section to be affected by the migration was Pittsburgh, the gateway to the West. The Pittsburgh district is the center of the steel industry. For this reason, the war caused the demand for labor to be extremely heavy there. Pittsburgh was one of the centers to which the greatest number of negroes went. Before the migration, a considerable number of negroes were employed there. In 1900, the negro population of Allegheny county, in which Pittsburgh is situated, was 27,753. In 1910 it was 34,217. When the migration began, the county had about 38,000 negroes. Investigations and estimates indicate that, at the end of 1917, the negro population of the county had increased to almost 66,000. Epstein in his survey of The Negro Migrant in Pittsburgh said:

From a canvass of twenty typical industries in the Pittsburgh district, it was found that there were 2,550 negroes employed in 1915, and 8,325 in 1917, an increase of 5,775 or 227 per cent. It was impossible to obtain labor data from more than approximately sixty per cent of the negro employing concerns, but it is fair to assume that the same ratio of increase holds true of the remaining forty per cent. On this basis the number of negroes now employed in the district may be placed at 14,000. This means that there are about 9,750 more negroes working in the district today than there were in 1915, an addition due to the migration from the South.

According to Epstein, the migration had been going on for little longer than one year. Ninety-three per cent of those who gave the time of residence in Pittsburgh had been there less than one year. More than eighty per cent of the single men interviewed had been there less than six months. In the number who had been there for the longest period, married men predominated, showing the tendency of this class to become permanent residents. This fact becoming evident, some industrial concerns bringing men from the South, having learned from bitter experience that the mere delivery of negroes from a southern city did not guarantee a sufficient supply of labor, made an effort to secure married men only, and even to investigate them prior to their coming. Differences in recruiting methods may also explain why some employers and labor agents hold a very optimistic view of the negro as a worker, while others despair of him. The reason why Pittsburgh has been unable to secure a stable labor force is doubtless realized by the local manufacturers. Married negroes come to the North to stay. They desire to have their families with them, and if they are not accompanied North by their wives and children they plan to have them follow at the earliest possible date.

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