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Publications of the University of Virginia Phelps-Stokes Fellowship Papers
Rural Land Ownership Among the Negroes of Virginia
With Special Reference to Albemarle County
BY
SAMUEL T. BITTING
1/iT-i
LISS .73
YsBi
D. Of D. OCT 3 191?
/»
r'
t^
FOREWORD.
The present essay, which for simplicity has been divided into seven chapters, is the result of the writer's investigations during his incumbency of the Phelps-Stokes Fellowship at the Univer- sity of Virginia during the session of 1914-15. While the sub- ject is too great to be treated adequately in so limited a time it is hoped that the following pages may at least suggest the dif- ferences in economic condition between urban and rural negroes and eventually, perhaps, lead to an exhaustive study of the sub- ject. Like all social questions the negro problem must be an- alyzed under the special conditions of time and place before there can be any intelligent basis for action, and it was with the purpose of increasing the present inadequate fund of such knowledge that the present study was undertaken.
My thanks for helpful advice on the ways and means of un- dertaking the study are especially due to Dr. Thos. W. Page, of the University of Virginia; Professor W. M. Hunley, of the Virginia Military Institute ; Dr. J. H. Dillard, Director of the Jeannes Fund, Charlottesville, Va. ; and Mr. D. Hiden Ramsey, of Asheville, N. C. ; and to Dr. Chas. W. Kent, of the Univer- sity of Virginia, who read the manuscript. Messrs. N. T. Mc- Mannaway, of Charlottesville ; P. T. Atkinson, of Hampden- Sidney ; B. E. Copenhaver, of Marion ; and R. A. Folkes, of Gloucester gave valuable information on school conditions which could not have been obtained from any other source and to that degree increase whatever value the present study may have.
S. T. Bitting. New York City,
November, ig 75.
CONTENTS.
Chapter I. Modern Agricultural Virginia ~
Chapter II. Freedom and Property Holding --
Chapter III. The Present Conditions 36
Chapter IV. Negro Land Ownership in Albemarle County ^6
Chapter V. Economic Conditions Among the Negroes in Albemarle County 67
Chapter VI. Social Conditions °'
Chapter VII. Reflections and Conclusions 98
Appendix and Bibliography 104
CHAPTER I. Modern Agricultural Virginia.
The system of land tenure and the possibility of a large staple crop early determined the type of agricultural economy which was to become typical of Colonial Virginia. In response to the demand for cheap labor created by this large scale agricul- ture negro slavery was soon introduced into the commonwealth and became an organic part of the economic organization. For about two centuries this system prospered, but finally, when good land became scarce in the nineteenth century it weakened, and indeed all but gave way several decades before emancipa- tion actually occurred. But it did remain until the War, and the plantation was characteristic of agriculture in the Old Do- minion except in the Valley where small farms were the rule. The negro slaves were most numerous in the tobacco raising sections of the South side. With the War between the States and the abolition of slavery, however, it became apparent that a complete agricultural and industrial revolution had begun.
At the close of the War Virginia found itself doubly handi- capped because not only had its economic organization been com- pletely overturned but its fields had been the scene of destruc- tive battles prohibiting for the time production of any sort. Thomas Nelson Page says : "The disorganization of the laboring class in Virginia and the condition of her transporta- tion facilities, coupled with universal lack of means at the time, almost destroyed her agriculture. * * The old planter
system proved generally wholly unsuited to the new conditions and under the continued depression of agriculture, and such agricultural products as it had been the custom to raise in Vir- ginia, it almost entirely disappeared. When labor only gave a half-year's work for a full year's hire, only that man could af- ford to farm who was independent of labor. Thus, the old planter class gradually passed away, the young representatives of it going to the cities and seeking other fields of enterprise for application of their faculties, and their place has been taken by
8 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
the small farmer who works at the plow himself or hires a few 'hands' to work under his own eye." 1 And during the years that immediately followed the War it was the small farmer who suffered the least, for the planter, burdened with land, was unable to follow similar simple methods. Indeed, the complete prostration of the planting section of the State is almost beyond comprehension. Page says of this section: "It was not only that property values had been swept away, but that everything except the bare land from which property values can be cre- ated had been extirpated. The entire personal property of the state had been destroyed; the laboring class of a country de- pendent upon its agriculture had been suddenly changed from laborers into vagrants, with no property to make them conserva- tive and no authority to hold them in check. Their dependence was suddenly shifted from their former masters to strangers, whose indirect, if not their direct teaching was hostile to their former owners. The country was left overwhelmed with debt, with nothing remaining with which the debts could be paid." 2 It was amid such conditions that the people of Virginia ad- dressed themselves to the new order. For a few years the old system in the tobacco counties survived by its inertia and the people went about planting on borrowed money. But such a system would have been unsnited to the new conditions under any circumstances, and under the conditions of the Reconstruc- tion Period every energy was paralyzed by exterior forces. The result was that Virginia and more especially that section of the state known as the "Black Belt," where conditions approximate those in the Gulf States, was withdrawn for several decades from the common movement of progress and the incubus of a body of homeless and helpless ex-slaves weighed on her heav- ilv. The effect of the changed conditions was, indeed, serious in direct proportion to the number of negroes; the greatest problem was presented in the Black Belt, while in the upper Piedmont Section adjustment was 'much easier, and in the Valley the evil consequences of the complete social and indus- trial upheaval were reduced to a minimum.
1. Thos. Xelson Page. "The Old Dominion." 325-f
2. Ibid. 320.
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP J
At the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at Ap- pomattox the soldiers of the Confederacy were allowed to "keep their horses." "They will need them," said General Grant, "when they get home for the spring plowing." The need was a crying one ; soldiers returned home after four long years to find their lands as war-worn as they themselves, and the horses which they rode were literally their only dependence for a new crop. But energy for the peaceful pursuits was not lacking, and in 1908 Page declared that there was scarcely a professional man in the state over the age of fifty who had not worked at the plough during the first few years after the war. There- fore, although to rebuild the state, was a long and difficult task and the people could not adapt themselves to the changed condi- tions in a day ; yet by the close of the last century the indus- trial revolution, so abruptly begun, had re-aligned the forces of production and real progress was well under way.
"The economic emancipation of the average white man," a Southern writer has said, "was the greatest result of the de- struction of slave labor,"3 and Virginia's post-bellum progress in both agriculture and industry has amply illustrated this truth. With the downfall of the old regime capital was no longer needed to purchase labor, and the cheap lands enabled the poor man, after the immediate effects of the War were over, to become a land owner without difficulty. Such was the theory, and that it has been the actual condition is borne out by the fact that since the War the number of small farmers has steadily in- creased and the average size of farms decreased from 246 acres in 1870 to 118.6 in 1900. Because of the destruction of prop- erty, the loss of capital, and the almost universal bankruptcy the white sections of the state recuperated much more rapidly than did the black sections. In 1865 land in the plantation sec- tions was a drug on the market — the burden of cultivation and taxation was greater than could be borne by the bankrupt own- ers— ; and in this year this class of land sold at from one-fourth to one-tenth of the price that it commanded in 1860; indeed, it
3. Walter L. Fleming, in "The South in the Building of the Na- tion," Vol. VI.
10 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
could seldom be sold for any appreciable amount.4 The whites in these sections, furthermore, had little faith in free negro la- bor. This opinion for some years seemed to be amply justified by the fact that negroes flocked to the cities without work and to the disease-ridden army camps in such numbers that DeBow estimated that one-fourth of the negro laborers died or were disabled in the first five years of freedom. When efforts were made to cope with the situation the Freedmen's Bureau inter- fered '•> and the general result was to retard those sections of the state where the negro population was densest.
