The Boll Weevil, the Cotton Economy, and Black Migration 1910-1930

Author(s): Robert Higgs

Source: Agricultural History, Vol. 50, No. 2 (Apr., 1976), pp. 335-350
Published by: Agricultural History Society
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 ROBERT HIGGS

THE BOLL WEEVIL, THE COTTON

ECONOMY, AND BLACK MIGRATION
1910-1930

For a half century after the Civil War a trickle of black population had
flowed out of the South. Then, during the years from 1916 to 1918, the
trickle swelled to a flood, and except for a brief period immediately
after the war the torrent persisted for more than a decade. Overall the
cotton-belt states lost more than 500,000 blacks during the war decade
and over 800,000 during the 1920s.1 This migration was, in the judg-
ment of two leading historians of black America, "after the Civil War
and Emancipation, the major watershed in American black history."2
Yet, despite the obvious importance of the Great Migration, its causes
have received only casual analysis, and the latest published discussions
of the subject are almost identical to those offered by contemporaries.3
ROBERT HIGGS is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Washington.
He would like to thank Tim Ozenne and Gavin Wright for helpful discussions.
1 Hope T. Eldridge and Dorothy Swaine Thomas, Population Redistribution and
Economic Growth, United States, 1870-1950: III. Demographic Analyses and Inter-
relations (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1964), 260.
2 August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, From Plantation to Ghetto, rev. ed. (New
York: Hill and Wang, 1970), 213.
3 Major works by contemporaries include U. S. Department of Labor, Division of

Negro Economics, Negro Migration in 1916-17 (Washington: GPO, 1919); Emmett J.

Scott, Negro Migration during the War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1920);
Thomas Jackson Woofter, Jr., Negro Migration: Changes in Rural Organization and
Population of the Cotton Belt (New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969 [1920]);
Louise Venable Kennedy, The Negro Peasant Turns Cityward: Effects of Recent
Migrations to Northern Centers (New York: Columbia University Press, 1930); and
Edward E. Lewis, The Mobility of the Negro: A Study in the American Labor Supply
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1931). More recent discussions may be found
in Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Moder Democ-
racy (New York: Harper and Row, 1969 [1944]), 191-96; Dewey H. Palmer, "Moving
North: Migration of Negroes During World War I," Phylon 28 (Spring 1967): 52-62;
John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans, 3d ed.
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), 471-73; Meier and Rudwick, From Plantation to
Ghetto, 213-16; and Dan Lacy, The White Use of Blacks in America: 350 Years of
Law and Violence, Attitudes and Etiquette, Politics and Change (New York: McGraw-
Hill, 1972), 139-61.
335
336 AGRICULTURAL HISTORY

The present paper contributes toward bringing the analysis of the

Great Migration up to date. It employs the best but generally over-
looked (Eldridge-Thomas) estimates of the migratory flows of blacks
in conjunction with neglected U.S. Department of Agriculture esti-
mates of cotton yield reductions due to boll weevils and other causes.
It also exploits some unpublished estimates of black income levels in
the Southern states. By conducting statistical tests of clearly specified
hypotheses the study makes possible a more rigorous assessment of the
"push" factors in the Great Migration. Existing explanations of this
momentous movement suffer from an excess of pluralism; as a result
they tend to lump together central with peripheral influences, indeed
to associate the migration with a variety of merely incidental circum-
stances. The present paper offers a more methodologically self-conscious
appraisal of the causal structure of the Great Migration.

For a long time social scientists and historians have analyzed migra-
tion in terms of "push" and "pull" factors. In this framework migration
occurs because people are somehow repelled from their accustomed
location and simultaneously attracted elsewhere. Very often the rele-
vant forces are viewed as economic-for example, deteriorating stand-
ards of living constituting the push and the promise of higher incomes
elsewhere the pull-but noneconomic forces can be fitted just as readily
into such a scheme. The push-pull framework has served as the prin-
cipal model for explaining the Great Migration of blacks to the North.
More recently economists and others have begun to analyze migration
as an "investment in human capital."4 This view assumes that migration
occurs whenever people believe that the present value of the net gains
realizable by moving exceeds the present value of the costs associated
with relocating. Migration therefore entails an expected increase in
wealth. This framework is somewhat richer in testable hypotheses than
the push-pull approach. For example, it implies that, ceteris paribus,
short moves are more likely than longer ones and that young adults are
more likely to migrate than older people. (Neither proposition is neces-
sarily implied by the push-pull analysis.) The investment approach
emphasizes that only an opportunity differential is required to prompt
migration. Thus people might abandon an area where incomes are
rising if they expect their incomes to rise sufficiently faster elsewhere.
In this case no obvious push impels them to depart from their usual
4 The seminal paper is Larry A. Sjaastad, "The Costs and Returns of Human
Migration," Journal of Political Economy 70 (October 1962): 80-93. For an attempt to
use this framework in a study of black migration-an attempt marred by lack of ap-
propriate data-see William Edward Vickery, "The Economics of Negro Migration,
1900-1960" (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1969).
BLACK MIGRATION, 1910-1930 337

