THE COAST REGION. 29 



LABOR AND SYSTEM OF PLANTING. 



On the sea islands of Carolina, field labor is performed almost exclu- 

 sively by negroes. Nearh^ all of them are engaged in farming on their 

 OM^n account ; a large number own farms; a still larger number rent lands 

 for cultivation, and even the laborers are paid most generally by granting 

 them the use of so many acres of land for certain stipulated services. 

 The total number of farms on the islands is stated to be fifty-four hundred 

 and fifty-three, but the number probably exceeds six thousand, the enu- 

 merators having had the lands and crops cultivated by renters returned 

 by the landowner, and consolidating them as being in some sort under 

 one management, when they were, in reality, entirely independent — an 

 error ever likely to occur, and sometimes quite difficult to avoid, and 

 which has no doubt caused the number of farms to be underestimated 

 and their size overestimated in manv sections of the South. The largest 

 number of acres of sea island cotton planted under one management 

 nowhere exceeds one hundred acres. • The white planters do not proba- 

 bly average more than thirty acres, and this necessitates that they 

 should be landlords of considerable estate. For as the laborers are fre- 

 (juently given five to seven acres for tw^o days' work in the week, and as 

 this two days' work per week does not suffice for the cultivation of more 

 than four acres, to cultivate thirty acres of cotton under this system 

 requires seventy-five acres of land; add to this the amount usually 

 planted in corn and other crops, and we will have one hundred and 

 twenty acres. As under the best system the land lies fallow every other 

 year, the planter of thirty acres of cotton will require two hundred and 

 forty acres of open land ; and as scarcely one-fifth of the land is under 

 cultivation, such a planter will probably own some twelve hundred acres. 

 Thus there is no proportion between the size of the farm actually culti- 

 vated and the land holdings — the first being quite small and the last 

 large. This state of things is owing to absence of capital and the low 

 price of land and labor. Lands which were worth $50 to $60 an acre 

 more than half a century ago (Mill's Statistics S. C, pp. 372 and 472), and 

 which had increased in value down to 1860, being until recently either 

 w^holh^ unsaleable or selling at $10 per acre or less. 



WAGES. 



On .James island, which at this time is perhaps under a more progres- 

 sive system of culture than the other sea islands, laborers are paid cash for 

 their work, at the rate of fifty cents per diem and $10 per month, with 



