44 BULLETIN 1269. U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
landlord, and at the same time gives the landlord a supervision 
which could scarcely cause offense even to the more capable farmers. 
The relation of the overseer to the plantation indicates the attitude 
in the management of labor on the progressive plantation of the 
present day. The overseer of the old regime has been displaced by 
the farm manager in the new order. The farm manager's function 
is to direct the labor and plan the enterprises along the lines of 
modern agriculture. The scope of the overseer's activities, except on 
the sugar-cane plantation, has been reduced to that of labor "boss" 
in charge of small gangs of wage workers. If colored, such an over- 
seer is usually one of the workers who, by exceptional ability as a 
worker, is able to carry the "lead row." Considerable competition 
develops among negro laborers in their efforts to become gang 
"leader." The only security a leader has in holding his position is 
sheer ability to outclass all other aspirants. The gang leader usually 
receives a few cents extra per day. The "driver," as a petty official 
of the old regime, has been displaced by the "leader," where gang 
labor is used, or by the farm manager, where croppers or tenants are 
employed. In short, the old ways of supervision are gradually 
giving way to leadership and direction. As one planter expresses it, 
"the proper method to employ in supervision is suggestion rather 
than dictation." 
LABOR MOVEMENTS AND OCCUPANCY 
Since the Civil War, there has been a tendency of plantation ten- 
ants to shift periodically from farm to farm, a movement usually 
characterized as local restlessness. This, before the past decade, had 
never been a cause for anxiety or alarm to plantation operators, ex- 
cept in certain localities, because the shifting labor was replaced by 
other shifting labor and no particular inconvenience was experienced. 
During the past decade, however, local movements of the laborers, 
including changes from one locality to another, became wider and 
more general. As well as moving from farm to farm and from com- 
munity to community, some were moving from section to section and 
in certain instances were actually leaving the plantation region. A 
brief outline of these movements, with special reference to negro 
migration, together with their causes and effects, reveals the impor- 
tance of the labor problem in the plantation region at the present 
time. 
Aside from changes from farm to farm in the same community, 
until recent years two main movements have characterized labor 
migration in the South. 40 The more important of these has been the 
change from one locality to another caused usually by crop failure 
and consequent lack of demand for labor in one locality as compared 
with another. A considerable portion of this labor remains in the 
new place as long as the difference in prosperity continues. Negro 
labor, like certain forms of capital, tends to respond quickly to rela- 
tive demand. The more unattached laborers, under such circum- 
stances, move first; and the tenants may follow afterward. A strik- 
ing example of local negro-labor migration is seen frequently in Texas 
4 During the last two decades there has been a tendency for the so-callod " float inp" or the more unat- 
tached farm laborers to congregate about the towns. Those form a considerable part of the wage-labor 
supply for plantations, but the occurrence on the whole could scarcely be characterized as a migration 
movement. 