place of residence, unless a lagging rate of growth be considered a push,

and it typically is not so regarded. In short, the investment approach to
the analysis of migration is both more general and more rigorous than
the push-pull approach. Unfortunately, studies employing the invest-
ment approach tend to be rather narrowly statistical and to lack the
richness of descriptive detail so often characteristic of push-pull analy-
ses.
Virtually all studies of the Great Migration have enumerated the
same list of push and pull factors.5 The principal attraction is believed
to have been a greatly expanded opportunity for employment at higher
wage rates in Northern industries consequent upon the reduction of
foreign immigration. Among the less important pull factors mentioned
are better schools, equal treatment by the police and the courts, oppor-
tunity to vote, and social equality with whites. The main push factors
are said to have been the ravages of the boll weevil and other disasters
such as floods and storms wreaking havoc upon the Southern cotton
economy. Among the minor repulsions mentioned are poor schools,
discriminatory treatment by the police and the courts, disfranchisement,
and segregation-the converses of the minor attractions of the North.
A causal analysis of the migration can dispose of several items on the
list immediately, namely, the so-called social factors having to do with
schools, police, courts, politics, and segregation. Most students of the
Great Migration have been highly sympathetic to the black community,
and they have found irresistible the opportunity for exposing once more
the brutalities and discriminations heaped upon blacks in the South.
Yet it should be quite evident that these inhumanities and injustices
played no causal role in provoking the massive northward migration
that got under way in 1916. Such problems had plagued the blacks of
the South ever since their emancipation. At any time after 1865 they
could have expected to enjoy better schools, more impartial justice, and
greater participation in politics if they had moved to the North. Yet they
did not move northward in great numbers; in fact, their direction of
movement on balance was toward the southwest. There is no evidence
that the interregional gap in educational, legal, and political conditions
suddenly widened during the war decade. One cannot explain change
by appealing to a constant. "Social factors" can be ruled out as causal
influences underlying the Great Migration.
Once these allegedly minor influences have been cleared away com-
pletely, the assumed causal structure of the Great Migration appears
quite simple: reduced immigration and consequently expanded oppor-
tunities for industrial employment at higher wages pulled blacks north-
5 See the sources cited in note 3, above.
338 AGRICULTURAL HISTORY

ward; the boll weevil infestation and other natural disasters in the cot-
ton economy repelled them from the South. Yet this explanation may
be questioned. Table 1 presents some data that may well stimulate
skepticism. These data show, for example, that during the war decade
the Carolinas contributed heavily to the northward migration well be-
fore the advent of the boll weevil and in the absence of unusual cotton
yield reductions from other causes. On the other hand, Texas, where
the boll weevil had resided ever since 1892 and where the yield reduc-
tion was substantial during the war decade, experienced a net migra-
tory gain in black population. The alleged push factor is most curiously
manifested here. Still, a more systematic test is in order.
A basis for testing the validity of the accepted push hypothesis is pro-
vided by the differential rates of black outmigration experienced by the
Southern states. Evidently, blacks in all the cotton-belt states were about
equally subject to the pull of new opportunities in the North. There-
fore, if the push-pull explanation is valid, differential rates of black out-
migration from the cotton-belt states should be associated with differ-
entials in the damage done to the cotton economy by the boll weevil and
by other causes. Oddly enough no one has ever tested this hypothesis in
a systematic way.

The data shown in table 1 provide the evidence for several different
tests of the accepted push hypothesis; but before the tests are presented
the data themselves require brief comment. First, the migration esti-
mates are just that-estimates. No records are available on actual inter-
state movements, and the figures used here are estimated largely from
state-of-birth information reported in the censuses. Although subject
to some error, these estimates are probably fairly reliable, provided they
are not put to uses that presume exact precision. The data on reductions
from full yield of cotton are conceptually somewhat vague and there-
fore necessarily subject to considerable error. The "full yield" from
which the losses are estimated is defined as follows:

