132 RESOURCES OF SOUTHERN ALABAMA. 



many kinds of statistics, such as size of cities, ages of the 

 population, and per capita wealth and education, too, if we 

 could get any information on those points. 



CROPS. 

 Relative importance. 



The relative importance of different crops of course 

 varies from year to year, but it will probably suffice for 

 present purposes to give statistics of the crops of 1909 only, 

 as returned to the census enumerators in the spring of 1910. 

 (Earlier censuses do not give the desired information about 

 the lime-sink region, on account of the non-existence of 

 Houston County, or enough data about crop values to enable 

 us to determine the aggregate value of each crop.) 



Value is made the basis of comparison rather than acre- 

 age, partly because the census does not give the acreage of 

 orchard crops, but chiefly because an acre of vegetables or 

 strawberries requires much more labor and fertilizer and 

 brings a much larger return than an acre of corn or cotton. 

 The value of each crop in each county is not given by the 

 United States census (as it is by some states, such as Flor- 

 ida), so that we have to estimate it by dividing the total 

 value for the State by the number of acres, pounds, bushels, 

 etc., and assuming that the same value prevails in each 

 county. 



Tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, watermelons, cabbage, let- 

 tuce, sweet corn, etc., are all lumped together by the census 

 under the head of "vegetables," which is rather disappoint- 

 ing, and gives that category a much higher rank than it 

 would have if its components were separated. But taking 

 southern Alabama as a whole, the most important "vege- 

 table" (other than potatoes, which are returned separately) 

 is probably the watermelon. 



There are some later crop returns in Bulletin 79 of the 

 State Department of Agriculture and Industries (1918), 

 which embodies the results of a farm survey of Alabama 

 made in 1917 by school children under the direction of F. W. 

 Gist; but on close inspection of the tables it appears that 

 the inquiries must have been made chiefly of the more pro- 

 gressive white farmers, so that the results cannot be taken 

 as typical of the whole situation. (The inferior tenants 

 were indeed expressly excluded from the investigation, al- 



