metayers. They work the land on their own responsibility, and this
degree of independence appeals to them. They pay a stipulated portion
of the crop as rent. If they possess some capital and the rental is
fair, this arrangement proves satisfactory. But as very few negro
metayers possess the needed capital, they resort to a system of
crop-lienage under which a local retail merchant advances the
necessary supplies and obtains a mortgage on the prospective crop.
Many negro farmers, however, have achieved the independence of cash
renters, assuming complete control of their crops and the disposition
of their time. And finally, 241,000 negro farmers are landowners.[14]
By 1910 nearly 900,000 negroes had achieved some degree of rural
economic stability.

The negro has not been so fortunate in his attempts to make a place
for himself in the industrial world. The drift to the cities began
soon after emancipation. During the first decade, the dissatisfaction
with the landlordism which then prevailed, seconded by the demand for
unskilled labor in the rapidly growing cities, drew the negroes from
the land in such considerable numbers that the landowners were induced
to make more liberal terms to keep the laborers on their farms. While
there has been a large increase in the number of negroes engaged in
agriculture, there has at the same time been a very marked current
from the smaller communities to the new industrial cities of the South
and to some of the manufacturing centers of the North. In recent years
there have been wholesale importations of negro laborers into many
Northern cities and towns, sometimes as strike breakers but more
frequently to supply the urgent demand for unskilled labor. Many of
the smaller manufacturing towns of New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania,
Illinois, and Indiana are accumulating a negro population.