. . .neither an averageor ideal crop, but what the fieldsought to producewith

the normal modes of farming,with normal weather conditions and without
unusuallossfromdisease,insectsor other adverseinfluences.The yield per acre
under such favorable,thoughnot extraordinaryconditions,would be a normal
yield, which is more than an averageyield but less than a maximumpossible
yield. A normalyield for one farmor sectionmay varywidely from that of an-
other.6
6 U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Crop Reports, Monthly Crop Report
(August 1918), cited in Rupert B. Vance, Human Factors in Cotton Culture: A Study
in the Social Geography of the American South (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1929), 83.
 TABLE 1: RATES OF NET MIGRATIONOF BLACKSAND MEASURESOF CO
TEN COTTON-BELTSTATES, BY DECADES, 1910-193
Net Migration Per Average Annual Percentage Net Migra
1,000 Average Black Reduction from Full Yield 1,000 Aver
Population, 1910-1920 of Cotton, 1910-1919 Population,
Boll Weevil All Causes

North Carolina -50 0.0 23.6 -2

South Carolina -106 0.3 25.7 -29
Georgia -73 4.2 26.1 -26
Tennessee -71 0.3 24.7 -3
Alabama -90 12.6 33.1 -10
Mississippi -153 20.4 40.4 -8
Arkansas -4 4.6 33.2 -11
Louisiana -81 19.9 40.9 -4
Oklahoma 8 1.5 35.1 1
Texas 7 8.6 39.7 1
SOURCES:Migration estimates from Hope T. Eldridge and Dorothy Swaine Thomas, Populati
States, 1870-1950: III. Demographic Analyses and Interrelations (Philadelphia: American Philoso
mates from USDA, Bureau of Agricultural Economics, Statistics on Cotton and Related Data, Stati
340 AGRICULTURAL HISTORY

Since the estimated state totals are built up from a large number of indi-
vidual estimates, some errors are probably offsetting. Still, the remaining
error may well be considerable. In view of these problems of data reli-
ability, the tests to be presented here presume only that the data estab-
lish a reliable rank order. This is a relatively undemanding standard
and one that the data probably come close to satisfying.
The push hypothesis can be tested in various ways. The first test is to
relate the rank order of black outmigration rates to the rank order of
reductions from full yield of cotton due to boll weevil infestation. For
the war decade the coefficient of rank correlation (Spearman's rho) is
0.361; for the 1920s it is 0.648. (Table 2 displays all the coefficients of
correlation discussed in the text.) The latter but not the former differs
significantly from zero at the conventional (5 percent) test level. A sec-
ond and apparently more comprehensive test is to relate the rank order
of black outmigration rates to the rank order of reductions from full
yield of cotton due to all causes. For 1910-1919 the coefficient of rank
correlation is 0.043; for the 1920s it is 0.261, neither of which differs
significantly from zero. A third set of tests calls for relating the rank
orders of changes between the war decade and the twenties. On this
basis the coefficient of rank correlation is 0.776 when changes in out-
migration rates are related to changes in boll weevil damage and 0.710
when related to changes in overall damage to the cotton yield. Both
coefficients differ significantly from zero. Taken together these results
suggest that neither boll weevils nor other factors influencing cotton

TABLE 2: SIMPLEAND PARTIALCOEFFICIENTS

OF RANK CORRELATION
(SPEARMAN'S
rho)
Coefficient 1910-1920 1920-1930 1910s to 1920s

1. r(MW) 0.361 0.648

2. r(MC) 0.043 0.261
3. r(MY) -0.648 -0.782
4. r(M*W*) 0.776
5. r(M*C*) 0.710
6. r(M*Y*) 0.039
7. r(MW.Y) 0.567 0.265
8. r(MC.Y) 0.335 0.219
9. r(M*W*.Y*) 0.877
10. r(M*C*.Y*) 0.876
NOTE: M denotes the rate of blackoutmigration; W is the percentagereduction
from full yield of cotton due to boll weevils; C is the percentagereduction from full
yield of cotton due to all causes; Y is the level of service income per black worker;
and asterisks denote absolute changes in decade means. Significancelevels of simple
rho for N = 10: 0.05 level is 0.564; 0.01 level is 0.746. Significance levels for
partial rho have not been developed. See text for discussion.
BLACK MIGRATION, 1910-1930 341