Today sections of Virginia in the Valley and the Southwest, where the negro population was always small, are among the richest and most prosperous agricultural districts in the entire country, and other districts in the same part of the state are destined to take their place in the same rank. But even the poorest section, finally recovered, has made rapid progress in the past two decades. A large portion of the old plantation section lying within the influence of the Chesapeake Bay has been found to be admirably adapted to truck farming, and now furnishes fruits and vegetables for the markets of the eastern cities several weeks before they can mature a hundred miles further inland. Another portion of the plantation region, the South Side, produces "bright" tobacco, which brings a far bet- ter price than that paid for common leaf : and in yet other por- tions new resources are being developed. Under the changed conditions the farmer has learned the value of land and labor as factors in production and this has taught him "where to take in and where to let out ;" he no longer confines himself to the staple crops and he raises more stock than he formerly did. And of equal importance is the more scientific basis of modern agriculture which not only increases production but makes the farm again attractive to the representatives of the old planting class.
While it would be out of place here to go into the enormous
4. Ibid.
5. See Chap. II belov
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 11
industrial strides that have been made in Virginia — and, for that matter, all over the South— since the Reconstruction Period, it will be well before going on to an outline of the present agri- cultural conditions to briefly call attention to Virginia's indus- trial resources. The improvement of transportation facilities in the eighties, and since that time, was the beginning of the new era. The railroads penetrated the forests and the timber proved a great field for new enterprise, while the trans-Appalach- ian railways, which were actually opened in 1882 under the di- rection of Major Jed Hotchkiss,0 made possible the development of the great coal fields and gave a stimulus to manufacturing. In 1907 the Pocahontas Fields (Virginia and West Virginia) produced 17,000,000 tons of coal whereas the second largest out- put, that of the Alabama fields, only totalled 14,500,000 tons. Other mineral deposits such as cement, gypsum, phosphate, etc., have likewise been extensively developed in recent years and have had a consequent effect upon industry. Under the stimu- lus of the factory new towns are now springing up, and in the older manufacturing towns, Richmond. Lynchburg, Roanoke, and others there has been a rapid increase in population. The general business revival which took place about 1880 was in itself of considerable aid to Virginia industry and the demand which it produced for Southern raw material increased the work- ing capital necessary for the establishment of factories, while Northern capital began to come South as understanding sup- planted misunderstanding. About this time, furthermore, the people began to see that if labor was to be honored it must be sufficiently diversified to accommodate the different aptitudes of classes and races and by 1880 the old Virginia factories had been placed on a firm foundation while their number and equip- ment was beginning to be rapidly increased by home and outside capital.
Thomas Nelson Page sums up the recent progress : "The con- ditions have of late been changing. Virginia, instead of being,
6. Article by E. W. Parker in "The South in the Building of the Nation," VI, 175.
12 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
as the cant phrase went, -a good place to come from' has be- come once more a good place to come to. Her advantages of lo- cation and climate have ever been recognized, and of late other advantages also have been discovered. Her transportation facil- ities have been steadily improving, her mineral resources have attracted the attention of capital, and, being examined, have been found to be wonderful both in quantity and quality. Her coal produces the highest speed in the ocean racers and her iron brings the best prices at the Northern forges."7 Or, as Chan- cellor J. H. Kirkland says of the South, "she is now sending iron to Pennsylvania and coal to Newcastle."
TABLE I: VIRGINIA MANUFACTORIES.
1899 1904 1909
No. established 3,186 3,187 5,685
Persons engaged S8.898 120,797
Proprietors 3<643 6'5T0
Salaried empl's 3,828 4,970 8,551
Wage earners 66,223 80,285 105,676
Primary horsepower 136,696 176,998 283,928
Capital $ 92,300,000 $147,989,000 $216,392,000
Expenses $ 94,513.000 $130,870,990 $196,246,000
Services $ 23,904,000' $ 32,818,000 $ 47,255.000
Materials $ 59,359,000 $ 83,649,000 $125,583,000
Miscellaneous $ 11,250,000 $ 14,403,000 $ 23,408,000
Val. of Product $108,644,000 $148,857,000 $219,794,000
Produced wealth $ 49,285,000 $ 65,208,000 $ 94,211,000
The above table shows the development of manufactures in the state during the last census period. In the order of their importance the manufactured goods of Virginia are: timber products over thirty-five million dollars, tobacco over twenty- five millions, flour seventeen millions, car and shop work nine mil- lions, fertilizer eight millions, leather eight millions, and cotton goods seven millions. The value of the gross product, which was $220,000,000 in 1909 was in 1870 barely $38,000,000 and
Thos. Nelson Page, "The Old Dominion,"
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 13
in 1880 about $52,000,000.8 From these figures the progress of industry is apparent, but although these interests are important and varied, agriculture continues to be the principal producer of wealth and the occupation of the majority of the people.
The State of Virginia is geographically divided into several sections, and since these divisions are closely related to the dif- ferent types of agriculture and negro population, it will be in- structive to note their natural differences. There are, in gen- eral, three principal divisions namely: Tidewater, Piedmont and Middle Virginia, and the Valley and the Southwest.
Tidewater Virginia, or the Coastal Plain, comprises about one- fourth of the state, and stretches along the eastern side from the Chesapeake to the fall line of the Atlantic rivers. It consists altogether of low land while a considerable portion of it lying nearest the bay consists of marshes that are reached by the ocean tide. It is essentially an alluvial country and by reason of its soil and climate has been found to be particularly adapted to truck- ing. It is within twelve hours of 20,000,000 consumers and its small fruits and vegetables find a ready market in Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. The trade in strawberries, peanuts, and potatoes is especially large, and even ten years ago yielded annually over $12,000,000.9
Piedmont and Middle Virginia, which for the present pur- poses may be considered together, consist of the broad alluvial level and rolling lands west of the Tidewater. The principal products of Middle Virginia are corn, wheat, oats, hay and to- bacco. The tobacco raised on the South Side is that known as "Virginia leaf" and has a world-wide reputation for its excel- lence, while in Halifax, Pittsylvania, and Henry Counties the famous "bright" tobacco is raised. Near the eastern slopes of the Blue Ridge fruits of excellent quality are produced in con- siderable quantities.
