4 ECONOMICS OF LAND TENURE IN GEORGIA [40 



Mathematical exactitude is not claimed for the per- 

 centages just given. They do nevertheless come within a 

 reasonable range of accuracy and trustworthiness, and a 

 perusal of them easily leads to some interesting informa- 

 tion touching the ownership of land in the state. A few 

 of these facts not yet adverted to will be mentioned. 

 Throughout the period covered by the figures a small 

 percentage of the proprietors have owned a large per- 

 centage of the total acreage; for instance, in 1902 less 

 than four per cent of the owners held one-fourth of the 

 land, the holding of each containing over one thousand 

 acres. In the beginning of the period something over 

 one-half and at the end slightly less than one-half of the 

 land was held in tracts containing over five hundred 

 acres, while the number of holders of such tracts fell 

 from a twenty-one per cent rank to an eleven per cent 

 rank. This discrepancy between the two rates of per- 

 centage decline does not indicate an increase in the aver- 

 age size of these large holdings, but is to be explained 

 by the fact that the crumbling of one large plantation 

 suffices to give rise to many small proprietorships. 



Again, especially noteworthy is the constancy with 

 which the two hundred and sixty to five hundred acre 

 tracts have held their relative rank. Throughout the 

 period approximately one-fifth of the acreage has been 

 in holdings varying in size from two hundred and sixty 

 to five hundred acres. The one hundred to one hundred 

 and seventy-five acre group shows the highest percent- 

 age of owners ; for the period, approximately one-fourth 

 of the owners held tracts in size between these two 

 limits. 



The most important general conclusion from the above 

 table is that the percentage for both the acreage and the 

 owners shows a downward movement to the left — a 



