CONCLUSION
CONCLUSION[ToC]
The significance of the foregoing facts is clearly indicated by the summaries following each set of figures. The road to the conclusions is straight. Turning to the preceding chapters, let us see what conclusions are warranted.
The urban concentration of the Negro is taking place in about the same way as that of the white population. In proportions, it varies only to a small extent from the movement of the whites, save where the conditions and influences are exceptional. The constant general causes influencing the Negro population have been similar to those moving other parts of the population to cities. The divorce from the soil in the sudden breaking down of the plantation régime just after the Civil War and the growth of industrial centers in the South, and the call of higher wages in the North, have been unusually strong influences to concentrate the Negro in the cities. It is with him largely as with other wage-earners: the desire for higher wages and the thought of larger liberty, especially in the North, together with a restlessness under hum-drum, hard rural conditions and a response to the attractions of the city, have had considerable force in bringing him to urban centers. Labor legislation in the South has played its part in the movement.
The growth of the industrial and commercial centers of the South, the larger wages in domestic and personal service in the North, and social and individual causes of concentration bid fair to continue for an indefinite period. The Negro responding to their influence will continue to come in comparatively large numbers to town to stay.