o the fundamental cause.

Why then should the Negroes leave the South? It has often been spoken of
as the best place for them. There, it is said, they have made unusual
strides forward. The progress of the Negroes in the South, however, has in
no sense been general, although the land owned by Negroes in the country
and the property of thrifty persons of their race in urban communities may
be extensive. In most parts of the South the Negroes are still unable to
become landowners or successful business men. Conditions and customs have
reserved these spheres for the whites. Generally speaking, the Negroes are
still dependent on the white people for food and shelter. Although not
exactly slaves, they are yet attached to the white people as tenants,
servants or dependents. Accepting this as their lot, they have been
content to wear their lord's cast-off clothing, and live in his
ramshackled barn or cellar. In this unhappy state so many have settled
down, losing all ambition to attain a higher station. The world has gone
on but in their sequestered sphere progress has passed them by.

What then is the cause? There have been _bulldozing_, terrorism,
maltreatment and what not of persecution; but the Negroes have not in
large numbers wandered away from the land of their birth. What the
migrants themselves think about it, goes to the very heart of the trouble.
Some say that they left the South on account of injustice in the courts,
unrest, lack of privileges, denial of the right to vote, bad treatment,
oppression, segregation or lynching. Others say that they left to find
employment, to secure better wages, better school facilities, and better
opportunities to toil upward.[3] Southern white newspapers unaccustomed to
give the Negroes any mention but that of criminals have said that the
Negroes are going North because they have not had a fair chance in the
South and that if they are to be retained there, the attitude of the
whites toward them must be changed. Professor William O. Scroggs, of
Louisiana State University, considers as causes of this exodus "the
relatively low wages paid farm labor, an unsatisfactory tenant or
crop-sharing system, the boll weevil, the crop failure of 1916, lynching,
disfranchisement, segregation, poor schools, and the monotony, isolation
and drudgery of farm life." Professor Scroggs, however, is wrong in
thinking that the persecution of the blacks has little to do with the
migration for the reason tha