WESTERN RED HILLS. 



37 



the latter, are rather high, but easily explained by the sparse 

 and predominantly rural population, which makes schools 

 rather far apart. But educational conditions are better in 

 the towns, and are improving steadily with the increase in 

 population. In Greenville, the only city in the region for 

 which such data are given by the last census, the illiteracy 

 figures were 0.34 per cent for whites and 7.9 per cent for 

 negroes, or 4.5 per cent for the total population, which is a 

 better showing than that of New York City and almost 

 equal to that of Boston. 



AGRICULTURE. 



Agriculture has long been the leading industry. In 1850, 

 when the area of farm land was first returned by the cen- 

 sus, nearly one-tenth of the land was in cultivation, and in 

 the next decade the amount nearly doubled. The salient 

 features of agriculture at the censuses of 1850, 1860, and 

 1880 to 1910 are shown in Tables 2 to 4. 



TABLE 2. 

 Farm equipment in western red hills, 1850-1910. 



