rs
and porters on the Atlantic coast steamers. The northern newspapers
with the greatest circulation are from Pennsylvania and New York, and
the New York colored weeklies are widely read. Reports from all of
these south Atlantic States indicate that comparatively few persons
ventured into the Northwest when a better known country lay before
them.

The Pennsylvania Railroad, one of the first to import laborers
in large numbers, reports that of the 12,000 persons brought to
Pennsylvania over its road, all but 2,000 were from Florida and
Georgia. The tendency was to continue along the first definite path.
Each member of the vanguard controlled a small group of friends at
home, if only the members of his immediate family. Letters sent
back, representing that section of the North and giving directions
concerning the route best known, easily influenced the next groups
to join their friends rather than explore new fields. In fact, it is
evident throughout the movement that the most congested points in
the North when the migration reached its height, were those favorite
cities to which the first group had gone.[75] An intensive study of
a group of 77 families from the South, selected at random in Chicago,
showed but one family from Florida and no representation at all from
North and South Carolina. A tabulation of figures and facts from 500
applications for work by the Chicago League on Urban Conditions among
Negroes gives but a few persons from North Carolina, twelve from South
Carolina and one from Virginia. The largest number, 102, came from
Georgia. Applicants for work in New York from the south Atlantic
States are overwhelming.[76]

For the east and west south central States, the Northwest was more
accessible and better known. St. Louis and Cincinnati are the nearest
northern cities to the South and excursions have frequently been run
there from New Orleans, through the State of Mississippi. There are
in St. Louis, as in other more northern cities, little communities of
negroes from the different sections of the South. The mail order and
clothing houses of Chicago have advertised this city throughout the
South. The convenience of transportation makes the Northwest a popular
destination for migrants from Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas
and Tennessee. The Illinois Central Railroad runs directly to New
Orleans through Tennessee and Mississippi.

There were other incidental factors which determined the course of
th