The Valley, the Southwest and the Appalachian region com- prise the balance of the state. The great Valley, as it is called, lies between the two mountain chains that extend throughout the
8. Cf. Census Reports for respective dates.
9. Virginia Handbook, 1907.
14 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
state, and includes parts of the valleys of Shenendoah, James, Roanoke, Kanawha, and the Houston or Tennessee. Its princi- pal crops are fruits and cereals, and, in the Southwest, cattle — this section having the distinction of being the only exporter of fat- tened cattle direct from the pastures.
Such, in brief, are the geographical divisions of the state and it is apparent that they afford great agricultural diversity. In his inaugural address ex-Governor Swanson said : 10 "No State in the Union has richer or more varied resources than Virginia. * * * In extreme Southside Virginia are seen great white fields of cotton, as rich in beauty and luxuriant in growth as can be found in North Carolina or Georgia. In Piedmont and South- ern Virginia are produced the great crops of tobacco1 which largely contribute to the world's supply. The magnificent Valley of Virginia, raising great crops of wheat, corn, oats and hay, is almost unspeakable in her prodigality and production. The beautiful hilltops and mountains of Southwest and Northern Vir- ginia, with their spontaneous and perennial growth of blue grass, have browsing on them herds of cattle and sheep. * * * In eastern and Tidewater Virginia we have large truck farms and gardens, which furnish the vast population of the Eastern cities with their vegetables and foods. The profits of this industry are already immense, but the industry is still in its infancy and its possibilities for the future are immeasurable. Nowhere can fruit grow to greater perfection than in Virginia, and her great crops of apples, peaches, and grapes are bringing immense re- turns and have brighter promise for the future. There is not a farm product known to the temperate zone that can not be raised in the varied soil, climate and conditions of Virginia. Every- where in the state are seen evidences of intelligent and scientific farming, of progress and prosperity. The increase in farm prod- ucts and values in recent years has been striking and excelled by few states in the Union." These passages do not exaggerate when they point out the diversity of agricultural products.
Certain figures derived from the last census may be of benefit
10. Quoted from address of Feb. 1, 1906.
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 15
in giving an idea of present agricultural conditions within the state. In the first place, according to the census, more than three-fourths of the entire area of the state is in farms, thus placing Virginia distinctly in the class of agricultural states. With the exception of fifteen counties — seven in the mountains and eight on the coast — the proportion of farm land to total area is three-fifths or more and of these eighty-five counties, eleven — Scott, Grayson, Carrol, Floyd, Franklin, Pittsylvania. Halifax, Caroline, King George, Clark, and Loudon — have over ninety per cent of their area in farms.
The average value of farm lands for the whole state, accord- ing to the census, is $20.24 per acre, with an average value of less than $10 in thirteen counties and over $50 in five. More than half of the counties (58) show an average value of between $10 and $25 — these with those valued at less than $10 per acre occupy most of the South-central portion of the state which was formerly the Black Belt. Of the twenty-four counties val- ued at between $25 and $50, eight are in the Southwest, ten are in the Northern Neck, and the remaining six include Chester- field and five coast counties.
During the last census period there was an increase of 16,132 farms or 9.6%, coincident with an increase of 11.2% in the general population of the State. The average size of farms de- creased from 118.6 to 105.9 acres. The total value of farm property, which includes land, implement, livestock, buildings, and poultry was in 1910 $625,065,000 or 93.2% greater than in 1900. The value of land alone increased 96.7% as compared with increases of 93.6% in the value of buildings, 82.8% in im- plements, and 78.2% in stock. The average value of a farm, including its equipment, is $3,397, or an increase of 76.3% since 1900. In Tennessee, a State comparable to Virginia, the in- crease in the value of farm property was 79%, as compared with Virginia's 93.2%."
Tabulated, Virginia's progress in agriculture since 1870, when the immediate effects of the war were over, appears as follows:
11. The decrease in the purchasing power of money makes all of these figures more apparent than real.
16
PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
|
TABLE II: |
PROGRESS |
IN AGR |
ICULTURE |
||
|
Per ceni in last |
|||||
|
1870 |
1880 |
1890 |
1900 |
1910 decai |
|
|
1,225,163 |
1,512,565 |
1,655,980 |
1,854,184 |
2,061,612 11. |
|
|
73,849 |
118,517* |
127,600 |
167,886 |
184,081 9f |
|
|
Land in farmst |
18,145,911 |
19,835,785 |
19.104.951 |
19,907,883 |
19.495.636 -2, |
|
Imp. land in farms |
8,165,040 |
8,510,113 |
9,125,545 |
10,094,805 |
9,807,058 -2. |
|
Acres per farm. . . |
245.7 |
167.4 |
149.7 |
118.6 |
105.9§-10. |
|
Value per farm... |
$2,666 |
$2,088 |
$2,308 |
$1,927 |
$3,397 7 |
|
Total val. farms.. |
$196,906,040 $ |
247,476,536 $ |
294,488,569 |
$325,515,977 |
$625,065,383 93. |
|
Per cent, of farms |
|||||
|
operated by owners |
70.5% |
73.1% |
69.3% |
73.57o |
|
|
By tenants |
29.5% |
26.9 |
30.7 |
26.5 |
|
|
Val. land and bldgs. |
|||||
|
per acre |
$9.39 |
$10.89 |
$13.32 |
$13.64 |
$27.29 100$ |
As shown by the table the increase in the value of farm prop- erty in forty years amounts to $428,159,000 of which $50,570,000 is credited to the first decade, $47,012,000 to the second, $29,027,000 to the third, and over three hundred million to the last. All classes of farm property show increases for each decade which are in fact considerable, and only seem small when com- pared with those of the last. In 1870 the plantation, which had been the agricultural unit before the war, still existed to a con- siderable extent, and the attempt to continue the old methods accounts for the large farms of that year. During the last thirty years these large estates have been divided into smaller farms, and either sold or operated by tenants.
The matter of land tenure is especially important when deal- ing with negro farmers, because in the lower South tenantry occupies the great majority of negro agricultural workers. In 1910 the number of farms in Virginia was 184,018 and of the
♦Note 60% inc. 1870-1880.
tTotal land area of State, 25,767,680 acres.
fit will be seen that more than a reasonable advance was made in the previous decade for an old farming country.
§In Tennessee the average size farm is 81.5 acres, worth $23.98 per acre.
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 17
operators 133,664 are classed as owners, and 48,729 as tenants. Of the owners 15,700 rent additional acreage and of the tenants 11,143 are cash, 1,208 share-cash, and 33A72 share. The bal- ance are not reported in the census. The number of tenants re- porting in 1910 represent a gain of 39.3% since 1880 but the gain has been fluctuating and there was a decrease of nearly 3,000 between 1900 and 1910. The proportion of tenants to all farmers which was 29.5', , in 1880, was only 26.5% in 1910, this being the lowest proportion shown for any census. In 1910 75.5% of all land in farms was operated by owners, (the es- timate includes part owners), 3.4% by managers, and 21.1%. by tenants, the percentage for owners being higher and that for tenants and managers lower than in 1900.
TABLE III: TENURE OF FARMS.
