to employ white
porters, druggists had to deliver their own packages and firms had
to resort to employing negro women. On the farms much of the crop was
lost on account of the scarcity of labor. In Greenwood wages of common
laborers increased from $1 and $1.25 to $1.75 per day. Clarksdale was
also compelled to offer laborers more remuneration. Vicksburg found it
necessary to increase the wages of negroes from $1.25 to $2 per day.
There were laborers on steamboats who received $75 to $100 per month.

At Leland 500 to 1,000 men received $1.75 per day. The oil mills of
Indianola raised the wages of the negroes from $1.50 to $2 per day.
At Laurel the average daily wage was raised from $1.35 to $1.65, the
maximum wage being $2. Wages increased at Meridian from 90 cents and
$1.25 to $1.50 and $1.75 per day. The wholesale houses increased the
compensation of their employes from $10 to $12 per week. From $1.10 in
Hattiesburg the daily wage was raised to $1.75 and $2 per day. Wages
in Jackson increased from $1 and $1.25 to $1.35 and $1.50 per day. In
Natchez there was an increase of 25 per cent. On the whole, throughout
the State there was an increase of from 10 to 30 per cent and in some
instances of as much as 100 per cent.[97]

Throughout the South there was not only a change in policy as to the
method of stopping the migration of the blacks to the North, but a
change in the economic policy of the South. Southern business men and
planters soon found out that it was impossible to treat the negro as
a serf and began to deal with him as an actual employe entitled to his
share of the returns from his labor. It was evident that it would be
very much better to have the negroes as coworkers in a common cause
than to have them abandon their occupations in the South, leaving
their employers no opportunity to secure to themselves adequate income
to keep them above want.

A more difficult change of attitude was that of the labor unions. They
had for years been antagonistic to the negroes and had begun to drive
them from many of the higher pursuits of labor which they had even
from the days of slavery monopolized. The skilled negro laborer
has gradually seen his chances grow less and less as the labor
organizations have invaded the South. In the end, however, the trade
unions have been compelled to yield, although complete economic
freedom of the negro in the South is still a matter of prospect.

There was, too, a decided change in t