Active from 1890 to 1900, later, the standard of living of the Northern Negro had risen, and just as capital in the North and West had forced out the English, German and Irish workmen and replaced them with cheaper and inferior people; so too, the Northern Negro could not live as cheaply as the Slav, Greek, Italian and Slovene.[352] These in their turn, however, the World War had been sweeping away, since the middle of 1914; and, while the sentimental regard for the Negro’s advancement, which had been very broad and active a generation earlier, had gradually become restricted to assisting in fitting him for a residence in “his natural home, the South,” the need for the brawn and sinew which he could supply, being felt in the North and West, in obedience to its demand, the Negro, for a consideration, was moving out of “his natural home”; for the philanthropy of the North, the greatest in the world, as it draws its supplies from, is to some degree, subservient to, the commercialism of its section. Almost contemporaneously with the lectures in the great Western city, which is destined to be the center of Northern Negro opinion, from the metropolis of the Union came an utterance of immense importance from the most aggressive, intelligent and humane publication, spreading out its influence from the center of American and world finance. As viewed by The New Republic, the situation in the summer of 1916 was thus stated: “To the Northern Negro the war in Europe has been of immense and unexpected advantage. It has shut out the immigrant who is the Negro’s most dangerous competitor, has doubled the demand for the Negro’s labor, raised his wages, and given chances to him, which in the ordinary course would have gone to white men. If immigration still lags after the war or is held down by law, the Negro will secure the great opportunity for which he has been waiting these fifty years.... In Southern cities, Atlanta, Memphis, Birmingham, Richmond, Nashville, Savannah, Charleston, Mobile, Negroes constitute one-third to one-half the population and more than that proportion of the wage earners and are given a chance to earn their living, because, without them, the work of these cities could not be done. In the city of Philadelphia, on the other hand, Negroes form only 5½ per cent of the population, in Chicago only 2 per cent, in New York a little less than 2 per cent.... If white men will not work with them, if the employer is forced to choose between a large supply of white labor and a small supply of Negro labor, he will choose the former.... The Negro gets a chance to work only when there is no one else.... The wronged are always wrong and so we blame the Negro. If we are fair, however, we must place the responsibility of a social effect for those responsible for the cause. If the Northern Negroes have a higher death rate and breed a larger proportion of criminals and prostitutes than do the