[A] Does not include proprietors, salaried officers, clerks, etc.
[B] 1880, Tenth Census, Manufactures, pp. xxiv, xxv; 1890 and 1900, 11th Census, Manufactures, Part ii, pp. 7, 108, 115, 134, 279, 300, 335, 831, 848, 908; 1905, 12th Census, vol. viii, Manufactures, Part ii, pp. 20, 142, 152, 179, 339, 361, 403, 1025, 1056, 1127.
[C] No return for 1880.
[D] Figures for 1905 are less and are not comparable with preceding figures, because in 1905 all neighborhood work and establishments for custom work and repairing were excluded.
[E] Does not include cotton compressing in 1900.
[F] Fourteen cities; Chattanooga and Birmingham are omitted.
The industrial pull of Southern cities, then, is shown both by the increase in the average number of wage-earners and in the total value of manufactured products.
There is no reason to doubt that commercial enterprise has operated and kept pace with industrial activity in causing the growth of these urban centers. Figures for the trade of these sixteen Southern cities are not available. However, we have side lights upon the commercial life in the amount of railroad building that has taken place in the South since 1860. In 1860, there were only 8,317 miles of railroad in the thirteen states from Maryland and Delaware to Arkansas and Texas. In 1900, there were 46,735.86 miles in the same territory, an increase of 461.9 per cent. From 1900 to 1905 this increased to 55,239.22 miles or 18.2 per cent in the five years.[10] Likewise the traffic operations, including total tonnage, and freight, passenger, express and mail earnings of selected groups of railways covering most of this territory, increased very rapidly from 1890 to 1900. In the ten years, from 1890 to 1900, the tonnage increased from 63,597,120 tons to 121,180,317 tons or 90.5 per cent; and total earnings went from $113,616,184.45 in 1890 to $168,606,233 in 1900, an increase of 48.4 per cent in ten years.
As these industrial and commercial forces affect the population, the Negro without doubt shares to a considerable extent the influence. That the Negro has been a large labor factor in the South is a patent fact. All the data available indicate that he has been affected by economic influences similar to those which have moved the white population toward the urban centers.
The most decisive set of facts is the growth in the number of whites and Negroes in gainful occupations in Southern cities. The census returns of 1890 and 1900 for a number of Southern cities were sufficient for an inference. For some occupations figures for 1890 were not available, and in other occupations some cities were not reported in 1890. So a selected list of occupations was taken.