All 190O
Owners 6S%
Managers 1.3$
Tenants 30. V,
It is shown by the table that the proportion of land in farms operated by owners showed a slight increase among the white farmers and a decided increase among the negro farmers.12 The average white farm in 1910 was 127 acres while the average negro farm was 46.5 % acres. The proportion of improved land to total farm land was slightly larger for the whites than for the negroes, being 50.8% in one case and 49.6%, in the other.
As to the size of farms those between 50 and 99 acres con- stituted 21.8% of the total white farms and those between 100' and 174 acres and between 20 and 49 acres constituted 21.2% and 19.1% respectively; for the negroes, farms of 20 to 49 acres constituted 34.2% while those of from 10 to 19 acres comprised 20.9% and ranked next in importance. Of farms op-
|
farmers |
White |
farmers |
Negro |
farmers |
|
1910 |
1900 |
1910 |
1900 |
1910 |
|
72.6" I |
71.2% |
74.6$ |
59.3% |
67$ |
|
.;>'. |
1.1% |
.5% |
.4% |
|
|
26.59! |
27.3% |
24.3% |
40.27c |
32.6' : |
12. Because, however, of the comparatively small number of ne- gro owners in 1900 this increase is not so real as it is apparent.
IS PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
erated by negroes, 35.5% are less than 20 acres as compared with 16.6r; of those operated by white farmers.
As to the crops, the war effected a radical change in the old staple crop of tobacco westward to Kentucky and Tennessee; and Virginia, as the table shows, has only recently entirely re- covered, although an increased consumption since 1870 has stim- ulated production.
TABLE IV: TOBACCO PRODUCTION.
1SG0 123.968,312 lbs.
1870 37.086,364 "
1880 79,988,868 "
1890 48,522,655 "
1900 122,884,900 "
1910 132,979.390 "
Virginia today, producing over 130 million pounds, ranks third among the tobacco producing states of the Union. Prior to the War the principal tobacco counties were Pittsylvania, Mecklenburg, Charlotte, and Albemarle and the plantations ranged from 100 to 500 acres while today tobacco farms range from 20 to 50 acres and none of the counties any longer rely solely on tobacco. Along with increased diversification and smaller farms, coupled with increased value of land and labor, goes more intensive cultivation. In 1880 Virginia raised 568 pounds of tobacco to the acre, while in 1905 this average had 1 een raised to 675 pounds,13 a condition in part made possible by the high price of tobacco which put fertilizer within reach of the producer, but also in large measure due to the more scien- tific methods pursued in its production.
The following table shows the extent of diversification of crops in lr>10. It should, however, be remembered that the acreage is a better index than either the amount or value of the crops, because of the varying seasons and the variations in value of crop.
13. Article by Meyer Jacobson in "The South in the Building the Nation," VI, 69.
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 19
TABLE V: AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS.
|
Acres har- |
Amount |
Value |
|
vested* |
||
|
Corn over $28,000,000 "| |
||
|
Wheat over $8,000,000 I 2,841,114 |
50.283,074 bu. |
$39,993,929 |
|
Oats over $1,000,000 J |
||
|
Peanuts 162,180 |
4,381,413 bu. |
4.430,384 |
|
S0.562 |
||
|
Hay and Forage 773,577 |
823,382 tons |
10,256,998 |
|
Potatoes 86,027 |
8,779.778 bu. |
5,667,557 |
|
Sweets 40,838 |
5,270,202 bu. |
2.6S1.472 |
|
Tobacco 1 85,427 |
132,979,390 lbs. |
12 169 0S6 |
|
Cotton 25.147 |
10.480 bales 5,240 tons |
695 721 |
|
Cotton Seed |
126.546 |
|
|
Sugar Crops 8,308 |
224,094 |
|
|
Miscel. Vegetables 124,350 |
8.989,467 |
|
|
123,029 |
||
|
Nursery Products |
522.480 |
|
|
Small Fruits |
671.843 |
|
|
3.770.491 |
||
|
Maple Sugar & Sugar.... |
12.223 |
|
|
10,118,851 |
||
|
Total |
. $100,531,157 |
|
|
$ 58,701,743 |
*A11 farms not reported.
Corn remains almost a universal crop, but it is often alter- nated with wheat. The average value per acre for corn in Vir- ginia in 1906 was $11.55 14 or a little more than that of Iowa and the same as that for Indiana. Peanuts, which are along with cotton seed, a totally new money crop since the War, form with this staple a large part of the state's agricultural wealth. Before the War corn and tobacco were practically the only crops and today we find a diversity excelled in but very few of the states. In the matter of vegetables alone the production in- creased between 1890 and 1900 something like 450%, the av- erage production of vegetables per acre being in excess of that in Ohio, where a large urban population creates a greater local
14. Year Rook of State Dept. of Agriculture (Unit',),
20 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
demand for truck garden products. Among the cereals corn ranks first, representing two thirds of the acreage and five sev- enths of the total value. Since 1880 the corn acreage has in- creased slightly while oats have decreased and wheat has re- mained practically the same.
Statistics are not always convincing, but where they are so striking as those which show the progress of Virginia in indus- try, commerce, agriculture, and the other sources of wealth, it is at once apparent that the Old Dominion is rapidly restoring its wealth and building up its waste places. It is no longer de- pendent upon negro labor — though for many purposes it is still preferred — and the farmers have shown their ability to practice diversification and concentration. With the industrial advances, furthermore, the vocations of the people are becoming more di- versified ; the professional men of ante-bellum days are entering industry, commerce, and finance and, applying their talents, are increasing production.
These changed economic conditions, which afford wider and more varied opportunities for earning a livelihood, have an im- portant bearing upon race relations and it is only in the light of actual present day conditions that they can be intelligently considered. In Virginia, where the contact between the races has been intimate, the negro problem was never so serious as in the Gulf States where the proportion of negro population is greater and where the negroes work largely as field hands with- out coming into direct contact with the whites. Under the new order of things, however, the inter-racial relations have been altered and the negro's wider field of economic activity has al- tered his status.
As would normally be expected, the great economic changes which have taken place within the last few decades have af- fected the employment of the negroes. The ratio between black and white population is, to be sure, considerably smaller than it was immediately after the War, and the ratio of negro farm workers would naturally be smaller, but in addition to this the small farm movement, where less hired help is required, has tended to take away the employment of many negroes. That there is no excessive supply of negro labor as a result of this,
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP -1
however, seems to be shown by the fact that there has been no decrease in the rate of wages but rather a steady increase too great to be accounted for by the decreased purchasing power of money. Many of the negroes have entered transportation,15 many more have entered mining, and still others are occupied in the new callings in the cities. Of recent years the number of negro artisans in the state has been decreasing and the industrial revival has not found it practicable to use negro la- borers as factory operatives (except in the tobacco factories), but they have entered the allied industries of transportation, min- ing, and lumbering in large numbers. Thus while negroes are not employed directly as a result of the increased number of factories, the wider industrial development has increased the number of vocations which they may enter.