yields were significant in determining black outmigration rates during

the war decade. During the 1920s, however, the weevil and other factors
reducing cotton yields appear to have played an important role. Still,
such an interpretation must remain tentative until some further ques-
tions are resolved.
Most important, one must somehow account for the differentials in
the rates of black outmigration among the cotton-belt states during the
war decade. It has been shown that neither weevil damage nor overall
damage to the cotton crop provides a significant correlation. What is
left out? The investment approach to the analysis of migration suggests
a possible explanatory variable: the level of income per black worker.
The reasoning here is that even if Northern opportunities were equally
open to all Southern blacks those with the lowest incomes would stand
to gain the most from and hence would be most likely to participate in
migration to the North. A test of this hypothesis calls for relating rates
of outmigration to levels of income per worker, the expected correla-
tion being negative.
This test requires data on black income levels, data that were not
collected until the census of 1940. However, estimates of service income
per black worker have been prepared by William Vickery in an unpub-
lished study. These estimates were made by first estimating a multiple
linear regression of the relative income of blacks on several selected
predictor variables descriptive of the racial composition of the labor
force in 1950 and then deriving the black income level for earlier dates
by using the predictor equation in conjunction with independent esti-
mates of total income by state.7 It is unlikely that this rather round-
about technique yields very accurate estimates, relying as it does on the
persistence of the 1950 prediction structure as far back as 1910. Still, the
estimates may be sufficient to establish a rank order of incomes for the
various states, and they are employed here only on such a scale (see
table 3).
The test calls for relating the rank order of black outmigration rates
to the rank order of black income levels. For the war decade the coeffi-
cient of rank correlation is -0.648; for the 1920s it is -0.782-both sig-
nificantly different from zero. Here, it would seem, is the answer to an
unresolved puzzle in the initial tests of the push hypothesis. Yet the
evidence is less than clear-cut. When changes between the two periods
are correlated, the coefficient of rank correlation between the outmigra-
tion rate and income is a mere 0.039, clearly insignificant. These results
suggest, then, that income differences had an important influence during
7 For a complete
description of Vickery's procedure and the resulting estimates,
see his "Economics of Negro Migration," 75-95.
342 AGRICULTURALHISTORY

TABLE 3: BLACKINCOMERANKS, TEN COTTON-BELTSTATES,

BY DECADES,1910-1930
Rank by Black Rank by Black Rank by Increasein
Income Level, Income Level, Black Income Level,
1910-1920 1920-1930 1910s to 1920s

North Carolina 6 5 2
South Carolina 10 9 6
Georgia 8 7 5
Tennessee 3 2 4
Alabama 7 8 7
Mississippi 9 10 9
Arkansas 4 6 10
Louisiana 2 4 8
Oklahoma 5 3 1
Texas 1 1 3
SOURCE: Rankings implied by estimates of service income per black worker in
William Edward Vickery, "The Economicsof Negro Migration, 1900-1960" (Ph.D.
diss., University of Chicago, 1969), 94-95.

both decades, but the lack of correlation among the changes from one
decade to the next raises the possibility of a more complex change of
circumstances. Perhaps, as argued earlier, the weevil did play a signifi-
cant role in the 1920s. In any event, the availability of income data now
permits a more discriminating test of the accepted push hypothesis.
Such a test considers both proposed explanatory variables, weevils
and low incomes, simultaneously. The test statistic is the partial coeffi-
cient of rank correlation, a measure of the degree to which two rank
orders correspond while holding constant their association with a third
rank order. The first test is based on the partial coefficient of rank cor-
relation between the rate of black outmigration and the level of weevil
damage, holding income constant. For the war decade this coefficient
is 0.567; for the 1920s it is 0.265. Unfortunately tests of significance have
not been developed for partial coefficients of rank correlation. One
might note that the relation between outmigration and weevil damage
with income held constant is stronger than the uncontrolled association
in 1910-1919 but not in the 1920s and that unlike the simple coefficient
the partial coefficient is less for the 1920s than for the previous decade-
very mixed results to be sure. The second test is based on the partial co-
efficient of rank correlation between the rate of black outmigration and
the overall level of damage to the cotton yield, holding income con-
stant. For the war decade this coefficient is 0.335; for the 1920s it is 0.219.
Again, curiously, the association of outmigration with overall damage
is weaker than the association with weevil damage alone, and the former
hardly appears significant. Even if a coefficient of 0.335 were regarded
BLACK MIGRATION, 1910-1930 343

as statistically different from zero it would account for only about one-
ninth of the variance in outmigration rates. A third set of tests, dealing
with changes between the two decades, reveals the highest associations
of all. Correlating the changes in outmigration rates with the changes
in weevil damage, holding changes in income levels constant, the co-
efficient is 0.877; the income-controlled correlation of changes in out-
migration and changes in overall damage to cotton yield is 0.876.
In sum, a partial correlation analysis appears to strengthen the tenta-
tive conclusions reached earlier from the simple correlation of outmigra-
tion rates with measures of weevil and other damage. Events in the cot-
ton economy, by themselves, do not seem to have influenced differential
black outmigration greatly in either decade. While income differentials
did contribute toward determining differentials in rates of outmigra-
tion in both decades, the strongest associations of all are obtained when
changes in outmigration rates are related to changes in traditional push
factors with income changes held constant. This finding suggests that
both differential weevil damage and differential income levels simul-
taneously contributed toward determining differential rates of outmigra-
tion. Of course, the two were not independent (in either a causal or a
statistical sense), so their interaction must be considered in a more
detailed analysis.

