t with these laws, and the
result is the maladjustment of those who have behaved thus. Society
then takes steps to compel these individuals to bring themselves back
into harmony with the life of the rest of the group. During this
period of compulsion, however, all do not comply with the commands of
society, for many avail themselves of the alternative of flight or
migration to another place where conditions of life seem more
favorable. The numerous historical accounts of men and women leaving
their native lands in order to escape discomforts, dissatisfactions,
punishment or persecution for various reasons, are examples of this
state of affairs.

Migration then is an important element in man's environmental
relations. It is the means by which he is enabled to escape the pain
of an unfavorable environment and to find the pleasure which might
result from adaptation in more favorable surroundings. Through flight
or migration man simply adopts the course on which his efforts meet
with the least resistance, because, instead of remaining in the
unfavorable locality to struggle against the most adverse
circumstances, or to run the risk of suffering death or degeneracy, he
moves elsewhere, where the obstacles appear to be fewer, and where
adaptation seems a matter of easier accomplishment. Now, should this
same principle be applied to this specific subject under discussion,
it would, perhaps, be demonstrated that the Negroes, likewise, simply
used migration as a means of escaping the intolerable conditions in
their home environment and of making their way into another accessible
locality, where the chances of winning out in the struggle for
existence seemed more certain.

In this view of migration as a means of escape from unfavorable
environmental conditions we must distinguish it, however, from those
earliest movements of primitive men. These were, perhaps, instinctive
and differed little from the movements of animals. They were mere
"wanderings"; but they were the necessary forerunners of the more
recent movements.[8] Migration, in its truest sense, is a reasoned
movement which arose after man had progressed far enough in the scale
of civilization to have a fixed abiding place. It is a definite
movement from one place to another. It involves an actual and
permanent change of residence. Migration, therefore, occurred only in
the most rudimentary form among people in the hunting stage; more
developed forms of it occurred amo