sible date.

It would appear that the stability of the labor supply depended to a
very large extent upon the housing conditions. It was found that in
many instances men who had families went to other cities where they
hoped to find better accommodations. The Pittsburgh manufacturer will
never keep an efficient labor supply of negroes until he learns to
compete with the employers of other cities in a housing program as
well as in wages. The negro migration in Pittsburgh, however, did not
cause a displacement of white laborers. Every man was needed, as there
were more jobs than men to fill them. Pittsburgh's industrial life was
for a time dependent upon the negro labor supply, and the city has not
received a sufficient supply of negroes, and certainly not so many
as smaller industrial towns, although the railroads and a few of
the industrial concerns of the locality have had labor agents in the
South. Yet, in spite of the difficulties because of the obstructive
tactics adopted in certain southern communities to prevent the negro
exodus, they have nevertheless succeeded in bringing several thousand
negroes into this district. "One company, for instance," says Epstein,
"which imported about a thousand men within the past year, had only
about three hundred of these working at the time of the investigator's
visit in July, 1917. One railroad, which is said to have brought about
fourteen thousand people to the North within the last twelve months,
has been able to keep an average of only eighteen hundred at work."
These companies, however, have failed to hold the newcomers.

The problems created by this sudden increase of Pittsburgh's
population were very grave. In the early part of 1917, plans were
formulated to make a social survey of the migrants in Pittsburgh.
Cooperating in this survey were the University of Pittsburgh, the
Associated Charities, the Social Service Commission of the Churches of
Christ and the National League on Urban Conditions among Negroes.
In March, 1917, the director of the Department of Public Health,
instructed the sanitary inspectors to pay special attention to all
premises occupied by the "newcomers." Another step in this direction
was the establishment in that city of a branch of the National League
on Urban Conditions among Negroes.

A survey made in 1917 showed that the housing situation was the most
serious aspect of the migrants' social problems, and that in order
to have improvements in othe