National Reports
FISZMAN, JOSEPH R. & JR., WILLIAM K. WYANT
National Reports Exodus from the Midwest By William K. W. Wyant Jr. St. Louis DEMOGRAPHY, the statistical study of populations, is a science of intense and compelling interest to Chambers of...
...In the swamps, supported by poles, stand squalid shacks with collapsing roofs and decaying walls...
...Also the roustabouts of the circus grounds at Sarasota— lost souls from all parts of the world loitering about the tents, wagons, stables and cages—harddrinking men who don't know what the next morning w i l l hold for them...
...Petersburg more old retired folk gather at the Municipal Pier—men and women, couples still young though many are long past their golden jubilee, Irish and Italians, Jews and Poles, Scots and many others...
...Nebraska 2.3 0.7 33...
...This is because it offers so many contrasts both i n agriculture and in types of urban living...
...Actually, the nation's history makes a strong case against the view that esthetics or cultural advantages have much to'do with movements of population...
...But the two provide sufficient contrast to illustrate the point that charm does not count for much i n the population race...
...it is right under the window, and you lie i n bed listening to the sound of the surf and imagine yourself rocking on the waves...
...They work under the supervision of armed guards, they are shirtless, bronzed and muscled, silent and hard...
...Hence, these migrants seek their fortunes in the West, or wherever opportunity beckons...
...A l l these together are part of America...
...and as= the cars slow down to pass them by,, they rest for a moment and stare with a dull curiosity into the windows of the automobiles...
...The sleek automobiles wind through a land of red clay pitted with ditches...
...so has Florida...
...Missouri, which has lost five representatives in Congress since 1900 because of post-census reapportionments, has been called a demographer's paradise...
...Miami is living now in a state of intoxication...
...In a single night this season, a Miami auto-rental company had 1,013 of its cars on the streets, as compared with 589 on the same date last year...
...In the 1950 census, Missouri and eight contiguous states were found to have lagged behind the national average in population increase for the decade...
...The towns and settlements skimming by, with exotic names like Alapaha and Willacoochee, are cut into two parts by the railroad tracks: on one side the white living quarters dipped i n green and afternoon sleep, and on the other the yards, the warehouses, the Negro slums and stores —houses devoured by age, termites and dampness...
...Texas has burgeoned...
...Try to walk into the lobby of a hotel after 7 P.M...
...Insofar as the Midwest is concerned, the population figures were so chilling that the St...
...They sit at the card tables, over chess or checkers...
...tall, grayish trees laden with hanging moss lend an eeriness to the scene...
...Recently published estimates for 1950-53 indicate that the joints are still stiffening...
...It is inevitable, they say— and, furthermore, quality is more important than quantity...
...On Collins Avenue the cars crawl bumper to bumper, women and hairy-chested men stroll about in bathing suits, stop at the stands to buy the latest racing form...
...And at night in St...
...In the Midwest, the subject has come to be of grave concern at the political level...
...Nevada, Arizona, California, Oregon and Washington have more than doubled the national average...
...some dance—lively dances although the movements are often awkward...
...Old Negroes sit on the steps along the margin of a life speeding past them, as if i n the midst of the swamps and moss and mud and hopelessness they wait for death, wait to be picked up by the black birds flying menacingly above...
...Arkansas —4.3 —2.0 Comment from the Governors of Missouri and most of the affected states indicated that they are deeply concerned about population losses and favor broad-scale action to grapple with the problem...
...A nd each day new hotels are going up, new restaurants and tourist homes...
...There are those along the Mississippi and on the prairies who view the out-migration with complacency...
...Missouri 1.6 4.5 37...
...In Kansas, for example, the exodus from farms has been offset to a large extent by a three-fold increase, since 1940, i n industrial employment...
...The seagulls come flyi n g down from Tampa Bay, white spots in the falling dusk, and old hands throw crumbs of bread to them...
...Across the border in Florida, the prison road gangs work even on Sunday, even on holidays...
