| In the two decades between 1910 and
1930, over ten percent of the Black population of the United States left the
South, where most of the Black population had been located, and migrated to
northern states, with. the largest number moving, it is claimed, between 1916
and 1918. It has been frequently assumed, but not proved, that the majority of
the migrants in what has come to be called the Great Migration came from rural
areas and were motivated by two factors: the collapse of the cotton industry,
which began in 1898, and increased demand in the North for labor following the
cessation of European immigration caused by the outbreak of the First World War
in 1914. This assumption has led to the conclusion that the migrants' subsequent
lack of economic mobility in the North is tied to rural background, a
background that implies unfamiliarity with urban living and a lack of industrial
skills. But the question of who actually left the South has never been thoroughly investigated. Although numerous investigations document an exodus (大批出走) from rural southern areas to southern cities prior to the Great Migration, no one has considered whether the same migrants then moved on to northern cities. In 1910 over 600, 000 Black workers, or ten percent of the Black work force, reported themselves to be engaged in "manufacturing and mechanical pursuits", the federal census category roughly encompassing the entire industrial sector. The Great Migration could easily have been made up entirely of this group and their families. It is perhaps surprising to argue that an employed population could be enticed to move, but an explanation lies in the labor conditions then prevalent in the South. About thirty-five percent of the urban Black population in the South was engaged in skilled trades. Some were from the old artisan class of slavery—blacksmiths, masons, carpenters—which had had a monopoly of certain trades, but they were gradually being pushed out by competition, mechanization, and out-date. The remaining sixty-five percent, more recently urbanized, worked in newly developed industries— tobacco, lumber, coal and iron manufacture, and railroads. Wages in the South, however, were low, and Black workers were aware, through labor recruiters and the Black press, that they could earn more even as unskilled workers in the North than they could as artisans in the South. During that period, urban black workers faced competition from the continuing arrival of both Black and White rural workers, who were driven to undercut the wages formerly paid for industrial jobs. Thus a move north would be seen as advantageous to a group that was already urbanized and steadily employed, and the easy conclusion tying their sub-sequent economic problems in the North to their rural background comes into question. |