32 ECONOMICS OF LAND TENURE IN GEORGIA [32 



situation that it is not actually cultivated, nor will some of 

 it be cultivated for many years to come. To the extent 

 that lands are privately owned, that is to say, to the ex- 

 tent that they have value, they are theoretically within 

 the margin of utilization, although they may not be cul- 

 tivated. Of course such lands are held speculatively, 

 and their value is therefore predicated upon a future 

 potentiality. If there were free lands within the state, 

 they and they alone would be beyond the margin of 

 utilization. 



In this chapter which is concerned with tendencies in 

 the ownership of rural land no sharp distinction is to be 

 made between land that is actually, and land that is only 

 potentially, within the margin of utilization. The rela- 

 tive size of these two categories has an important bear- 

 ing on the question of land valuation, and is a matter of 

 significance in relation to certain developments that are 

 to be described later. However, the statistics of owner- 

 ship about to be given do not pertain to quite all the 

 rural land in the state. In providing for the returns of 

 land for purposes of taxation, Georgia makes a distinc- 

 tion between improved and wild lands. " Improved " as 

 here used has a much wider connotation than as used in 

 the census. It is here used as practically synonymous 

 with farming lands, including, therefore, both the im- 

 proved and unimproved lands of the census classifica- 

 tion. And it includes slightly more, for according to the 

 state comptroller-general's report, eighty-five per cent 

 of the lands, or 31,000,000 acres, is returned as improved 

 or farming lands. 1 The remaining fifteen per cent, that 

 is, the wild lands, lies chiefly in the northern and south- 

 ern counties of the state. 



1 Compt.-Gen. Report, 1903, p. 166. 



