# The Lutheran Pioneer_St. Louis_1925_S92 # Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration) 92 THE LUTHERAN PIONEER. : The revival of business prosperity in 1922 prought on a new exodus from the Southland. Thousands of Negroes who had remained in the North during the depression wrote to their friends Future Captains of Industry. and relatives, urging them to come North, and in many instances sent them money for the journey. The 1920 census showed that more than 1,000,000 Northern Negroes, or 73 per cent., live in ten industrial centers including the following sections: Indianapolis, 47,500; Detroit-Toledo, 55,900; Cleveland-Youngstown, 58,800; JXansas City, 65,400; Pittsburgh, 88,300; Columbus-Cin- cinnati, 89,600; St. Louis, 102,600; Chicago, 131,600; Philadelphia, 248,300; New York, 251,300. Industrial Progress of the Negro. From this we may get a fair conception of the progress the Negro has made industrially. Let us here quote the authority of a Southern white man, Mr. Jacobs, president of Oglethorpe University, Atlanta, Ga., who says: “The Negro’s rise in the scale of occupations has given him a greater purchasing power and a higher standard of living. To his credit it should be said that, for the most part, he sincerely tries to live up to his oppor- tunities in the North. He is usually a law-abiding citizen, buys his own home when possible, and gives his children the best schooling his income will permit.”- And when we call to mind that the 1900 census showed that 89.7 per cent. of the entire Negro _ population resided in the fourteen Southern States, leaving only 10.3 per cent. to be scattered over the whole remainder of the United States, while to-day %3 per cent. live in the ten industrial centers, we shall not be surprised to learn that the total ac- cumulated wealth of the American Negro amounts to $1,700,000,000, which is a fair indication of the progress he has made. With this improved economic condition there comes for us Christians a corresponding increase of responsibility. For the past fifty years we have almost wholly confined our mission efforts among the Negroes to the South. Since the large migra- tion northward there has arisen for us the necessity to accept the opportunities the increased Negro populations in the North offer.