Existing analyses of the Great Migration have done little to identify

different explanations applicable to different times and places.8 They
have, as it were, treated the Great Migration of 1916-1929 as a single
event, when in fact it was two, and perhaps three, analytically distin-
guishable events. The foregoing correlation analysis, despite its ambi-
guities, has indicated the direction in which a reinterpretation of those
events must be sought. The task is now to sketch the principal features
of that reinterpretation.
The first distinct stage of the Great Migration occurred during the
years 1916-1919, a second during 1920-1923, and (possibly) a third dur-
ing 1924-1929. For several reasons the causal structures of the northward
8 An exception is Lewis's Mobility of the Negro, which concludes from a study of
changes in numbers of black farmers and cotton acreage between 1919 and 1924 that
"taking the Cotton Belt as a whole, both the demand for industrial labor and the
disorganization of southern agriculture were important in the movement of the
Negro. The industrial factor, however, exerted a somewhat greater influence than
did the agricultural.... In the states of South Carolina and Georgia, in which the
boll weevil was a recent invader, the agricultural factor was of much greater im-
portance than elsewhere in the Cotton Belt.... In the Mississippi River Valley, the
pull of industrial labor demand was by far the more important influence upon the
migration of colored workers. The agricultural factor was apparently negligible"
(p. 129).
344 AGRICULTURALHISTORY

migration during these stages differed markedly, especially between the

first and the second. To see the differences one must consider the boll
weevil infestation, cotton prices, and foreign immigration, noting
changes in these variables over time and, in the case of the weevil, the
differential impact on the various Southern states. Figure 1 provides a
graphic summary of the principal variables for the entire United States.9
An important source of interpretative confusion has been a general
misunderstanding of the effect of the spreading boll weevil infestation on
the cotton economy.10 Excessive reliance on contemporary documents
has helped to foster several misapprehensions. In the minds of many con-
temporaries the advent of the weevil meant not only immediate disaster
but a permanent change in the agricultural economy of the South. As
one writer expressed it, cotton was "being rapidly relegated to its proper
minor position in a well-balanced farming schedule." Others believed
that although the weevil invasion was not shrinking the overall cotton
economy it was resulting in a far-reaching relocation of production, with
acreage declining in the southeastern states and expanding in western
Texas and Oklahoma where, for climatic reasons, the weevil did not
flourish.12Decline of cotton acreage was identified in several studies as
an intermediating variable linking the boll weevil infestation with black
migration to the North.'3
Yet declines in cotton acreage, when they occurred at all, were transi-
tory in most places. As farmers learned how to alter their methods of
9 Sources underlying figure 1 are as follows: net
immigration calculated from data
on immigrants and emigrants in Simon Kuznets and Ernest Rubin, Immigration and
the Foreign Born (New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1954), 96; real
cotton price calculated from nominal season average price received by farmers in
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Marketing Service, Cotton and Cotton-
seed: Acreage, Yield, Production, Disposition, Price, Value; By States, 1866-1952,
Statistical Bulletin 164 (June 1955): 20, and index of prices paid by farmers for con-
sumption goods in U. S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United
States, Colonial Times to 1957 (Washington: GPO, 1960), 283; percentage reductions
from full yield of cotton (calculated for all causes, directly for boll
weevil) from data
in U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Agricultural Economics, Statistics on
Cotton and Related Data, Statistical Bulletin 99 (une 1951): 67.
10 Useful sources on the boll weevil include Walter M.
Riggs, Report of the South
Carolina Boll Weevil Commission, U.S. Congress, Senate, 64 Cong., 2 sess., Sen. Doc.
701; W. D. Hunter and B. R. Coad, The Boll-Weevil Problem, U.S. Department of
Agriculture, Farmers' Bulletin 1329 (June 1923); Vance, Human Factors, 89-107; and
U. C. Loftin, "Living with the Boll Weevil for Fifty Years," Smithsonian Institution
Annual Report, 1945 (Washington: GPO, 1946), 273-91.
11 E. T. H. Shaffer, "A New South: The Boll-Weevil Era," Atlantic
Monthly 129
(January 1922): 120. See also L. A. Higgins, "How the Dairy Cow Brought Prosperity
in the Wake of the Boll Weevil," U.S. Department of Agriculture,
Yearbook, 1917
(Washington: GPO, 1918), 303-10.
12 Vance, Human Factors, 128-34.
13 U. S. Department of Labor,
Negro Migration in 1916-17, 21, 51, 59, 79; Lewis,
Mobility of the Negro, passim; Scott, Negro Migration during the War, 15-16.
BLACK MIGRATION, 1910-1930 345

