The migration of negroes to the cities is extremely significant. In ten
Southern states the proportion of the colored population was almost
exactly the same in 1890 as it had been in 1860,--namely, 36 per
cent,--yet in sixteen cities of those states, as shown by Mr.
Hoffman,[25] the colored proportion increased from 19 per cent in 1860
to 29 per cent in 1890. This relative increase, however, did not
continue after 1890, for, according to the census of 1900, the
proportion of negroes in those cities was still 29 per cent. During the
past decade the negroes have increased relatively faster in Northern
cities. The white population of Chicago increased threefold from 1880 to
1900, and the colored population fivefold. The white population of
Philadelphia during the same period increased 50 per cent and the
colored population 100 per cent. In the thirty-eight largest cities of
the country the negro population in ten years increased 38 per cent and
the white population, including foreign immigration, increased 33 per
cent. In thirty Northern and border cities during the past census decade
the negroes gained 167,000, and in twenty Southern cities they gained
80,000.[26]

The Southern whites also are moving from the South, and in larger
proportions than the negroes, though the movement of both is small. In
1900, 7 per cent of the whites of Southern birth lived in the North and
West and only 4.3 per cent of the negroes of Southern birth. But the
negroes who go North go to the cities, and the whites to the country.
Three-fifths (58 per cent) of these northbound negroes moved to the
larger cities and only one-fourth (26 per cent) of the northbound
whites.[27]

The accompanying map, derived from the census of 1900,[28] shows clearly
both of these movements of negro population. The shaded areas indicate
the counties where negroes formed a larger proportion of the population
in 1900 than they did twenty years earlier, in 1880. Here can be seen
the movement to the low and fertile lands of the South and the cities of
the North and South. There are but two areas in California and Colorado,
not included on the map, where the population of negroes has increased,
and one of these contains the city of Los Angeles.

Were the negroes in the cities to scatter through all the sections, the
predominating numbers of the white element might have an elevating
influence, but, instead, the negroes congregate in the poorer wards,
where both poverty