88 Negro Migration 



Clothing. — No statistics are available for clothing bought, 

 but the same limitations of credit are imposed on share 

 tenants in this respect as in the purchase of food. 



Housing. — The figures in Table 11 above indicate that 

 owners uniformly occupy the most valuable houses, cash 

 tenants next and share tenants the poorest. The average 

 values of buildings per farm i n the State as a who le were : 

 for owner farms, $293, cash tenant farms, $189, and share 

 tenant farmc, jfira Th ese values ap eak for themselves. 

 Even the owner's, house at $295 is poor enough, but the 

 h nii.qpg qj the share tenants are often unsp eaRable. Con- 

 s tructed of green lumber and in ninety-nine cases ou t of a 

 hundred unpainted, they warp , spring jcracks and Jsaks, and 

 present a bare and uninviti ng appearance fromj vithout and 

 within. . They are predominantly of the one room construc- 

 tion^ sometimes with an 8' x 1CK lean-to addition. They 

 seldom have more than one or two small windows with 

 rough board shutters, and almost never more than one chim- 

 ney, with migrated fireplace. It is in these cabins that 

 families, sometimes large ones, with the added company 

 of several dogs, live. 



The general significance of this low standard of living 

 is more fully treated in the last chapter. It cannot, how- 

 ever, be too frequently emphasized that all students of the 

 race question agree that the most pressing problem of the 

 Negro is his standard of living. Educating him to pro- 

 duce more hinges on the ability of educating him to want 

 more. As a passage from share tenant to cash tenant or 

 cash tenant to owner, means an improvement in the stand- 

 ard of living, it is a movement to be heartily encouraged. 



^ PERMANENCY OF RESIDENCE. 



The share tenant, the renter, and the o wner are l ikewise 

 successively more attached to tne land and less Hkely to 