In spite of these new vocations, however, the city negroes have not increased any faster, relatively, than have the rural negroes and many have remained in the agricultural pursuits. In the country they have, from their profits as renters or from their savings as laborers, gradually begun to acquire property and the rapidity with which their rural holdings have increased in the past twenty years has been nothing short of remarkable. It is the negroes who have remained in the country, rather than those who have sought uncertain employment in the cities, who have made the most rapid progress in acquiring property and economic stability.
15. See below, p.
CHAPTER II. Freedom and Property Holding.
It has been briefly shown how completely prostrated was ag- riculture immediately after and for several years following the War between the States and how the new industrial organization gradually evolved after the incubus of slavery was removed. But adaptation to the new conditions was no easy process and the negroes, freed overnight, were more at a loss, under the new conditions, than were any other classes of society. Their one valuable asset was the training which they had received in slav- ery and many of them took advantage of this to enter agriculture and the semi-skilled trades. There were many forces, however, in the years that followed the War which, taken with the negro's inborn traits, tended to keep matters unsettled and postpone eco- nomic adjustment. The natives of West Central Africa lived under conditions of tropical plenty where wild fruits were in abundance and easy cultivation made large returns for slight labor. There was, therefore, nothing in the environment under which the negro's racial characteristics were determined to create industrial capacity and when he was taken from his native land he was not only untrained but he was organically lacking in energy, industry, and providence, qualities which seem more apt to occur in the peoples of the North temperate zone.
When the negro was taken into slavery there were many changes in all of the conditions of his life, but the greatest of these was that, for the first time in his history, he was forced to work. During slavery the negroes were given a very com- plete knowledge of the trades and industries which lie at the basis of civilization and, in the opinion of the most capable leader which the race has so far produced, it was the salvation of the race in America, because "every large plantation in the South was, in a limited sense, an industrial school." 1 And in the opin-
1. Washington, "The Future of the American Negro," 54.
22
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 23
ion of Dr. H. B. Frissell, the principal of Hampton, "The South- ern plantation was really a great trade school where the slaves received instruction in mechanical arts, in agriculture, in cooking, sewing and other domestic occupations. Although it may be said that all this instruction was given from selfish motives, yet the fact remains that the slaves on many plantations had good industrial training, and all honor is due to the conscientious men and still more to the noble women of the South who in slavery times helped to prepare the way for the better days that were to come." -
In Virginia, furthermore, there was a factor which tended to improve the negro organically. With the decline of the large plantations in the early part of the 19th century the demand for slaves decreased and after this time the state was largely engaged in selling slaves to the far South. Few negroes were imported into Virginia in the last hundred years of slavery, and the conse- quent process of weeding out or artificial selection produced a superior quality of negroes in the state — as indeed it did in the other border states. To indicate the character of the negroes sold from the border states, Bracket gives a quotation from a Balti- more newspaper advertising some good negroes to be "exchanged for servants suitable for the South with bad characters." 3 The result of this selection and the better training, made possible by the more intimate relations between master and servant in Vir- ginia, was to improve very materially the quality of the negroes within the state.
At the beginning of the War, broadly speaking, four classes of slaves had evolved. The highest rank was that of sub-over- seer. On many of the Virginia plantations trusted slaves often took the place of paid white overseers, and that this was pos- sible shows to what an extent the fittest of the African popula- tion had acquired industrial qualities under slavery. Next stood the domestic servants for which the brightest and quickest were picked, and who constituted a much envied class among the ne-
2. Quoted in Kelsey, "The Negro Farmer."
3. Bracket, "The Negro in Maryland." quoted by Kelsey, "The Negro Farmer."
24 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
groes by reason of the exceptional advantages afforded by con- tact with the whites. Below this group were the semi-skilled artisans who were the plantation cobblers, carpenters, smiths, etc. The lowest grade, a class composed of left-overs, was that of the field hands. In the cotton raising states it was this class which predominated, while in Virginia, where agriculture had already advanced beyond this stage, the upper classes were much more numerous.
When the slaves were freed, therefore, the Virginia negroes had the advantage over their Southern brethren in both training and inheritance. Still, however, certain racial traits were pres- ent, and so long as the laws of inheritance hold true they will remain to a greater or less degree. Aside from mental capacity, these traits may, for purposes of analysis, be divided into four principal classes. First is the lack of purpose. Booker Wash- ington said that an "element of weakness which shows itself in the present stage of the civilization of the negro is his lack of ability to form a purpose and stick to it through a series of years."' 4 Indeed, it is this very lack of resolve that has, so far back as history goes, made the negro an ideal slave. Again we find carelessness, which includes indifference and lack of atten- tion, which makes him accept a mean lot with no ambition to rise above it. A third characteristic which has materially re- tarded the progress of the negro since his emancipation, and which was indeed a certain handicap to him during slavery, is improvidence. There was nothing in either the environment of Africa or that of slavery to develop thrift and economy and that they are lacking is to be expected, but the fact remains that they are qualities necessary for modern economic efficiency. "It may be asserted without overstatement," says a careful ob- server,5 "that his inclination to gratify his tastes in those ways that money allows is only circumscribed by the limitation put upon his freedom of purchase." Wastefulness and destructive- ness form the final class of these traits which are organically present in the negro. Examples of these traits are to be found
4. Washington, "The Future of the American Xegro.''
5. Bruce, "The Plantation Negro as a Free Man," 195.
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 25
wherever the negro is employed unless by careful training he has overcome them.
It is with these handicaps that the negro has entered free economic competition. They are innate and were not changed by emancipation. "An overwhelming majority of the race in its new struggle for existence under the exacting conditions of American industry," says Tillinghast. who has made a careful study of the economic heritage of the race, "is seriously handi- capped by inherited characteristics. Economic freedom has not developed a sense of responsibility and a persistent ambition to rise in energy, purpose, and stability; they are giving way before the whites in the skilled and better paid occupations ; and they fail to husband resources so as to establish economic safety." 6
In spite of these deficiencies, however, the negro has since his freedom made remarkable progress in acquiring property. The explanation seems to lie in the fact that by entering agriculture the negro is putting to use what he learned best in slavery, and that in rural pursuits he comes into less intimate competition with the whites and in so far as he does compete with them his lower standard of living to some extent counterbalances his in- ferior efficiency. He did not begin to acquire land, however, to any appreciable extent until after the disturbing influences of the Reconstruction Period had passed over.
Because of the "general disposition on the part of the negro to move at least once a year, the love of hunting, fishing, church and circus going, and other amusements which took him from his work" 7 the average white placed but little dependence upon free negro labor after the War. Accordingly the most impor- tant question before the Southern legislatures in 1865 was that of the ex-slave; he must work, obey the laws, abandon his va- grant habits and in general become responsible for himself and to society. To assist in bringing about this end the so-called Black Codes were passed in several of the Southern States, not- ably Louisiana, South Carolina, and Mississippi, which paved the way for what it was thought would be a general Southern
6. 1. A. Tillinghast, "The Negro in Africa and America." Annals of the American Economic Association, May, 1902.
