ecame more manifest as comparisons were
made between the existing state of things at home and a much better
state of things elsewhere. It is possible to note in the appeals of
the letters a suggestion of a desire simply to improve their living
standards so long as there was an opportunity. In the case of some
there is expressed a praiseworthy providence for their families; and
in others may be found an index to the poverty and hopelessness of
their home communities. In this type of migration the old order is
strangely reversed. Large numbers of negroes have frequently moved
around from State to State and even within the States of the South in
search of more remunerative employment. A movement to the West or even
about in the South could have proceeded from the same cause, as in the
case of the migration to Arkansas and Oklahoma.

Among the immediate economic causes of the migration were the labor
depression in the South in 1914 and 1915 and the large decrease in
foreign immigration resulting from the World War. Then came the cotton
boll weevil in the summers of 1915 and 1916, greatly damaging the
cotton crop over considerable area, largely in Louisiana, Mississippi,
Alabama, Georgia and Florida, and threatening greatly to unsettle
farming conditions in the year 1917.[17] There followed then the
cotton price demoralization and the low price of this product during
subsequent years. The unusual floods during the summer of 1915 over
large sections in practically the same States further aggravated the
situation. The negroes, moreover, were generally dissatisfied because
of the continued low wages which obtained in the South in spite of the
increasing cost of living. Finally, there was a decided decrease in
foreign immigration. The result was a great demand in the North for
the labor of the negro at wages such as he had never received.[18]

To understand further the situation in the South at the beginning of
the migration and just prior to it, attention should be directed to
the fact that the practice of mortgaging the cotton crop before it
is produced made sudden reversals--an inevitable result of such
misfortune as followed the boll weevil and the floods. Thousands
of landlords were forced to dismiss their tenants and close the
commissaries from which came the daily rations. Some planters in
Alabama and Mississippi advised their tenants to leave and even
assisted them. The banks and merchants refused to extend credit when