Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Connecticut have the following estimates: Between 1916 and 1918, 23,320 migrants went to Indiana, most of whom stopped in Indianapolis and Evansville;[45] 24,390 found their way to Michigan and settled for the most part in Detroit;[46] in Illinois, 24,000 were in Chicago alone;[47] and in Connecticut the city of Hartford reported 3,200 newcomers among its Negro population.[48]
In order to obtain a comprehensive view of any migration something should be known about its composition as well as its volume. As regards this particular movement it can be said that first of all it was a mass movement and not a movement of Negro leaders. It was composed of the large numbers of Negro laborers and artisans who, being very sorely pressed by adverse economic and social conditions, as will be shown later on, refused to seek the advice of their leaders, but pushed forward of their own accord with a determination to find the way for themselves.[49] This great mass, from the standpoint of habitation, was made up of two separate and distinct classes,[50] namely, rural and urban. The rural class was by far the most ignorant, owing to the lack of educational advantages in the rural districts of the South. They were for the most reared upon farms and their occupation was that of farm labor. It is said also that from this class came the majority of the Negroes who migrated from the South.[51]
On the basis of the economic, social and moral status, moreover, the members of this movement were composed of three types.[52] The first type consisted of the less responsible characters, the younger men, mostly single, who immediately responded to the promises of high wages and of free transportation made by labor agents. It was undoubtedly the presence of this type in such large numbers in the North that led Professor F. D. Tyson, of the University of Pittsburgh, to the conclusion that the outstanding fact of the Negro migration from the South was that it was preponderately a movement of single men; and certainly 70 or 80 per cent of the migrants in the Northern States were without family ties, as is evidenced by the advanced reports of the Bureau of the Census showing a change of sexual ratio of the population of some Southern States.[53] Thousands of this type were imported by the railroads to the North, but they proved to be very unreliable workers. They did not stick to their work but moved from place to place, thus furnishing in industry what some have termed the "floaters" or "birds of passage."
The second type was composed of industrious, thrifty, unskilled workers.[54] These for the most part were men with families or other dependents. It was the custom for the men to go ahead first, earn money, and at the same time observe conditions to ascertain whether they were favorable enough to warrant their sending for their families to join them in the North. If things were favorable, their families soon followed. Many of these, because of hard working and living conditions in the South, were forced to accept, ready, free transportation and promises of work and of high wages just as did the members of the first type. A good many of them, however, had small savings which they used to pay their travelling expenses. In some cases, in leaving their homes, the migrants departed from the usual custom of the men going ahead and leaving the families behind, by taking their wives and children to the North with them in the beginning; in others, only the wives accompanied their husbands, while the children were left behind with relatives or friends to be sent for at some future time.
In the next place, the third type of migrants consisted of a rather small group of skilled artisans, business and professional men who shared the dissatisfaction and restlessness of the common laborers.[55] For this group, moving from the South became a necessity because the migration had deprived it of the patronage of the rank and file from which its means of subsistence had been derived. Many of these, however, were in good circumstances, having been in possession of good positions, cash money and considerable property. That this was the case the following citations will show: In regard to the economic condition of the Negroes leaving Alabama, the Birmingham Age-Herald said, "It is not the riff-raff of the race, the worthless Negroes, who are leaving in such large numbers. There are, to be sure, many poor Negroes among them who have little more than the clothes on their backs, but others have property and good positions which they are sacrificing in order to get away at the first opportunity."[56] It is also reported that highly skilled Negro workmen went to Michigan, Ohio, and Massachusetts with fairly large sums of money from the sale of their possessions in the South.[57] A study of the financial conditions of 2,500 Negro migrants upon their arrival in Coatesville, near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, furthermore, revealed that many had brought with them sums ranging from $50 to $150, realized from selling their homes in the South. Their desire was to purchase new homes in Philadelphia, but in this they were disappointed, because very few houses were available for sale or rent.[58] Migrants of this type gladly sacrificed their means and earnings to leave the South, feeling that by so doing they were making an advance to a life of greater freedom.
FOOTNOTES:
[25] Tyson, F. D., Negro Migration in 1916-17, Rep. U. S. Dept. of Labor, p. 121.
[26] Pendleton, H. B., Survey, 37: 569, Feb. 17, 1917.
[27] Baker, Ray S., World's Work, 34: 315, July, 1917.
[28] Lit. Digest, 54: 1914, Jn. 23, 1917.