“General dissatisfaction with conditions, ravages of boll weevil, floods, change of crop system, low wages, poor houses on plantations, poor school facilities, unsatisfactory crop settlements, rough treatment, cruelty of the law officers, unfairness in courts, lynching, desire for travel, labor agents, the Negro press, letters from friends in the North, and, finally, advice of white friends in the South where crops had failed.” It is impossible to calculate the numbers with any likelihood of accuracy. Even the census of 1920 will hardly indicate what has taken place—for no one can say what allowance ought to be made for natural increase in the last ten years. But the insurance companies reckon that between May, 1916, and September, 1917, between thirty-five and forty thousand Negroes left Georgia. Perhaps the net loss to the South has been a quarter of a million, the majority young, single men and women. Some certainly put the figure higher. The movement has slowed down, owing to the after-the-war stagnancy in trade, the very bad housing conditions in the North, the race riot in Chicago, and other retarding influences. With a revival of trade it may go on more rapidly. Certainly whenever a countryside in the South is visited by some special act of violence there is a tendency for the colored population to flee. Unfortunately, the lot of migrants of the type of Negroes is always a hard one. It is difficult to settle down in a new community. Irregular habits bring disease. Provincial dullness makes it difficult to find a job or to evade sharpers. Unfortunately, also, Negroes are not by nature altruistic, not clannish like the Jews. They do not help one another in distress as much as poor Whites do. So many who flee northward inevitably come to grief.