28 ECONOMICS OF LAND TENURE IN GEORGIA [ 2 8 



Inasmuch as there were over 53,000 active farms in the 

 state in i860, it is fair to assume that about one-half of 

 the white population of 580,000 had an immediate inter- 

 est in the land. It is beyond the scope of this essay to 

 attempt to give the economic status of the other half. 

 Many were small shopkeepers and merchants in the 

 towns and cities ; some were doctors, lawyers, preachers 

 and teachers ; a few were tenants ; some were mechanics 

 and blacksmiths; some worked for wages in various 

 capacities, and many were employed as overseers on 

 plantations. It is true that many of them led a very 

 precarious, hand-to-mouth existence. This, however, is 

 not an exceptional phenomenon to be found only in 

 slave societies ; on the contrary, it seems to be universal 

 in its manifestations. 



Owing to the abundance of land in Georgia and to the 

 profitableness of the plantation system in the production 

 of cotton the large land holdings tended to increase in 

 number and size. Owing to the abundance of land this 

 tendency cannot be said to have made the economic 

 struggle very hard before the war. Owing to the fact 

 that there was a limit to the supply of land, and owing 

 to the exploitative methods of cultivation, as well as to 

 the natural increase of population, the tendency was 

 toward an increased hardship for those less successful in 

 the economic struggle. 



After the above discussion which has proceeded upon 

 the assumption of the effectiveness of the slavery-planta- 

 tion system in cotton production and which has at- 

 tempted to show that the system, while productive, was 

 in Georgia at least, not so productive as to render pre- 

 carious the condition of the small producer, it seems less 

 than useless to adduce evidence for the purpose of show- 

 ing that the system was really efficient. Still one of the 



