76 ECONOMICS OF LAND TENURE IN GEORGIA [76 



about one-half of the population, possess only one- 

 twenty-fifth of the land in the state. 



This leads to the consideration of the extent to which 

 the environment of the negro is unfavorable to his ac- 

 quiring land. In the first place, no doubt there has been 

 a disposition on the part of some white landowners to 

 discourage the acquisition of land by negroes to the ex- 

 tent of refusing to sell to them on the simple ground 

 that a negro, being a negro, has no business to own 

 land. One would expect that the greater economic com- 

 petition between the two races would tend to increase 

 this feeling. The feeling, however, in its beginning was 

 not a product of the economic struggle. It had its birth 

 in the period of the reconstruction orgies, and as the 

 vision of the negro's political dominion supported by the 

 strong arm of the national government has vanished, it 

 has become possible for the southern white man to take 

 a saner attitude toward the negro as a citizen as well as 

 an industrial factor. So that now, in Georgia at least, 

 the attitude of the typical white landowner is not one 

 that would dictate a refusal to sell land to a negro be- 

 cause of his color, nor would the color of the purchaser 

 alter in any wise the terms upon which the land might 

 be obtained. 



Another influence of the environment that has un- 

 doubtedly worked to hinder the negroes in purchasing 

 lands has been the generally unprosperous condition of 

 the farmers up to within recent years. It is particularly 

 noticeable that during the depression of the nineties, as 

 was said above, 1 the negroes made little progress in 

 acquiring farms. As will be discussed in another con- 

 nection, many of the negro farmers are croppers upon 



1 Supra, p. 70. 



