70 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE 



localized by slavery. In the Coastal and Piedmont regions 

 of the Atlantic states, twenty-one counties in North 

 Carolina, thirty-five in South Carolina, and ten in Georgia 

 were found to have approximately 15 to 30 per cent of 

 their improved land in plantations. In Alabama forty- 

 seven counties mostly in the Black Prairies had around 

 30 per cent of their improved land in plantations. The 

 Mississippi River Valley had around 45 per cent of its 

 improved land in plantations in forty-five counties in 

 Mississippi, twenty-three in Arkansas, eleven in southern 

 Tennessee, and twenty-nine in Louisiana. Slavery had car- 

 ried the Negro here, and mosquitoes, malaria, and the 

 high cost of the rich river bottom land have kept white 

 farmers out. In and near the Black Prairie of Texas, 

 forty-one counties were found to have about 15 per cent 

 of the lands in white tenant farms comparable to the 

 plantation system. 58 



The average plantation was found to contain 724 acres 

 of which 405 were in improved land. The value of its 

 land and buildings was $17,322. Its acreage thus was 

 more than five times and its value three times as great 

 as those of the average farm in the United States. The 

 average farm retained by the landlord for cultivation 

 was worth $6,564 and contained 330 acres, 26 per cent 

 of which was improved. There were 398,905 tenant tracts 

 which covered 15,367,398 acres of farm land. The aver- 

 age tenant farm contained 38.5 acres of which 81 per 

 cent was improved. Although composed of richer and 

 better cleared land the value of land and buildings was 



58 1910 Census, V, p. 880. See also Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin 

 1269, Fig. 2, p. 5. The plantation was noticeably absent in counties 

 where soil and topography rendered impossible the production of 

 cotton. 



