REGIONS AND HUMAN ECOLOGY 23 



and the whole area averages almost a million bales. 



The Eastern Prairies of Oklahoma comprise almost 

 half the eastern part of the state. The soil is black to 

 reddish, topography rolling, and vegetation prairie 

 grasses. The area is mostly given to corn, hay, and pas- 

 ture land. In 1909 it produced over a third of a million 

 bales averaging 182 pounds to the cotton acre. 



The Red Prairies in Western Oklahoma and North 

 Central Texas are rough in contour and given mostly to 

 grazing, produce about 105 pounds of cotton to the acre, 

 but bid fair to become important because of large area. 

 They produced 825,000 bales in the 1909 figures. 



The outstanding cotton section of the West is the 

 Black Waxy of Texas, so called from its dark calcareous 

 clays. It has the highest per cent of its area in farms, 

 86, the highest per cent improved, 62, and the highest in 

 cotton, 31.6. It is also unique in that it is an area of 

 white tenancy, for although only 14.5 per cent of the 

 farm land is in plantations, 55.7 per cent of all farms are 

 run by white tenants. In the per cent of white ownership 

 the region comes second only to the Interior Coastal 

 Plains. The size of farms is over sixty-five acres, second 

 to the Red Prairies with their hundred-acre farms much 

 of which is in pasture. The land is rich and fresh and 

 practically no fertilizer is needed. West Texas has a po- 

 tentially fertile soil but the desert is too close and the 

 "droughts are frequently devastating." J The story of 

 the spread of cotton culture to the Great Plains must be 

 left to a later chapter. The black land, however, does not 

 suffer so much from drought, for "it holds water like a 

 sponge." 3fl 



38 Hubbard, op. cit., p. 79. 39 j^id., p. 15. 



