The Greenback Movement , 1876-84. 
535 
portance but not in the direction of financial pressure upon the 
property owner. Not only do the Greenback counties pay a 
smaller average tax per capita and have a smaller per capita 
debt, but the ratio of this debt and tax to their total valuation 
is less than the average for the several state groups. This 
shows conclusively that these districts have not yet attained the 
complex economic life of older communities in the same states — 
they form, as it were, a frontier belt, not yet fully developed. 
The evidence as to the ratio of mortgages to farm values per 
acre is full of significance. As shown by Table III the two 
most important groups of states show averages that indicate a 
heavier per acre burden upon farms in the Greenback areas. 
The third group gives just the opposite result. The separate 
states, also, whose Greenback counties do not show a greater 
per cent, of mortgages to farm values are six in number 
and represent 104 counties, a little over one-third of the whole 
number of these counties. 
To sum up our results thus far, it has been shown that the 
most important part of the Greenback vote of 1880 was distrib¬ 
uted through 15 states and 306 counties, and comprised those 
districts largely agricultural in interest. These communities, 
moreover, were on the average poorer than the remainder of the 
state in which they were located, and their economic life was 
more undeveloped. This latter appears from their lower per 
capita manufactures, total valuation, and local debt and taxa¬ 
tion; while their poverty is indicated by the low value of farms 
•and the smaller total value of manufactures and farm produce. 
And, further, these conditions were aggravated by a higher 
average value of mortgages upon the farms. 
We may next turn our inquiry toward ascertaining the loca¬ 
tion and character of the more or less compact Greenback dis¬ 
tricts in the separate states, with a view to testing the conclu¬ 
sions already reached. In selecting these districts for separate 
study, the effort has been made in each case to choose only those 
counties which are contiguous, or nearly so, and which seem to 
form a natural group. In one instance, in southeastern Kansas 
and southwestern Missouri, two separate groups are made of one 
large district because of essential physiographic differences. 
