trace his economic
progress from the modern serfdom.

Even in the better-ordered country districts of the South the free
movement of agricultural laborers is hindered by the migration-agent
laws. The "Associated Press" recently informed the world of the arrest
of a young white man in Southern Georgia who represented the "Atlantic
Naval Supplies Company," and who "was caught in the act of enticing
hands from the turpentine farm of Mr. John Greer." The crime for which
this young man was arrested is taxed five hundred dollars for each
county in which the employment agent proposes to gather laborers for
work outside the State. Thus the Negroes' ignorance of the
labor-market outside his own vicinity is increased rather than
diminished by the laws of nearly every Southern State.

Similar to such measures is the unwritten law of the back districts and
small towns of the South, that the character of all Negroes unknown to
the mass of the community must be vouched for by some white man. This
is really a revival of the old Roman idea of the patron under whose
protection the new-made freedman was put. In many instances this
system has been of great good to the Negro, and very often under the
protection and guidance of the former master's family, or other white
friends, the freedman progressed in wealth and morality. But the same
system has in other cases resulted in the refusal of whole communities
to recognize the right of a Negro to change his habitation and to be
master of his own fortunes. A black stranger in Baker County, Georgia,
for instance, is liable to be stopped anywhere on the public highway
and made to state his business to the satisfaction of any white
interrogator. If he fails to give a suitable answer, or seems too
independent or "sassy," he may be arrested or summarily driven away.

Thus it is that in the country districts of the South, by written or
unwritten law, peonage, hindrances to the migration of labor, and a
system of white patronage exists over large areas. Besides this, the
chance for lawless oppression and illegal exactions is vastly greater
in the country than in the city, and nearly all the more serious race
disturbances of the last decade have arisen from disputes in the count
between master and man,--as, for instance, the Sam Hose affair. As a
result of such a situation, there arose, first, the Black Belt; and,
second, the Migration to Town. The Black Belt was not, as many
assumed, a