icultural labor; but it is
said that from a broad, national standpoint the gain to the
manufacturing industries more than compensates. And there has
been an actual increase in the output of energy. The negro
works harder in the North. He produces more. He is thus of
more use to the community. And for the benefit he brings,
communities are more willing than they were at first to
tolerate the inconvenience due to his coming.

Some of the negro newspapers opposed the migration. Prominent among
these was the _Journal and Guide_ of Norfolk, Virginia, and the
_Voice of the People_ of Birmingham, Alabama. In speaking against the
migration, the _Journal and Guide_[168] said:

It is difficult, if not impossible, to check the operation of
an economic law, and it is perfectly natural that men should
seek fields of labor in which they are promised higher
wages and better conditions, but those who go and those
who encourage the going of them should get the facts of the
so-called inducements and learn the truth about them before
lending their influence to a movement that can not only
promise no permanent good to laborers, but works untold injury
to the foundation of their own economic structure.

Another phase of the matter, and one that invites the
condemnation of all honest persons, is the manner in which
negro labor is at present exploited to satisfy the selfish
whims of a group of misguided and ill-advised agitators and
fanatics on the race question. All of the nice talk about
"fleeing from southern oppression," and going where "equal
rights and social privileges" await them is pure buncombe. It
is strange that negro labor should stand the oppression of the
South for fifty years and suddenly make up its mind to move
northward as an evidence of its resentment.

The truth of the matter is that the element of negroes in the
South that feel the oppression most is not concerned in the
migration movement. Nor are they going to leave their homes
and accumulations of half a century as a solution of their
problems. They are going to remain here and fight out their
constitutional rights accorded them here in the land of their
birth.

The editor of _The Star of Zion_, Charlotte, North Carolina,[169]
conceded the right of the negro to go wherever he had opportunity to
go; on the other hand, it was doubtf