56 COTTON 
of 1899—which sum if equally divided, would give 
a surplus of $240 to each of the 1,418,000 farms 
growing cotton, of $21 each to every one of the 
16,000,000 inhabitants of the Cotton States. 
ASTOUNDING SOUTHERN PROSPERITY 
Small wonder that Southern railways report 
heavier increases in earnings than lines in any other 
section of the country. 
Small wonder that the assessed valuation of 
Southern property is now increasing three times as 
rapidly as in the decade 1890-1900. 
Small wonder that savings and bank deposits in 
the Southern States from 1900 to 1905 increased 
more than 100 per cent. while the increase for the 
rest of the United States was only 50 per cent. 
Small wonder that it is no extraordinary affair 
a Sampson County, North Carolina, farmer re- 
ported to us when he said last week that a farm he 
bought four years ago for $57.50 per acre would 
sell now for $100; another farm bought then for 
$3,000 was recently sold for $8,000; land values in 
his county have increased 33 1-3 per cent. within a 
year, a total increase of a million dollars for this 
one cotton county. ( We know of two South Caro- 
lina cotton farms, one of which in three years has 
increased in selling price from $3,000 to $8,000 and 
another from $7,000 to $20,000.) 
Small wonder that Dr. Walter H. Page declares 
in the World’s Work that we “are in sight of the 
time when the cotton grower in the old Slave States 
will become the most prosperous tiller of the earth.” 
It is, in fact, a new South that we have. The 
factory, the bank, the church, the school, the news- 
paper—all are benefited by the increase in prices 
