Daily Kennebec journal., 1905-11-16
The Negro Moving Northward.

diffusion of the blacks throughout the
northern and western states to such an
extent that the congestion in the
southern states would be wholly re-
lieved. While some southern editors
and statesmen were urging one remedy
and some another, and while such
hysterical alarmists as Thomas Dixon,
Jr., have advocated the expectation of
the whole colored population of the
South, or almost any other means to
get rid of it, the Picayune has senslDiy
kept calm and has felt that the race
question would in time settle itself. IL
has found in recent conditions numer-
Gus indications which appear to justify
its belief. Increasing numbers OF
negroes are moving northward as last
as their conditions and opportunities
will hermit them. The first movement
was from the country districts of the
South. into the large towns and cities;
thence if began to go northward and
westward. In some of the states of the
middle West the negro invasion is be-
coming the subject Of serious consider
alton, in many communities.
In this connection the matter is
treated at some length in the Atlantic
Monthly for November by Robert De
Courcy Ward The Atlantic is great
Boston magazine, and the treatment of
this matter in it's pages is significant.
The article itself is primarily devoted
to a discussion of labor and immigra-
tion in the South, but in the course of
it appears the folloWing:
There is in the South today wide
spread and decided reaction against
the negro. Many of the white popula-
ton are losing patience with him. He
is charged with being less efficient than
before the war; with incapacity, ire
sponsibility and instability; with unfit
ness for and dissatisfaction with his
work; with demanding too much pay
and requiring too many holidays. Most
VI lHcSS IL Iioy W ii'tSu'
are similar to those which are heard in
the North with regard to white labor
e-s and servants. Furthermore. many
negroes, in common with the whites,
are leaving the country and fOcking to
the cities. often making it impossible
to secure negro labor for cotton picking
or for work on the sugar plantations.
Now. while the North has no special
interest in the difficulty which some
sugar-grower in Louisiana or some
cotton planter in Mississippi expert
ences in securing labor, it is vitality
interested in the effect which foreign
immigration into the South is having
on the negro. 1t is perfectly clear that
alien white immigrants are displacing
the negro. He is going to the southern
cities. and in increasing numbers to the
northern cities. Italians are proving
their ability and willingness to do work
at least equal to that of the negro in
the cotton fields. They have begun to
displace the negro on the sugar planta-
tions and truck farms of Louisiana,
Mississippi and Texas. Mexicans are
found cheaper and more easily obtain
able than negroes in parts of Missis-
sippi. Hungarians, Slavs and Italians
are being imported from New York into
the Birmingham district of Alabama to
work in the furnaces and mines instead
of the negroes. Italians, Mexicans and
Bohemians are replacing negroes in
Texas, in Mississippi, in Georgia. On
plantations and truck farms: in fur
naces and mines; in factories and
mills. in tho Of ait md
country; even in domestic service. the
black is steadily losing ground to the
alien white. The result is twofold
There is a tendency for the negro to
leave the occupations which require
greater skill and intelligence, and to
take refuge in those which require less,
for the negro gives up the struggle and
goes to the city. especially in the North
1t is the latter tendency which must at
tract the attention of thinking men and
women in the North. who, already
familiar with the conditions of negro
life in the cities, cannot fail TO view
with anxiety the inevitable congestion
Of these Southern negroes i'm the sIums
of Northern cities. Into one city of
100000 inha bitants in Massachusetts
there came during the past winter $50
negroes from the South. This immi-
grafton has only just begun; it will
gain greater and greater headway as
more aliens pour into the South What
the result will be for the negro, time
alone can tell, but those who have the
welfare of the negro at heart may well
ask themselves whether the indiscrimi-
nate admission of hundreds of thou
sands of aliens will not inevitably force
the majority of the cOlOred race down.
Our New Orleans contemporary feels
that the result of the diffusion of the
negroes throughout all the States will
be good for both negroes and whites.
The negroes being everywhere in a
minority among the population will be
no longer a social or political menace
as race. They will have no power to
dominate politics. They will lose all
their arrogance and offensive assump-
ton which are often manifested where
It is not kept down by force or intimi-
dation. The negroes. as individual
members of society. will then rise or