...Kansas 3.9 5.8 30...
...Only at the sight of a pretty girl in one of the cars do the prisoner faces melt into a smile: " H i , ma'am...
...Once the traveler moves away from Miami, once he moves further south or into the hinterland, there is yet a different America to see—an America of hard work which makes one feel tender...
...Tennessee —0.7 12.9 38...
...Here is the America of the small commercial fishing towns, of the large air bases, the great citrus orchards, the huge packinghouses and yards...
...Over them all hangs the shadow of the bum who freezes in the midst of all the heat, unshaven and diseased, with a permanent hangover, the bum who stands i n front of the honky-tonks of Flagler Boulevard and begs a dime for coffee...
...And from ropes dangle multi-colored shirts and patched underwear, drying lazily under the sun, giving a bit of color to a depressing scene...
...What political leaders are suggesting is the development of water-power resources along the great rivers—that together with a determined effort to make life more pleasant on the farm and in the city...
...These are the faces of people of hard work, good solid people...
...The guards seem weary and bored and eye with envy the traffic moving toward the sea and the golden sands, toward the sun, toward Miami...
...Would they laugh so gaily if they knew that, only a short distance away, i n the Georgia swamps, an overburdened mother killed her child because it cried all night...
...Large black birds swoop down from the high branches, flutter their wings over the highways and circle over the swamps...
...Old, wrinkled faces, white hair and young eyes...
...without a tie, just try...
...Oklahoma —1.4 —4.4 39...
...And on the steps of the little stores selling Coca-Cola, pecans and K i n g Edward cigars sit the old folks, chewing tobacco and blinking with nearsighted eyes at the traffic moving by, at the traffic going toward Florida, toward Miami where there is the sea, the sun, and money...
...The seagulls are grateful...
...In Lakeland, the pretty town of thirteen lakes, exists a unique institution, Florida Southern College...
...Louis metropolitan area, with its zoo and its symphony and its art museum, showed an increase in migratory population of only 7.3 per cent i n 1940-50, while a booming municipality known as Lubbock, Texas racked up 68.7 per cent...
...The rail lines and highways leading to Miami are jammed...
...Nor is this all...
...Children play in the mud, in the swamp, run barefoot over the redclay earth...
...Louis is not a heavenly place to live and Lubbock is not hell...
...Kentucky —1.9 3.5 48...
...Illinois 4.3 10.3 22...
...Governor Francis Cherry of A r kansas, a state which has shown a steady net decrease in population, strongly favors a regional conference but believes that the meeting should follow an exhaustive study by individual states of their own particular problems...
...Who of the tourists who come to ogle at their villages gives a second thought to the Seminoles living i n straw huts i n the murky waters along the Tamiami T r a i l ? In Miami, the world seems to begin and end, to concentrate, among the shiny mirrors and gleaming marble of the luxurious hotels...
...As i f there had never been a Korea, as if youths their age have never fought, have never suffered, never fallen...
...Its buildings, designed by Frank L l o y d Wright, have the color of the orange, and through the multicolored glass bricks drift the rays of the sun, and through the ceilings of the halls one can see straight into the face of the innocent blue sky...
...It is not always, to be sure, a case of a Kansas farmhand relieved of his duties by mechanization, or an Ozarks side-hill grubber coming to town for easier work at infinitely higher pay...
...Farmers of the Midwest mix with models from New York, bookies mill about in crowds of respectable matrons, and prostitutes rub shoulders with well-behaved girls from sheltered homes...
...They are willing to render unto Southern California what is Southern California's, adding perhaps a fervent prayer that the wanderers may never return...
...A nd along the severalmilelong street of hotels moves a procession of open cars with scantilydressed girls whose bronzesmooth shoulders gleam in the neon lights...
...Of the nine states, only Illinois matched the national increase for the three years...
...With much pomp, a new motel was just opened where the charge is $50 a night...
...When you awaken in the morning, no effort is needed to go to the ocean...