7. Flemming in "The South in the Building of the Nation," IV, 448.
26 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
system of apprenticeship. "To the Southern lawmaker," says Woodrow Wilson, "such restraints and compulsions seemed to be demanded by ordinary prudence for the control and at least temporary discipline of a race so recently slaves, and therefore so unfit to exercise their new liberty, even with advantage to themselves, without some checks put upon them." s
But to Congress they were plain and wilful violations of the negro's freedom and their execution was suspended by the "Bu- reau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands." However praiseworthy may have been the intent of those who planned the work of this bureau, it is the opinion of unbiased observers that it was disturbing to the working of natural economic laws because it interfered between master and former slave. John Minor Botts, a Virginian Unionist, writing in 1866 said of the bureau: "I think that one of the greatest difficulties in Virginia in regard to the colored people arises from the organization of the Freedmen's bureau. * * * I have heard of a great many diffi- culties and outrages which have proceeded from the ignorance and fanaticism of persons connected with the Freed- men's Bureau, who do not understand anything of the true re- lation of the original master to the slave, and who have in many instances, held out promises and inducements which can never be realized iby the negroes, which have made them entirely in- different to work and sometimes ill-behaved." '■' In the same year Stephen Powers, correspondent to the Cincinnati Com- mercial and a Northerner by birth, after expressing his approval of the general purpose of the bureau criticised its organization as follows : "In many cases it has fallen into the hands of incompetent and speculating officers, who made it a by-word and unnecessarily obnoxious to the people of the State where it was located." 10 The effect of all of this was to demoralize the labor- ing force and thus hinder the progress of both the white farmer and the freed slave. Writing in 1865 Carl Shurz, expressed the situation well when he said : "The true nature of the difficulties
8. Woodrow Wilson, "Division and Reunion," 261.
9. Flenrming, "Documentary History of the Reconstruction," 365.
10. Ibid., 365.
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 27
of the situation is this : the general government of the republic has, by proclaiming the emancipation of the slaves, commenced a great social revolution in the South, but has, as yet, not com- pleted it." u Conditions were not improved by the Reconstruc- tion Act which was passed in 1867 and which divided the seced- ing states into military districts.
When it was found, therefore, that the regulations to control the plantation labor could not be enforced, a new system of ag- ricultural economy had to be resorted to which, while never as important in Virginia as in the far South occupied, and still oc- cupies, many of the negroes. It was the metayage or share sys- tem, which economists usually consider a poor form of agricul- tural organization, but which was about the only practicable one at the time, because the lack of capital and the disorganization of the laboring force prohibited the sale of the plantations so that if they were to be cultivated at all they had to be rented out in small parcels. In 1880, 21,594 of the 118,517 farms in Vir- ginia were rented on shares, while 13,392 were rented for fixed money rentals. The census does not distinguish between the races, but it is probable that most of the "croppers" and a large proportion of the "renters" were negroes. By this time several variations of the system had been evolved.12
The old tobacco and cotton plantations on the South Side, where the effects of the War were most serious, were the prin- cipal ones to resort to this system and here, indeed, it still con- tinues to a very appreciable extent. But this form of agricul- tural organization took up fewer of the negroes in Virginia than it did further South, and in the other sections of the state the bulk of them continued to work for wages ; for the unreliable could find no other form of employment, and many of the best of them preferred to work for wages paid at the end of each week or month. The planters who were not forced by financial difficulties to pursue some other method kept their old negroes
11. Shurz, "An Impartial View."
12. For a good description of the variations of the metayage sys- tem see an article by Flemming in "The South in the Building of the Nation," Vol. VI.
28 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
with them and paid them wages until parts of the plantations were sold off. These negroes worked under supervision and received from $5 per month immediately after the War 13 to $8 or $10, a decade later,14 and were "found," i. e. furnished with rations. The regular laborers and the croppers were usually given a house, a garden, poultry, pasture and other privileges which, as is the case with the modern "service basket,'' tended to increase the real wages to a point considerably higher than the nominal wages. In the opinion of many writers these numerous privileges which afforded the necessities of life were, indeed, one of the principal causes for the inefficiency of both the crop- pers and laborers of the period, and in so far as they removed the incentive for economic exertion this is undoubtedly true.
The sudden emancipation of the negro and the consequent de- moralization of the working force was, in short, a serious handi- cap to the negro himself as well as to the industries of the state. During the Reconstruction Period the negroes were deluded with the idea that they were the wards of the Federal Government ; 15 they were led to expect "forty acres and a mule" as a gift from Washington, and the sense of political importance which they acquired did much to demoralize them as agricultural laborers, and is in part responsible for the fact that in 1870 negroes com- prised 45.2% of the urban population of the state. The same influence fostered their innate characteristic of improvidence, and those who did acquire small tracts of land, either as orna- ments or as means to economic independence, were apt to be prevented from accumulating by a parasitic following of kin. As long as these influences were present the white counties of the state benefited in contrast with the black, and it was not until the negro had settled down to the new conditions that the latter could again begin to prosper.
13. Godkin, "The South as It Is" in Hart's "American History Told by Contemporaries," IV. 450.
14. Bruce. "The Plantation Negro as a Free Man," 197.
15. Godkin asserts that "The very large majority of those claiming to be destitute might easily support life without taxing the charity of the government." "The South as It Is" in Hart's "American History Told by Contemporaries," VI, 449.
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 29
Virginia was re-admitted to the Union in 1S70, and this was the beginning of the new adjustment. In 1878 President Hayes withdrew the troops from the South, and at this time negro rule under unprincipled adventurers came to an end and the "natural, inevitable ascendency of the whites, the responsible class, was established." 1G Now, with the external influences withdrawn, the economic forces which had been gathering strength for the future were unhampered and the result was the rise of industry and a general re-shifting of labor. Negroes were prohibited by their inefficiency from entering the new industries except to a very limited extent, but as we have seen, they entered some of the allied trades in considerable numbers and about this time began to acquire land.
The total value of farming lands in the South declined 48% between 1860 and 1870,17 which, of course, put rural lands at a price advantageous to prospective buyers until affairs were back in their normal condition in the eighties. Bruce declares that during this period the negro laborers were perhaps "in receipt of more money (in the form of wages) than any other class of the community; and if they had saved even a portion of their earnings it could have been invested to the greatest advantage in the land, which the revolution in the general economic system, produced by the civil war, threw upon the market. * *
There were few owners of estates off the watercourses who would not have consented to sell many acres, in order to contract the size of properties that had always been too large, as well as to obtain cash ; and yet such opportunities of improving their condition at the very time that these opportunities have been fair- est have not been utilized by the masses of the blacks, not be- cause they have failed to observe them, but because they have not had the qualities to provide the purchase money that was necessary." ls
It is true that the negroes failed to take advantage of the cheap lands of the Reconstruction Period, but the reasons, it would
16. Woodrow Wilson, "Division and Reunion," 273.
17. Bogart, "Economic History of the United States," 314.
18. Bruce. "The Plantation Xegro as a Free Man," 222.
30 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
appear, are not so easily found as this would indicate. In the first place there were the disturbing influences which came from the outside. These forces, when taken together with the negro's natural traits of improvidence and carelessness, kept him from discovering his best move and from looking into the future. It has been asserted that by saving his earnings the negro could have bought his "forty acres and a mule" during this period of depressed land values, but for a race of the negro's inherent qualities it was, indeed, more natural to expect that he should wait in the hope of receiving it as a gift. Beside such disturbing factors there was the dense ignorance of business transactions and economic values. Although they occasionally bought an acre or two the negroes had no conception whatever of the eco- nomic possibilities of land and their knowledge of business in general was practically nil. Furthermore, and of the greatest importance, is the fact that money was scarce. The negroes, just as the whites, did not buy land during this period for the very same reason that land was cheap. The poor whites did not begin to acquire land until after 1880 when the small farm movement began — they had missed the same opportunity to acquire cheap land, and largely for the same reason. Added to these factors is the natural contentedness of mind of the negro which makes him live in perfect happiness amid surroundings that would be revolting to more highly developed sensibilities.
