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118,000 Negroes move from the south.

Atlanta- Since the first of last April, 118,000 Negroes have gone from the South to West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, Illinois, Michigan and Connecticut to accept work. They went to take places vacated by thousands of unskilled foreign laborers who returned to Europe after the outbreak of the Great War. This Negro migration to the North, East, and West has recently assumed such gigantic proportions that it threatens the very existence of some of the leading industries of Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and Alabama, which have borne the burden of the exodus. The World correspondent, after interviewing hundreds of Negroes and white people in this section of the country, has found the chief reasons for the tremendous flow of colored citizens to the North to be:

1. The natural desire to get a promised increase of wages, accompanied by a free ride to the new field of labor.
2. To gratify a natural impulse to travel and see the country.
3. To better the condition of the Negro by a freer use of schools and other advantages offered in the North, East and West.
4. The desire of some Negroes to escape the persecution of thoughtless and irresponsible white people who mistreat them.
5. To see the fulfillment of a dream to be on a social equality with white people.
6. The Negro who is educated wants to go where he can vote and take part in running the Government.

The dominant reason for the migration is more money. The alluring tales of the labor agent have made the Southern Negro long for the North. He is in a state of unrest. Every sane Negro in the states of Florida, Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee has heard of the "recruiting man" from the North who has come South to take the Negro to his "real friends."

Great excitement prevails in the entire cotton belt. Crops are short and many Negroes will be idle until spring unless they leave the cotton plantations. The boll weevil and floods destroyed thousands of acres of cotton on the Mississippi this year and left hundreds of Negro families penniless. That is why the call for labor met such a ready response in some regions. The following figures, showing the number of Negroes leaving the various States, indicate the extent of the transfer of labor from the South to other sections of the country: from Alabama, 60,000; from Tennessee, 22,000; from Florida, 12,000; from Georgia, 10,000; from Virginia, 3,000; from North Carolina, 2,000; from Kentucky, 3,000; from South Carolina, 2,000; from Arkansas, 2,000; from Mississippi, 2,000.

It is estimated that ninety-five per cent of the Negroes who have left the South in this movement are men, The demand is for laborers for freight and section-hand work on railroads, miners for coal and iron mines, and unskilled workmen for general outside work at industrial plants throughout the Middle West and North. Most of the black men are now doing the heavy work done by Italians, Montenegrins, Roumanians, Greeks, and other foreigners before the European war broke out. The reports of the Bureau of Immigration of the Department of Labor show that during the fiscal years of 1915 and 1916, 169,300 Italians returned to Italy; 2,170 Bulgarians, Serbs, and Montenegrins; 3,622 Germans; 18,500 subjects of Great Britain, 8,096 Frenchmen; 1,400 Roumanians; 1,000 Russians and 1,600 Japs to their native countries.

Last spring, when the business of the railroads and the mines began to prosper as they had not done before in years, the demand for unskilled labor increased rapidly. The freight congestion in and about New York caused a pressing demand for truck hands. In former years the railroads had called on Europe and Asia for extra supplies. Labor agents and steamship companies cooperated to fill orders for thousands of men for rough work. This year, when they could not get people from the war zone, they returned to the South. The present movement of colored labor from the cotton States of the South to the great industrial centers of the North, East and West was started by the Erie and Pennsylvania Railroads in a legitimate way. The agents of these roads commenced their efforts to increase their operating forces by appealing to the Federal Department of Labor's distribution office, connected with the division of information. The roads took advantage of Secretary Wilson's plan to land the "jobless man" in the "manless job." The first call was made on Florida and George. It was made known at Jacksonville and Savannah that these two great roads would pay 22 cents an hour, seven days a week, and use the men overtime. It was announced that bunkhouses made from boxcars, or railroad hotels, would be provided for the Negroes, and that food would be sold to them at the rate of $2 a week.

It was stated that an able-bodied hard-working Negro man could earn from $70 to $85 a month, laboring for the Erie or Pennsylvania Roads. This appeal started the ball going; the news of the desire for labor spread throughout both States. But the final inducement that reached all of the idle Negroes, and most of the busy ones, was the offer of a "free rise" or a ride on "credit." When it became known that the railroads would not only provide jobs at good wages but would haul the Negroes free, the entire