production to reduce weevil damage-before 1920 mainly by early plant-

ing and heavy fertilization, afterwards by these plus the application of
calcium arsenate-they generally abandoned their hasty attempts to
diversify and returned to their traditional specialization in cotton. As
the weevil spread across the South it did create great havoc and serious
economic dislocations in the newly infested areas. But behind the cut-
ting edge of devastation, adjustments were being made and the cotton
economy was reverting to "normal," a condition that now included the
additional risks of weevil damage and the additional costs of reducing
those risks. In any given year, at least before 1920, heavy losses attribut-
able to weevil infestation were localized and not large in the aggregate.
Only once before 1919 did the reduction from full yield for the entire
American crop exceed 10 percent, the exception being 1916, when the
estimated loss was about 13 percent.14 And, most significantly, cotton
acreage actually increased over the years of the Great Migration: in the
aggregate from 32.5 million acres (in cultivation 1 July) in 1910 to 44.5
million acres in 1929; and in most individual states as well. Cotton acre-
age reached its peak for the 1910-1929 period during 1925 in North
Carolina, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Texas; during 1929 in Mississippi,
Arkansas, and Louisiana. Only Alabama (1911), Georgia (1916), and
South Carolina (1918) achieved their peak cotton acreages during the
period of spreading weevil infestation. And in Alabama, where the acre-
age reduction began well before the war, the decline was almost fully
recouped during the late 1920s.15Only Georgia and South Carolina fit
the classic description of heavy weevil infestation, declining cotton acre-
age, and black outmigration so often set forth as applicable to the entire
cotton economy. The "boll weevil depression" of 1920-1923 was ap-
parently quite genuine in those two states.
Movements in cotton prices played a crucial role in determining
whether yield reductions would entail hardship for the cotton growers.
After all, the farmer's ultimate concern was neither yield nor price but
total income. If the weevil cut the cotton yield by 10 percent while the
price advanced by 10 percent the farmer's income was unchanged. Dur-
ing the war the situation for the cotton economy as a whole was even
better: the real price of cotton-that is, the nominal price of cotton
received by the farmer relative to an index of prices paid by farmers for
consumption goods-rose in far greater proportion than the reduction
from full yield due to boll weevils or other causes (see figure 1). The
total real value of the cotton crop advanced substantially. Areas experi-
encing the very heavy yield reductions attendant upon recent weevil
infestation did suffer genuine income reductions. But in the cotton
14 USDA, Statistics on Cotton, 67.
15 USDA, Cotton and Cottonseed, 20-33.
346 AGRICULTURAL HISTORY

economy as a whole the years from 1916 to 1919 were a time of un-
precedented prosperity for blacks and white alike. In 1918 an observer
in the black belt of Georgia reported:

The Negro tenantsare rolling in wealth.It is a curioussight, those in the coun-

try districtsof Georgiareport, to see them come to town with their pockets
stuffedwith papermoney.They pay theirbills and buy more goodswith money
peeled fromgreat rolls of green and yellow backs.Theirs, indeed, is almostan
embarrassment of riches.They seemhardlyto know how to handle such masses
of currency.16

In 1920 the real price of cotton plummeted 60 percent. It recovered only

slightly in 1921, then advanced to a substantially higher level during
1922-1924; but only in 1923 did it reach the level of 1917-1919. After
1923 the real price fell in every year except 1927. For the quinquennium
1925-1929 real cotton prices averaged about the same as they had during
the prewar period 1910-1914 (see figure 1).
Immigration flows were important in determining the extent of
Northern employment opportunities for blacks. Net immigration dur-
ing 1910-1914 averaged almost 750,000 per year (see figure 1). Then in
1915 it fell precipitously to only 123,000, and for the quinquennium
1915-1919 the annual average was a mere 111,000, with the inflows in
1918 and 1919 virtually nil. From 1920 to 1924 net immigration recov-
ered and, though never again reaching its prewar heights, averaged
376,000 per year. The late 1920s witnessed another decline, the quin-
quennial average for 1925-1929 being only 226,000 per year.
By taking into account both the foregoing evidence on intertemporal
changes in weevil infestation, cotton prices, and net immigration and
the cross-sectional patterns revealed by the correlation analysis of the
previous section one can characterize the causal structure of each stage
of the Great Migration. Some additional evidence on the origins and
occupations of the migrants strengthens the interpretation.
Consider first the prewar years, for clearly an explanation of what
caused the Great Migration should also account in some measure for the
absence of massive northward movements before 1916. The assumed
push was surely there: boll weevils did tremendous damage in eastern
Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi during the decade before 1916. In
fact, the greatest yield reduction ever recorded for the weevil in Missis-
16 Charles Lewis, "Thirty Cent Cotton and the Negro," Illustrated World (May
1918): 470, quoted in Vance, Human Factors, 138. See also Francis Taylor Long, "The
Negroes of Clarke County, Georgia, During the Great War," Bulletin of the Uni-
versity of Georgia 19 (September 1919): 49-55. Note that this prosperity was observed
in the very state where the spreading weevil infestation was localized during the war
years.
BLACK MIGRATION, 1910-1930 347