But. on the other hand, the negro had a more or less natural inclination, acquired during slavery, toward agriculture and when the obstacles were removed he began acquiring land at a remark- able rate. Statistics are not available, but from the testimony of people familiar with conditions at that time and from a few records derived from county books, the tide turned about 1880 after economic conditions had again become fairly stable. The golden opportunity for the negro with respect to his securing valuable tracts, had indeed passed, but Bruce's prophecy, made twenty years after the war, that the negro would not acquire more property is not borne out by the facts. "An increase in the number of small white planters," he says, "will diminish the ability of the negro to buy estates, because such increase implies an advance in the price of land, upon which the prosperity of
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 31
the white people must always rest. This will only render it more difficult than ever for the blacks to acquire it. If few were able to make purchases in the period of the greatest depression of prices, that is. in the course of the last two decades, the proba- bility is that still fewer will be able to do so in the future, on ac- count of the general rise in valuations that will attend an im- provement in the condition of the whites. So far as can be ob- served the race is not more economical after twenty years of freedom than it was after five, or even ten; and its habits are not likely to change with the progress of time." 19
Probably if Virginia had remained solely an agricultural state this prediction would have been nearer true, but with the rise of industry twenty years after the war there occurred a general shifting of occupations, and since the greater efficiency of the white man forces the negro out wherever he cares to compete, this naturally determined the course of the negroes. Under nor- mal conditions they would have' turned to the land and this fact only aided them. The proportion of the total negro male popu- lation engaged in farming and agricultural pursuits increased from 50% to 51% between 18f'0 and :1910, but there was a de- crease among the laborers and an increase among the owners. Those engaged as carpenters decreased in the same period from 2,017 to 1,905; sawmill operatives from 2,541 to 695; tobacco factory operatives from 4,419 to 1,918; blacksmiths from 1,554 to 1,005; railroad employees, however, increased during the same period from 7,648 to 9,029, and miners and quarrymen increased from 1,700 to 2,626. There was an actual increase of negroes engaged in agricultural pursuits of 19,357, thus their increase was both actual and relative to the increase in the total number of gainfully employed negro males. The whites in ag- riculture have decreased proportionately to their total population, being drawn away into factories, lumbering, milling, railroading, and other skilled occupations where the negro is largely excluded. In farming the competition is less severe, and consequently with this re-distributing of the population the negroes have again taken their place as agricultural workers and have of late years
19. Ibid, 223.
32 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
been increasing actually both as landowners and as laborers. Thus, in spite of the increase of small white farmers and the general rise in the value of land there has been a general increase in negro rural land ownership since 1880.
That the negroes have, since the disturbing influences of the Reconstruction Period, made substantial progress in the acquisi- tion of title to land seems to be shown conclusively by the figures and that the rate of increase is progressive seems to be shown by a comparison of the figures taken from the 1900 and 1910 cen- suses. A computation of the rates of increase in land ownership for the two races gives results which are startling and which have been made the basis of various papers illustrating the great prog- ress of the negro over the whites in acquiring land, but which commendable as is the real progress, have been misleading. To illustrate, let us say that in a given community there are five thousand people of each race. Twenty of the negroes are land- holders, and two thousand of the whites are landholders. Now, if during a given period the actual increase of negro farmers is forty, the rate of increase is 200% and if there is an increase of one hundred white owners, the rate is 5<fc ■ That this is mis- leading is obvious, but the same methods of calculation have characterized many recent papers on the subject of negro prog- ress. For this reason the following tables and those elsewhere in this paper include the absolute as well as the relative figures, which, while hardly as miraculous, show a substantial progress, and one of which the race can well afford to be proud.
TABLE VI: NEGRO FARMS AND ACREAGE.
Per cent. Per cent.
1900 1910 of total increase
Negro farms 44,834 48,114 7.3%
Owned 26,566 32,228 •',:' 21.3
Rented* 18,030 15,886 33% — 14.6%
Number acres 2,329,118 2,238,220 —.5%
Owned 1,031,331 1,381,223 61.7% 1.8
Rented 1,197,787 856,997 38.3% —29.5%
Average size 49.7 46.5 — 6 .'.'' I
Owned 42.9
Rented 53.9
*1S0 managers operate farms averaging 150 acres each.
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 3o
The figures for the white farmers show an increase of from 87,598 in 1900 to 101,436 in 1910 or 10.4%, with a total increase in white population of 16.5%. For negroes the reverse tendency is true, farmers increased faster than population, the respective figures being 7.3f0 and 1.6%. In some of the counties we find this even more true than in the state in general as is shown by the following table :
TABLE VII: RATIOS OF FARM AND POPULATION IN- CREASE.
Excess of
County Negro pop. Negro farms farm rate
Gloucester 11.8 decrease 1.6 decrease 10.2%
Middlesex 2.1 increase 11.6 increase 9.5
Albemarle 6.9 decrease 4.5 decrease 2.4
Prince Edward 15.5 decrease 12. decrease 3.5
Warwick 16.2 increase 171. increase 154. S
Princess Anne 2.3 increase 9. increase 6.7
The case of Warwick county is an apt illustration of the dan- ger of rates of increase, — here practically all of the negro prop- erty has been acquired recently, and although it is of a smaller amount than that in Albemarle it appears to a very much greater advantage. 'But nevertheless the figures are significant because they show that in these counties, which are fairly typical of the Tidewater and Piedmont sections, while in some instances both the population and number of farmers are decreasing, there is always an increase in the ratio of farmers to total population. For the state as a whole negro farmers increased 4.56 times as fast as their total population, while white farmers increased only .63 times as fast as their population. The ratio is as 1 to 72. These figures are important, not as showing that the negroes are making greater progress in this direction than are the whites, but as showing that they are overcoming their shortage as farm own- ers. In 1910 they constituted 24.8 per cent, of the farm owners of the state, while their population was 32.6% of total. It is reasonable to expect, however, that at the present rate of in- crease the number of negro farms will soon occupy a ratio pro- portionate to their population.
—3
34 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
TABLE VIII: VALUE OF FARMS.
