jO ECONOMICS OF LAND TENURE IN GEORGIA [y Q 



1900 it was eleven per cent; from 1900 to 1903 it was 

 sixteen per cent. Or, for the periods just named, the 

 annual average rates of increase were respectively twelve 

 per cent, six per cent, one per cent and five per cent. 

 Or, to view the problem from still another standpoint 

 in 1874, the negroes owned one in every eighty-five acres 

 of improved land in the state; in 1880, they held one in 

 every fifty; in 1890, one in every thirty-one; in 1900, 

 one in every twenty-eight; in 1903, one in every twenty- 

 five. These figures show that there has not been a uni- 

 form rate of increase during the past thirty years. On 

 the whole, the rate of increase has suffered a decrease 

 during the period, but even this decrease has been far 

 from regular. From 1874 to 1892 there was some uni- 

 formity in the enlargement of the acreage owned by 

 negroes, the most noteworthy perturbation being that in 

 the early eighties, due no doubt to the general depres- 

 sion which then occurred augmented by the poor cotton 

 crop of 1881. The years from 1892 to 1900 are marked 

 by fluctuations in the amount of land held by negroes, 

 with only a slight increase in the acreage taking the 

 period as a whole — in fact there was not a two per cent 

 increase from 1892 to 1900. It will be remembered that 

 most of those years belong to the period of depression 

 which bore with particular severity upon the farmers of 

 Georgia, because of the abnormally low price of cotton 

 then prevailing. 



Since 1900 there has been a significant increase in the 

 acreage — significant not so much because of the amount 

 as because of the fact of the increase after eight years of 

 arrested development. 



Maps drawn to show the localization of these holdings 

 for 1880, 1890, 1900 and 1903 indicate that the negroes 

 have continued to maintain a stronger hold on the soil 



