ECONOMIC PROPERTIES 



was thirty, in the South Central States it was 

 twenty-seven and two-tenths, while in the one 

 state of Mississippi the percentage was fifty-eight 

 and three-tenths. The size of their farms is 

 small, averaging about fifty-one acres. That 

 they do not work very strenuously nor compete 

 very keenly for the use of land, is shown by the 

 fact that land of practically the same grade is 

 much less valuable in Alabama where the negroes 

 predominate than in Texas where the whites are 

 in the majority. In all of the thirty-nine counties 

 of the "Black Prairie" of Texas the whites were 

 in the majority in 1890, and the average value of 

 land was 12.19 dollars per acre; whereas, similar 

 soil was worth 6.40 dollars per acre in the "Black 

 Prairie" of Alabama in which there are twelve 

 counties, and in all of which counties there were 

 more negroes than whites. 1 



A Southern planter, interested in the improve- 

 ment of the negroes, is quoted as saying: "One 

 of the things which militates most against the 

 negro is his unreliability. . . . His mental proc- 

 esses are past finding out and he cannot be counted 

 on to do or not to do a given thing under given 

 circumstances." 1 "Judged by present stand- 

 ards," says Carl Kelsey, "the negro is decidedly 

 lacking. . . . Something is holding him back, .... 



1 Carl Kelsey, The Negro Farmer, p. 69 ; also, Harry Ham- 

 mond, in The Cotton Plant (Bulletin No. 33, U. S. Dept. of 

 Agr., Office of Experiment Stations), p. 242. 



37 



