ion by
flight to another locality. This maladaptation was the result of
defeat of the migrants by natural forces operating in the struggle for
existence, and of their failure to overcome the powerful economic and
social adversities due to racial prejudice in the Southern society.
The floods and boll-weevil pests had, in many cases, either destroyed
crops, or rendered the raising of them totally impossible, and in
consequence had practically destroyed the very means of subsistence of
the Negroes. Added to this were numerous economic and social
disadvantages in the form of unjust farming conditions, wretchedly low
wages, lynchings, segregation, injustice in the courts, poor housing,
poor schools, and so on, all of which tended to make life in the home
environment more and more unendurable. While these driving forces were
at work, there suddenly loomed up in the North a most unusually large
demand for labor, and in this the Negroes saw the possibility of
gaining access to an environment where conditions of life seemed much
more favorable than those in the present surroundings. Consequently,
as a means of escaping the pain of maladaptation and of seeking the
pleasure which results from proper adjustment to external conditions,
the Negroes simply chose the line of least resistance; that is, flight
or migration to the North.

In the next place, we see that the migration was merely one of many
such movements which have been in progress for more than fifty years,
and that it differs from these only in volume. Its uniqueness, as we
said,[174] lies in the fact that it alone brought from the South to
the North and West a number of Negroes which exceeds that which
resulted from all the combined movements in this direction during a
period of forty years. While this is the case, it should not be
overlooked, however, that this was due largely to the then existing
extraordinary economic and social conditions. At the time of the
occurrence of this movement conditions causing the Negroes to desire
to leave the South, and opportunities for their employment in Northern
industries, were never so favorable and widespread as then. The forces
of push and pull, both economic and social, were present and were
operating on a scale larger than any hitherto known. It is, therefore,
very evident that without these most unusual and favorable conditions
this migration either never would have occurred when it did, or if it
would have, it would not hav