And for every land-owner who has thus hurried away from the narrow and hard conditions of country life, how many field-hands, how many tenants, how many ruined renters, have joined that long procession?
Du Bois poses a rhetorical question to emphasize the vast number of Black laborers and tenants forced to leave rural areas due to harsh economic conditions.
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More from W.E.B. Du Bois
One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
Many of the worst characteristics of the Negro masses of to-day had their seed in this period of the slave’s ethical growth.
To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.
Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the words I longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine.