Page:Chicago Race Riots (Sandburg, 1919).djvu/38

28 are an index to poverty and helplessness of home communities.

"In this type of migration the old order is strangely reversed. Instead of leaving an overdeveloped and overcrowded country for undeveloped new territory, they have left the south, backward as it is in development of its resources, for the highly industrialized north. Out of letters from the south we listed seventy-nine different occupations among i,ooo persons asking for information and aid. Property holders, impecunious adventurers, tradesmen, entire labor unions, business and professional men, families, boys and girls, all registered their protests, mildly but determinately, against their homes and sought to move.'*

From Pensacola, Fla., in May, 1917, came a letter saying, "Would you please let me know what is the price of boarding and rooming in Chicago and where is the best place to get a job before the draft will work? I would rather join the army 1,000 times up there than to join it once down here."

"What I want to say is I am coming north," wrote another, "and thought I would write you and list a few of the things I can do and see if you can find a place for my anywhere north of the Mason and Dixon line, and I will present myself in person at your office as soon as I hear from you. I am now employed in the R. R. shops at Memphis. I am an engine watchman, hostler, rod cup man, pipe fitter, oil house man, shipping clerk, telephone lineman, freight caller, an expert soaking vat man who can make dope for packing hot boxes on engines. I am capable of giving satisfaction in either of the abovenamed positions."

"I wish very much to come north," wrote a New