138 Negro Migration 



tenth" among the Negro population of the towns, com- 

 posed of the merchants, doctors, teachers and preachers. 

 Just as the unattached agricultural laborers constitute the 

 shifting class in the country districts, so the domestic and 

 the common laborer is the migrant in the city. Home owner- 

 ship is still proportionately small in the Negro population. 

 Only 22 per cent of Negroes in the United States who 

 occupy "other than farm" homes are owners. A fourth of 

 these homes are mortgaged. The owners of other than 

 farm homes, however, increased between 1890 and 1910 

 from 143,500 to 285,000, or about 100 per cent. 10 



This growth of a stable, home-owning class in the town 

 is fully as encouraging as the growth of landownership in 

 the country. It is to the personal interest of these settled 

 property-owning Negro leaders to keep their fellow towns- 

 men from migrating. It is therefore very significant that 

 these leaders did not oppose but rather encouraged the 

 migration of 1916-17. Although their personal interest 

 is in seeing their race stay in the South, the conditions from 

 which they were moving were so patently undesirable that 

 the leaders either did not discourage or actively encouraged 

 the movement. 



CAUSES OF CITY MIGRATION 



The abnormal wage conditions of 1916-17 are so widely 

 known that little need be said in connection with them as a 

 principal cause of the movement. It has also been noted 

 that the movement itself created a sort of a suction which 

 drew others along. Dr. W. T. B. Williams, the colored 

 investigator, on the Department of Labor survey, summed 

 this up in the following keen observation : 



" The unusual amou n ts of money coming in, the glowing 

 accounts f rom the North, and the excitement and stir of 

 greafT Towcls leaving, work upon t he feelmgs__of many 

 NeftfQesr Thev pull up and follow aTmo s F without-gnrason. 

 they are stampeded into action. This accountsj njarge part 



10 Negro Population, 1790-1915, p. 460. 



