AGRICULTURE. 127 



As before, the eastern division of the red hills leads in 

 the amount of land cultivated, per square mile, per farm, 

 and per inhabitant, probably because so much of the area 

 is comparatively smooth, moderately fertile and easily tilled. 

 The western division has more fertile soils but rougher 

 topography, and the regions farther south have poorer or 

 more swampy soils. The largest investments in farm prop- 

 erty are in Mobile County, for reasons already given, and 

 the pine hills region still leads in all sorts of animals except 

 mules and hogs. It is the only region that has more horses 

 than mules, as previously indicated. (In 1910 there were 

 very few automobiles or tractors on Alabama farms, but now 

 they are gradually taking the place of horses and mules, and 

 they will have to be reckoned with in future censuses.) The 

 pre-eminence of the lime-sink region in hogs is doubtless 

 correlated with the large peanut crop. 



The apparent value of nearly everything in these tables 

 just about doubled between 1900 and 1910. This is partly 

 because of actual improvements, and the "unearned incre- 

 ment" of land values caused by increasing population, but 

 ntostly because of the shrinkage of money values, which 

 was due primarily to discoveries of gold in the Klondike 

 region and elsewhere since 1896. This shrinkage during 

 the decade amounted to about 60 per cent, making a two- 

 thirds increase in apparent values of commodities. At the 

 present time the inflation of currency, and other conditions 

 resulting from the recent war, have still further boosted 

 prices, so that those of 1920 are just about double those of 

 1910 on the average; a fact which must be borne in mind 

 in trying to estimate present conditions from past develop- 

 ments. 



TENURE OF FARMS. 



Tables 34 and 36 show the conditions of farm tenure 

 in the several regions in 1900 and 1910. The former is in 

 two parts, the first classifying owners and tenants accord- 

 ing to race, and the second dividing white and colored farm- 

 ers into three tenure classes. The census recognized five 

 tenure classes, namely, owners, part owners, managers, cash 

 tenants and share tenants, but in order to simplify matters 

 the owners and part owners are here combined, and the 

 managers, who constitute usually less than 1 per cent, 

 omitted. (The difference between 100 and the sum of the 