FIGURE 1: NET IMMIGRATION, REAL COTTON PRICE, AND REDUCTION FROM

FULL YIELD OF COTTON,UNITED STATES,1910-1930

Net Immigration
(100,000's)

Cotton Price
(1910-14 cents
per pound)
15

Percentage Reduction
from Full Yield of
Cotton
40

30

1910 1915 1925

348 AGRICULTURAL HISTORY

sippi, 33 percent, occurred in 1913. In Louisiana weevil losses were esti-

mated at 42 percent of the full yield in 1909, 40 percent in 1910.17Yet
these major disasters set in motion no massive outmigration to the
North. Clearly the push of weevil devastation was not a sufficient con-
dition. For where could the impoverished black farmers have gone?
Certainly not to the North, where the huge annual influxes of foreign
immigrants allowed industrial employers simultaneously to satisfy their
voracious appetites for labor and to gratify freely their tastes for racial
discrimination. To the extent that blacks were forced out of cotton cul-
tivation in certain areas, they either resumed work in raising other crops,
migrated to adjacent cotton areas less affected by the weevil, or moved
to nearby Southern towns and cities. Some went to Arkansas, Texas, and
Oklahoma.'8
With the onset of the war in Europe and the consequent drastic re-
duction of immigration in 1915 the situation changed fundamentally.
Cut off from their accustomed source of additional unskilled laborers
and further pressed as recruitments and drafts transferred workers into
the armed services, Northern industrial employers for the first time
opened their doors wide to black workmen; indeed, many employers
actively sought out black workers and offered special inducements, such
as payment of railway fares, to attract them. This pull of new opportuni-
ties in the North was a sufficient condition to precipitate the Great Mi-
gration. Clearly no unusual push was necessary. Blacks abandoned the
states where the agricultural economy was functioning "normally" al-
most as readily as they left the troubled countrysides of Alabama and
Mississippi. Virginia, Kentucky, and the Carolinas made major contri-
butions to the wartime exodus even though the former two states had
virtually no cotton and the Carolinas had yet to be plagued by the wee-
vil. And very significantly, in most areas of the cotton economy there
simply was no real repulsion: cotton price increases more than compen-
sated for yield reductions, leaving employers, tenants, and wage workers
all more prosperous than ever before. Income differentials offer a more
explanatory variable than any push to account for differentials in South-
ern outmigration rates during the war decade, as shown in table 2 above.
The origins and occupations of the migrants of 1916-1918 also sug-
gest that agricultural difficulties had little to do with their leaving the
South. Scattered evidence indicates that many, perhaps even a majority,
of them came from Southern towns and cities and had been normally
employed in nonagricultural occupations.19 Moreover, many of the
17 USDA, Statistics on Cotton, 72-73.
18 Riggs, Report of the South Carolina Boll Weevil Commission, 14.
19 U. S. Department of Labor,
Negro Migration in 1916-17, 12, 18-19, 55, 63, 82-85,
BLACK MIGRATION, 1910-1930 349

