Wages in the south were lower than wages in the north or The southern states had many immigrant workers available, the southern states did not have the right to “work” or maybe They did not have the right to work in the south at that time. Companies don’t pay everyone fairly, if at all. or maybe wages in the south were higher than wages in the north. What was one reason that businesses moved to the south?
The Great Migration, sometimes known as the Great North Migration or Black Migration, involved relocating 6 million African Americans from rural southern United States to northeastern cities, the midwest and west that occurred in 1916–70. This was primarily due to poor economic conditions as well as widespread racial segregation and discrimination in southern states in which Jim Crow’s rights were respected.
White southern reaction
The beginning of the Great Migration then revealed a paradox in racial relations in the American South. Although Black people were treated with great hostility and were subject to legal discrimination, the southern economy was deeply dependent on them as the abundant supply of cheap labor, and black workers were seen as the most critical factor in the economic development of the South. A South Carolina politician summed up the dilemma: “There are far too many blacks from a political point of view, but from an industrial point of view there is room for many others.”
When the Great Migration began in 1910, the southern white elites seemed to be concerned, and industrialists and cotton growers saw it as positive because it consumed a surplus of industrial and agricultural work. As migration accelerated, the southern elites began to panic, fearing that the prolonged black exodus would go bankrupt in the South, and press articles had warned of danger. White employers finally noticed this and began to express their concerns. The southern whites soon began to try to stop the influx to prevent labor supply bleeding, and some began to try to remedy the poor standard of living and racial oppression experienced by southern blacks to get them to stay.
As a result, southern employers have raised their wages to match those offered in the north, and some individual employers have opposed the worst excesses of Jim Crow law. When the measures did not stop the tide, white Southerners, in consultation with federal officials who feared the rise of black nationalism, collaborated in an attempt to force Black people to stay in the South. The Southern Metal Trades Association called for decisive action to stop black migration, and some employers have made serious efforts against it. The largest steel producer in the south refused to pay the cash sent to finance black migration, efforts were made to limit access for buses and trains for negroes, agents were stationed in northern cities to report on wage levels, the unionization and development of black nationalism, and newspapers were pressed to direct greater coverage of the negative aspects of black life in the North. A number of local and federal directives have been introduced to limit black mobility, including local vagrancy ordinances, “work or combat” regulations that require all men to be employed or serve in the military, and enlistment orders. Intimidation and beating were also used to terrorize black people to stay. These scare tactics have been described by Secretary of Labor William B. Wilson as interfering with “the natural right of employees to move from place to place at their own discretion.”