...Flight from the farms into the cities is obviously a nationwide manifestation, but the agricultural Midwest has been especially hard hit because many of the richest farm states do not have enough large cities to absorb the farm migrants...
...Miami bathes in sun and money...
...But young lads, bookies' runners with oiled hair and sleek suits, walk through the lobbies, hands in their pockets and wads of gum between their teeth, and on their full smooth cheeks lies a world of satiety and self-assurance...
...When the sun leaves the beaches, women change from their bathing suits to evening dresses and men don stiff white shirtfronts, jackets and shining shoes...
...Unfortunately, no official Census Bureau figures on quality are published Scenes on a Drive Through Florida By Joseph R. Fiszman ATLANTA THE HIGHWAYS leading from the depths of Georgia to Florida are empty for long stretches...
...And the little town of Venice on the shore of the Gulf, a settlement formed by retired members of the Locomotive Brotherhood in 1924, where today 727 people live the year round, and where for $200 one can still buy a plot of coastal land...
...Iowa —1.4 3.3 44...
...This is because the Midwest, demographically speaking, is showing unmistakable signs of approaching old age...
...Behind this golden facade, however, there is something human, something simple—the fear of insecurity, of the unavoidable return to the months of beans and grits...
...Here is a table to which the newspaper gave prominent display...
...Waitresses and chambermaids eagerly count the tips: What they don't catch now, they won't have later...
...Only 25 counties showed increases in the 1950 census, and i n every case the increase could be explained as an instance of urban increase within the county exceeding rural decline...
...Much is already being done by individual states...
...Aside from bums, the extremely wealthy and the retired, people seem to be lured by economic opportunity rather than by scenery or by climate...
...The statistics showed a trend toward the West, the Southwest and the Pacific Northwest...
...About 60 of Missouri's 115 counties reached their population peak by 1900 and have been declining since...
...Some observers might put it the other way around...
...Louis PostDispatch has been urging a regional conference to discuss ways and means of reversing the negative trend...
...The Midwest, seeking to recover its pioneer vigor, cannot do much about its lack of spectacular recreational topography, even though the faith to move mountains be present...
...Who thinks of Korea, who thinks of swamps and blood and hunger and labor camps i n Russia...
...The St...
...Negro girls in tight red sweaters walk slowly along the narrow sidewalks, laughing into the faces of the boys whose arms encircle their hips...
...It lists Missouri and surrounding states in the order in which they stood among the 48 in census estimates for 1950-53...
...They iron out the roads, filling in holes so the tourists from the North and Midwest may have a smoother ride...
...Hialeah racetrack broke all records this year: in the first thirty days of its forty-day season, 623,625 people bet $50,437,782 at its windows...
...A citizen's committee is now at work i n Arkansas, preparing an intelligence estimate on which counter-attack plans can be based...
...Louis DEMOGRAPHY, the statistical study of populations, is a science of intense and compelling interest to Chambers of Commerce, sales managers and manufacturers of babybuggies...
...Meanwhile, it was clear enough which states and which regions were receiving heavy transfusions of new, if not always rich, blood...
...Their own amateur orchestra renders the music, one of the crowd sings the lyrics...
...1950-53 1940-50 % Gain % Gain or Loss or Loss UNITED STATES 4.3 14.5 20...
...There are also the sons and daughters of prosperous farmers who go off to college, and the retired elders who quit the windmill belt for Florida or Southern California...
...A nd this in addition to the money spent at Tropical Park and at the dog races...
...A major segment of the native population lives off the few months of the winter season...
...Cooks and waiters complain of the gypsy-like quality of their livelihood, the fact that hotels and restaurants open and close overnight...
...H is shadow frightens...
...Let them go," these voices counsel...
...Eastern Airlines announced an all-time record for February and expected even more in March...
...Here no one hears the words recession or depression, words which seem to hold the rest of America i n suspense...
Vol. 37 • March 1954 • No. 12
