Footnote 92: [(return)]
The suggestions were: to encourage the farmer to plant peanuts, soy beans, velvet beans and cotton as cash crops; to create a cash market for such crops named above as at present have no cash market; to encourage tenants to grow fall and winter gardens and to plant at least five acres of oats to the plow, seed being furnished when necessary; to stipulate, in making tenant contracts for another year, that cotton stalks be plowed under in the fall, that special methods of combating the boll weevil be used. To advance no more than $25 to the plow, and, in every case possible, to refrain from any advance; to encourage land holders to rent land for part of the crops grown; to urge the exercise of leniency on unpaid notes and mortgages due from thrifty and industrious farmers so as to give them a chance to recover from the boll weevil conditions and storm losses; to create a market lasting all year for such crops as hay, cow-peas, sweet potatoes, poultry and live stock; to urge everybody to build fences and make pastures so as to grow more live stock and to produce more nearly all of the supplies used on the farm; to carry on a food campaign in the country, devoting the first Sunday in October to the work of urging the people to plant gardens and sow oats, and to organize a Farmers' Loan Association in Macon county to work with the Farmers' Loan Bank being established by the United States Government.
Footnote 93: [(return)]
Report of the Twenty-sixth Annual Negro Conference at Tuskegee Institute.
Footnote 94: [(return)]
Johnson, Report on the Migration from Mississippi.
Footnote 95: [(return)]
Johnson, Report on the Migration from Mississippi.
CHAPTER VIII
Effects of the Movement on the South
The first changes wrought by this migration were unusually startling. Homes found themselves without servants, factories could not operate because of the lack of labor, farmers were unable to secure laborers to harvest their crops. Streets in towns and cities once crowded assumed the aspect of deserted thoroughfares, houses in congested districts became empty, churches, lodges and societies suffered such a large loss of membership that they had to close up or undergo reorganization.
Probably the most striking change was the unusual increase in wages. The wages for common labor in Thomasville, Georgia, increased almost certainly 100 per cent. In Valdosta there was a general increase in the town and county of about 50 per cent, in Brunswick and Savannah the same condition obtained. The common laborer who had formerly received 80 cents a day earned thereafter $1.50 to $1.75. Farm hands working for from $10 to $15 per month were advanced to $20 or $35 per month. Brick masons who had received 50 cents per hour thereafter earned 62½ cents and 70 cents per hour. In Savannah common laborers paid as high as $2 per day were advanced to $3. At the sugar refinery the rates were for women, 15 to 22 cents per hour, men, 22 to 30 cents per hour. In the more skilled lines of work, the wages were for carpenters, $4 to $6 per day, painters, $2.50 to $4 per day, and bricklayers $4 to $5 per day.
The increase in the Birmingham district may be studied as a type of the changes effected in the industrial centers of the South, as Birmingham is a great coal mining center and, with the exception of Pittsburgh, is the greatest iron ore district in the United States. On November 6, 1917, the average daily wage earnings of forty-five men was $5.49. On November 10, 1917, the average for seventy-five men was $5.30. One man was earning $10 a day, two $9 to $10 a day, five $8 to $9, six $7 to $8, ten $6 to $7, fourteen $5 to $6, thirty-two $4 to $5, nine $3 to $4, and six under $3. In the other coal and iron ore sections the earnings had been similarly increased.[96]