SOUTHERN AGRICULTURE. 



255 



and least of all for anotlier man's 'cropper.' And, sad to say, thou- 

 sands of white croppers are fully equal to the most benighted negroes in 

 lack of education. 



Tables III. and IV. exhibit the relative productiveness of the labor 

 of the two races, and also very strikingly the superiority of the agri- 

 culture of owners to that of tenants. 



I have selected from the four representative southern states of 

 Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and South Carolina, the eighty counties 

 (except the two extremes of sea islands and mountains) having the 

 largest and the smallest proportion of negro population. I then 

 found the production per improved acre of the farms in each of these 

 counties. Table IV. contains all those counties whose negro popula- 

 tion is 75 per cent, of the whole and all whose production reached $11 

 per acre. A table of this kind is unduly favorable to the negro, for two 

 reasons: Eirst, those counties throughout the south containing the 

 richest lands were flooded with black population during the slavery 

 regime, and their agricultural population is to-day of the same compo- 

 sition; and secondly, the good farming counties having to-day from 20 

 to 40 per cent, of negro population generally contained almost no 

 negroes before the war, whereas their towns grown up since have drawn 

 a large number of negroes from a distance, while the country districts 

 are still inhabited in about the same proportion as formerly by 

 whites. Thus a county having 30 per cent, negro population and a 

 large per capita production might appear to one unacquainted with 

 actual conditions to be blessed with just about sufficient negro popula- 



Taele IV. 



