t during these years when the treatment of the
Negroes is decidedly better they are leaving the South. This does not mean
that they would not have left before, if they had had economic
opportunities in the North. It is highly probable that the Negroes would
not be leaving the South today, if they were treated as men, although
there might be numerous opportunities for economic improvement in the
North.[4]

The immediate cause of this movement was the suffering due to the floods
aggravated by the depredations of the boll weevil. Although generally
mindful of our welfare, the United States Government has not been as ready
to build levees against a natural enemy to property as it has been to
provide fortifications for warfare. It has been necessary for local
communities and State governments to tax themselves to maintain them. The
national government, however, has appropriated to the purpose of
facilitating inland navigation certain sums which have been used in doing
this work, especially in the Mississippi Valley. There are now 1,538 miles
of levees on both sides of the Mississippi from Cape Girardeau to the
passes. These levees, of course, are still inadequate to the security of
the planters against these inundations. Carrying 406 million tons of mud a
year, the river becomes a dangerous stream subject to change, abandoning
its old bed to cut for itself a new channel, transferring property from
one State to another, isolating cities and leaving once useful levees
marooned in the landscape like old Indian mounds or overgrown
intrenchments.[5]

This valley has, therefore, been frequently visited with disasters which
have often set the population in motion. The first disastrous floods came
in 1858 and 1859, breaking many of the levees, the destruction of which
was practically completed by the floods of 1865 and 1869. There is an
annual rise in the stream, but since 1874 this river system has fourteen
times devastated large areas of this section with destructive floods. The
property in this district depreciated in value to the extent of about 400
millions in ten years. Farmers from this section, therefore, have at times
moved west with foreigners to take up public lands.

The other disturbing factor in this situation was the boll weevil, an
interloper from Mexico in 1892. The boll weevil is an insect about one
fourth of an inch in length, varying from one eighth to one third of an
inch with a breadth of about one third of t