age it,
but as common carriers, they could not refuse to sell tickets or to
provide the necessary transportation. It seemed to him that as long as
their friends and kinsmen who had preceded them to the North and East
were receiving a high scale of wages, the South would have to look for
continued movement.[88]

After having enforced these drastic measures without securing
satisfactory results, and having seen that any attempt to hold the
negroes by force resulted apparently in an increased determination to
leave, there was resort to the policy of frightening the negroes
away from the North by circulating rumors as to the misfortunes to be
experienced there. Negroes were then warned against the rigors of the
northern winter and the death rate from pneumonia and tuberculosis.
Social workers in the North reported frequent cases of men with simple
colds who actually believed that they had developed "consumption."
Speakers who wished to discourage the exodus reported "exact" figures
on the death rate of the migrants in the North that were astounding.
As, for example, it was said by one Reverend Mr. Parks that there
were 2,000 of them sick in Philadelphia. The editor of a leading white
paper in Jackson, Mississippi, made the remark that he feared that
the result of the first winter's experience in the North would prove
serious to the South, in so far as it would remove the bugbear of the
northern climate. The returned migrants were encouraged to speak
in disparagement of the North and to give wide publicity to their
utterances, emphasizing incidents of suffering reported through the
press.

When such efforts as these failed, however, the disconcerted planters
and business men of the South resorted to another plan. Reconciliation
and persuasion were tried. Meetings were held and speakers were
secured and advised what to say. In cities and communities where
contact on this plane had been infrequent, it was a bit difficult
to approach the subject. The press of Georgia gave much space to the
discussion of the movement and what ought to be done to stop it. The
consensus of opinion of the white papers in the State was that the
negro had not been fairly treated, and that better treatment would
be one of the most effective means of checking the migration. Mob
violence, it was pointed out, was one of the chief causes of the
exodus.[89]

The _Tifton_ (Georgia) _Gazette_ commenting on the causes said:

They have allowed negroe