Small Farms and Their Owners 

 Wealth Producers. 



TITHI ^^^ should new and thriving towns dot the face of the 

 ^^■^^* earth in the Wiregrass, why should the smoke that 

 ascends from the contented country homes form a chain of 

 signals of satisfaction for miles on miles, why should the coun- 

 try be so markedly contented, the towns so emphatically new 

 and so emphatically prosperous, when the same contentment 

 and the same pronounced prosperity is not so manifest in the 

 rural regions of the Black Belt? 



The prairie lands are undeniably richer than the farm lands 

 of the pine woods. The fertilizer needed in the Wiregrass is 

 not needed in the prairie? What is this difference that gives 

 the prize of prosperity to the Wiregrass? 



The answer is simple. The small farm is the better thing 

 for the country than the big plantation. The small farm is an 

 infinitely better producer than the negro tenant. The small 

 farmer is a wealth producer. The negro tenant is a wealth 

 d; "^i -oyer anywhere else on earth except on a Black Belt plan- 

 tation and even then he barely gives to the community more 

 than he takes from it and this little his landlord and advancer 

 gets. He is not a wealth destroyer on the prairie lands' because 

 the prairie acres are practically indestructible. The negro ten- 

 ant does as' much as he can to the Black Belt acres, but they 

 are proof against hard usage. On other soil the negro tenan: 

 can do his worst. As a soil impoverisher the average negro, 

 farming on shares', is in a class by himself. 



ORIGIN OF WIREGRASS RICHES. 



It is the industrious white farmer cultivating his 60 acres, 

 his 80 acres or his 160-acre farm who forges the prosperity of 

 the Wiregrass. He is the map who came in here in the early 

 davs and homesteaded his land or who bought it at an insig- 

 nificant figure when land was selling in the Wiregrass at a 

 doHar and two dollars an acre. This man's farm, closely 

 watched, closely tilled, with its smoke house, its plethoric corn 



