66 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



People who live in the cotton growing States know that a very 

 large part of the business of those states is based on the Negro 

 and the mule. 



In the South, when a planter wants to borrow money, he finds 

 his credit at the bank is usually determined by the number of 

 reliable Negro tenants he can control ; business is based on labor. 

 In other words, the value of the land and of all that goes with 

 it and depends upon it, is determined very largely, more largely, 

 perhaps, than is true of any other part of the country, by the 

 character and quantity of the labor supply. 



The two million and more Negroes who are employed in agri- 

 culture in the Southern States have in their hands, either as 

 renters or as owners, 40 per cent, of the tillable land. Some- 

 thing like 100,000,000 of the 150,000,000 acres of improved land 

 is cultivated by Negro labor, and of every eleven bales of cotton 

 produced in the South, seven are raised by Negroes. 



The Negro is here and he is likely to remain. First, because 

 after something like three hundred years he has adapted him- 

 self to the country and the people ; because experience has taught 

 him that, on the whole, the vast majority of the Negroes are more 

 at home and better off in the agricultural regions of the South 

 than they are likely to be in any other part of the world; and 

 finally because the Southern white man does not want him to go 

 away. You may say what you please about segregation of the 

 races, but when there is work to be done about the plantation, 

 when it comes time to plant and pick the cotton, the white man 

 does not want the Negro so far away that he cannot reach him 

 by the sound of his voice. 



At the present time Negroes in the rural districts represent, 

 in some respects, the best portion of the Negro race. They are 

 for the most part a vigorous, wholesome, simple-minded people. 

 They are, as yet, almost untouched by the vices of city life, and 

 still maintain, on the whole, their confidence in the good will of 

 the white people by whom they are surrounded. 



These seven million people represent, therefore, tremendous 

 possibilities for good and for evil to themselves, and the com- 

 munity in which they live. From an economic view alone, this 

 large actual and potential labor force represents a vast store of 

 undeveloped wealth, a gold mine of productive energy, in fact. 



