but for the South whose economic system is so largely dependent upon Negro labor, and the North would have been utterly
unable to absorb so great an access to its population. But two
conditions operated simultaneously with this movement of the
Negroes. One was the expansion of industry in the North
consequent on the war, coupled with the depletion of the
ranks of immigrant labor by those returning home to fight. The other was the fact that for nearly fifty years strong influences had been at work among Negroes which enabled them to
adapt themselves more quickly to the change from rural to
urban life and from agricultural to industrial pursuits.
This vast movement of the Negro population was the result of a wartime demand for labor in the industrial centers North and South. Negroes had long felt the restraint of restricted opportunities in the South. Individuals and small groups had all along been finding release in various sections of the North, but the great masses were compelled to remain where they were, as there was at that time no disposition to exploit the labor supplies of the South. During the same period there was a mighty influence at work below Mason and Dixon's Line enlarging the outlook of the Negro and preparing the race not only to take advantage of new opportunities but to create opportunities for themselves in the midst of surrounding conditions.
This influence was the Hampton-Tuskegee movement inaugurated by General Samuel Chapman Armstrong at Hampton, Virginia, in 1868 and expanded by his pupil, Booker T. Washington, at Tuskegee, in the years succeeding through the remarkable spread of his gospel of industry and self-reliance throughout the whole of the Negro race. In its early development it was called industrial education, but thoughtful observers have long since come to see that the work of Hampton and Tuskegee is not the training of men and women as mere units of industry, but rather the training of the individual, indeed to be self-supporting, but at the same time to be a contributing element to community life—to be conscious factors in every community for establishing the highest ideals of American life and inspiring all whom they touch to win salva-
