Several factors precipitated one of the largest population
shifts in the country's history. In 1898 the tiny boll weevil
invaded Texas and proceeded to eat its way east across the
South. Crops were devastated, thousands of agricultural workers
thrown off the land, and the long reign of King Cotton as the
region's economic backbone was finally brought to an end. Even
more important was World War I. Its onset in Europe, in 1914,
brought a halt - within three years - to the massive immigration
of European industrial workers which had been going on for some
sixty years. By 1900 more than a million were settling in the
United States each year. Although the country did not enter the
conflict until 1917, it had been supplying the European
combatants since hostilities began. The cessation of immigration
resulted in an acute labor shortage at a time when workers were
needed to gear up the arms and war-supplies industries. The war
created an economic boom, and an alternative supply of labor was
needed to meet the incre