SOQAI, AND ECONOMIC PROGRESS OF THE NEGRO FARMERS 



95 



In this case we have forms akin to metayage or quite identical with it. 



But the progress of the negro has not stopped here : from a simple sharing 

 in the crop (pa5nnent in kind made bj' the landlord for his work), advance 

 was made to the paj^ment by the tenant of a fixed amount in money or 

 produce (the tenant, undertaking to work the farm, paid the landowner for 

 the use of the land); from the forms of share tenancy the negro advanced 

 to the contract of lease. The tenant then completely emancipated himself 

 from every kind of supervision and was enabled to manage the farm and 

 conduct all the business of the sale of the produce. 



A proof of the progress of the negro farmers is that they are more and 

 more found working under the conditions of these higher classes of share ten- 

 ancy or under contract of lease — and we shall hereafter see more and more of 

 them becoming landowners — and this increase of the negroes in such situ- 

 ations is not only absolute, but relatively greater than that of the whites. 



Unfortunately, the last census (1910) does not give special figures for 

 the negroes who are grouped under the head of coloured people, together 

 with the Indians, Japanese and Chinese. Yet these general figures may 

 provide sufficiently accurate information with regard to the negroes, as, in 

 view of the very different local distribution of the coloured farmers, we 

 may judge when they refer almost exclusively to negroes and when to 

 other coloured races. The following table shows the distribution of the vari- 

 ous races in the territory' of the Union. 



[ TabIvE II. — Various Races of Farmers {Landowners, Tenant Farmers) 



in the United States. 



It is therefore, clear that up to the present the very large majority of 

 the coloured landowners and tenant farmers, and in the Southern States 

 almost all, are negroes. So much said, we can give their true value to the 

 following figures : 



