HUMAN EFFORT AS A FACTOR IN PRODUCTION 257 



population, the improvements were: land and buildings, 121, buildings 

 alone, 102, implements and machinery, 96; in the counties where the 

 negro constitutes 10 to 37^ per cent of the population: land and build- 

 ings, 171, buildings alone, 153, implements and machinery, 130. It 

 is thus evident that agricultural production and farm improvements 

 increase in a ratio inverse to that of the presence of negro population. 



The real condition and spirit of agriculture are probably more 

 accurately revealed in the movements of population. Between 1900 

 and 1910 the rural population of the Black Belt, if we exclude four 

 border counties, decreased 37.1 per cent. Ten counties suffered an 

 average loss of 8.3 per cent. In rural and urban population nine 

 counties suffered a loss of white individuals; eleven counties suffered 

 a loss of negroes. On the other hand, every county in the group of 

 White Counties increased in rural population. The average increase 

 for the group was 21.3 per cent in rural population. The entire white 

 population, rural and urban, increased 19 per cent and the negro 

 population 20 . 8 per cent. 



Such is the agricultural situation in the Black Belt as revealed by 

 the records a low rate of production, low rate of farm improvements, 

 and an actual decline in rural population. 



74. RURAL ILL-HEALTH AS A CAUSE OF INEFFICIENCY 1 

 BY ALLEN J. SMITH 



In 1901 and 1902 and 1903 the hook-worm formed the nucleus 

 of a jest in talk and printed items; it was then the "lazy worm." 

 The poor Southerner who harbored the worm was if anything incensed 

 by the disgrace he felt was incurred by his becoming ignorantly its 

 host. But as time and experience confirmed and added to the earlier 

 warnings, the real meaning of the insidious enemy to the district 

 fastened itself in the public mind; and more than one paper earnestly 

 urged the economic as well as the purely pathological importance of 

 the disease. 



Is there wonder that our southern states lagged in the march of 

 American progress? There have been numerous causes which held 

 back the fuller development only now beginning to open before us 

 of this which is naturally the most desirable part of our whole country, 



1 Adapted from "The Economic and Biologic Aspects of Hook- Worm Disease 

 in the Southern United States," University of Pennsylvania Bulletin, Fifteenth 

 Series, No. 3, Part 5, pp. 286-90. 