blacks who did forsake the cotton economy during the war years never
went North; instead they took positions in Southern towns and cities
and in Southern mining districts, positions opened up in part by the
northward migration of the black townspeople and miners who had
previously held them.20
The year 1920 opened a new stage in the Great Migration. For four
consecutive years, boll weevil damage would remain at unprecedented
levels. In 1921, the worst weevil year in history, the damage done by
the weevil alone exceeded 30 percent of a full yield for the entire Amer-
ican crop; damage from all causes consumed over 50 percent. Eight of
the ten cotton-belt states experienced their peak year for weevil damage
during the period 1920-1923. (The exceptions were Louisiana, with
worse damage in 1909 [and possibly even worse earlier, before the rec-
ords began], and North Carolina, where the peak occurred in 1929.)
Worst hit were Oklahoma and Georgia, with weevil losses of 41 and 45
percent respectively in 1921, and South Carolina, where the weevil de-
stroyed 40 percent of a full yield in 1922.21Whereas the yield reductions
of the war years had been offset by higher prices, the disastrously low
yields of 1920 and 1921 coincided with almost equally disastrous prices.
The incomes of many cotton growers approached the vanishing point.
Although prices recovered during 1922-1924, the fatal blow for many
rural blacks already had been dealt, Immigration had partially recov-
ered its old vigor, but Northern industrialists were still hiring blacks.22
With prospects so hopeless in the cotton economy, many resolved to
move North and take their chances at finding employment. In places
like Greene County, Georgia, where "the three poorest cotton crops . ..
came consecutively and ranged from 2 to 10 per cent of a normal pre-

94-95, 99; Scott, Negro Migration during the War, 59-70; Long, "Negroes of Clarke
County," 34-35; [Emmett J. Scott, compiler], "Letters of Negro Migrants of 1916-
1918," Journal of Negro History 4 (July 1919): 290-340; and idem, "Additional Letters
of Negro Migrants of 1916-1918," ibid. (October 1919): 412-65.
20 U. S. Department of Labor, Negro Migration in 1916-17, 17, 63, 72, 80; Scott,
Negro Migration during the War, 65-68; Kennedy, Negro Peasant, 48; John William
Fanning, "Negro Migration: A Study of the Exodus of the Negroes between 1920 and
1925 from Middle Georgia Counties as that Exodus was Influenced or Determined by
Existing Economic Conditions," Bulletin of the University of Georgia 30 (June 1930):
34-35.
21 USDA, Statistics on Cotton, 67-79.
22 Charles S. Johnson, "Substitution of Negro Labor for European Immigrant
Labor," National Conference of Social Work Proceedings (1926), 317-27. As John
Higham expresses it, during the 1920s "businessmen were discovering that the iron
men [machinery], combined with growing migration of black men from the rural
South, were emancipating industry from its historic dependence on European man-
power." See his Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism 1860-1925 (New
York: Atheneum, 1973 [1955]), 317.
350 AGRICULTURAL HISTORY

weevil output,"23 and where adjacent areas were faring little better,
rural blacks saw little real alternative to moving North. And although
Greene County was not typical, neither was it the only county to experi-
ence such a disastrous fate. For the spatial variation in weevil damage
was great, and when the statewide average loss was 45 percent some
counties experienced practically a total loss of the yield. Especially hard
hit during the 1920-1924 quinquennium were Georgia and South Caro-
lina. These states also had rates of black outmigration vastly higher than
any other state during the 1920s (see table 1). Small wonder. If the push
hypothesis ever made sense, surely it did during the early twenties, espe-
cially in the southeastern states.
After 1923 weevil damage fell substantially, reaching levels during
1924-1926 comparable to those of the prewar years. A resurgence of
damage in the late 1920s caused less dislocation and suffering than the
"boll weevil depression" of the early twenties. By this time the weevil
had covered virtually the entire cotton region for several years, adjust-
ments were being made, and the boll weevil was becoming "institution-
alized" as a part of the cotton economy. Real cotton prices fluctuated
within the same neighborhood as during the prewar years. Foreign im-
migration stabilized at little more than 200,000 per year. In brief,
times were not good in the cotton economy, but they were not calami-
tous. Northern opportunities, though not as numerous as during the
war, continued to beckon; and the presence of large numbers of rela-
tives and old friends in the North now made migration cheaper and
easier to contemplate. By the late twenties a large and steady movement
of Southern blacks to the North had, like the weevil, become institution-
alized.
To sum up: tests of the accepted push hypothesis indicate that the boll
weevil infestation was neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition
underlying the Great Migration. The opening of numerous industrial
employment opportunities for blacks in the North during the war was
a sufficient condition. Differentials in Southern income levels largely
determined which states would contribute most heavily to the exodus:
ceteris paribus, the poorer the people, the more likely they were to mi-
grate in response to the Northern opportunities. Hence, during 1916-
1918 Mississippi and South Carolina blacks led the way. During the
early 1920s the boll weevil infestation did constitute a significant push;
this time Georgia and South Carolina blacks led the way. By the late
twenties a continuing, substantial northward migration of blacks had
become an established fact of American social life.
23 Arthur F. Raper, Preface to Peasantry: A Tale of Two Black Belt Counties
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1936), 209. See also 201-22.