Negro farms 1900
Value land $14,481,710
Value buildings 5,550,740
Value implements 931,280
Value stock and poultry ::,C15,2S6
Total value farm property 24.529,016
Value per acre 6.50
Value per farm 547
|
1910 |
increase |
|
$32,553,640 |
124.8 |
|
12,070,864 |
128.3 |
|
1,852,503 |
98.6 |
|
7,671,900 |
112.5 |
|
54.748,907 |
123.2 |
|
14.54 |
123.7 |
|
1,138 |
108. |
The value of land for the whites increased from $186,133,370 to $362,105,272; buildings, from $65,462,380 to $124,728,286; implements and machinery, from $8,979,760 to $16,263,380; stock from $38,411,451 to S67 ,219,538. There was an increase in the value of all white farm property of '0.7', while land increased from $10.53 to $20.98 per acre or 99.2% ■ The greater increase in the value of negro land is probably due to the fact that the negroes bought the cheapest land in sight, — marginal no-rent land, — which could not depreciate in value, while most of the property belonging to whites was subject both to depreciation and to appreciation. The increase in value of equipment is due to the fact that small farms normally have more improvements per acre and these the negroes have only acquired recently.
TABLE IX: RELATIVE SIZE OF WHITE AND NEGRO FARMS, BOTH RENTED AND OWNED.
|
Per cent. |
of |
Per cent, of |
|||||
|
White |
all w |
farm |
ers |
all |
n. farmers |
Total |
|
|
Under 3 acres |
183 |
.1 |
.5 |
277 |
|||
|
.. 10,485 |
7.6 |
36.3 |
17,464 |
||||
|
10 to 19 acres 20 to 49 acres 50 to 99 acres |
11,976 25.925 . . 29,657 |
S.7 19.1 21.7 |
20.8 34.1 IS. |
22,055 42,390 38,342 |
|||
|
100 to 174 acres. . . . |
.. 28,831 |
21.2 |
8.6 |
32,997 |
|||
|
.. 13,893 |
10.2 |
2.6 |
14,963 |
||||
|
260 to 499 acres |
.. 10,608 |
7.8 |
1.1 |
11,138 |
|||
|
500 to 999 acres |
3,338 |
2.4 |
.2 |
3.450 |
|||
|
1,000 and over |
974 |
.7 |
.03 |
992 |
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP
35
300 ^Oo ipo
Acres.
From the above figures and their graphical representation the great advantage of the white farmers in point of size of farms is apparent. The difference is due in part, however, to the fact that many of the large white holdings still survive in Virginia, in spite of the tendency, which has been seen from a previous table, for all farms to decrease rather than increase in acreage. The graph illustrates strikingly the two types of negro holdings : those which are large enough for real farms and those which make no pretense at being anything but rural homes. The negro holdings are apt to be of one class or the other and those half way between are, as the graph shows, relatively few in number.
C H A P T E R I 1 1. The Present Conditions.
In the preceding discussions the general status of agriculture in Virginia has been considered and we have entered, in some detail, into the matter of the acquisition of rural property by the negroes in the state. From this we may now pass to a brief survey of conditions among the rural, and especially land-own- ing negroes as they exist today in the several sections of the state. Conditions vary considerably, as will be seen, in the different sections of the state and must be considered geograph- ically if the study is to be of value ; the problem varies from neighborhood to neighborhood. "It is one thing in those re- gions of light and sandy soil where the farms of the white man and the negro adjoin, where the white man's farm is cultivated by his own labor, where the negro is not to any large extent a dependent class, and where the relation of master and servant exists but to a slight degree ; it is another thing where the ne- gro exists in large numbers as a working class upon the planta- tion of the white man." 1
Among the negro rural inhabitants, other than the day la- borers, there are three distinct classes ; renters, farm owners, and owners of small rural tracts who have some other principal means of livelihood. Renters comprise about one-third of the negro farmers of the state and, as a class, are inferior to the owners. The obvious explanation is that by the very fact of being landowners this class has proven its superiority in self- control, prudence, and the other qualities which may lead to suc- cessful management. Many of the renters, on the other hand, are apt to be inferior even to the day laborers, since the free- dom of the position makes it one that is held in high esteem by the most worthless of the negroes. Renting is, in short, a retreat for the indolent, on the one hand, and an opportunity
1. E. G. Murphy, "Problems of the Present South," 155
36
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 37
to make the initial steps to economic independence, on the other. Thus while the renting class contains many who, by thrift and industry, will gradually become free-holders, it is as a class in- ferior in stability and efficiency to the owners. The farm own- ers are apt to be of simpler tastes, regular, and more purposeful. After the War the class which first became landowners were those who had been sub-overseers on the plantations, and the training that they had had in bearing to some degree the weight of responsibility served them in good stead when emancipation threw them upon their own resources. Having been trained in simple standards of life they showed no inclination to waste their earnings and were thus able to save enough from their wages to purchase at low prices small tracts of land on the ridges that extend back from the water courses. The lowlands were held at a higher price and not even the more thrifty ne- groes could buy this land. The characteristic negro farm today is of thin soil and removed from the streams, but even this land with the aid of artificial manure is capable of raising a fine qual- itv of tobacco and very fair corn, and many of the negro tracts are in an excellent state of cultivation despite their inferiority. An occasional negro farm will be found consisting of a hundred acres or more all in good cultivation and as well equipped in the matter of outhouses, implements, and stock as those of their average white neighbors.
The third class of the negro rural inhabitants, to which ref- erence has been made, own usually from two to ten acres with ordinarily not over three acres in cultivation and derive their principal means of support either by renting, farm laboring, or in some one of the various semi-skilled trades. In the Piedmont and Tidewater sections of the state considerable settlements of such negroes will be found at a distance of from two to four miles from many of the towns and smaller cities. It is not possible to state accurately, but from the statistics of size of holdings, it may reasonably be estimated that three-fourths of the negro free-holders are of this class.
While all of the rural negroes, therefore, are not farmers in the strict sense of the word, there are many economic advan- tages which come to them that are not possible for their urban
38 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
brethren. In the first place, and contrary to the facts in the cotton and rice districts of the far South,2 practically all of these small freeholders raise a garden and cultivate for their own use corn, cabbage, snaps, onions, melons, and other vegetables. Many of them, also, have a few fruit trees and can some con- siderable amount of fruit for winter use. Most of the families, furthermore, keep a few chickens — albeit they are often of the "dunghill" variety — which help to diminish the cost of the daily menu, and by raising a few acres of corn they are enabled to keep a few head of stock, and a pig can be fed on the refuse from the table. That many of the negroes do take advantage of such economies is obvious to the most casual observer ; one negro informant told the writer that he netted an average of $10 per month by breeding a jack which he fed from his own little patch of corn. On the other hand, few negroes make the most of the opportunities afforded by a few acres of land. For instance, while it is not unusual to find a cow on a negro's place and the calves regularly sold, it is rare that they use milk and when butter is used at all it is a] it to be bought at the country store. It can not be said as true of the race, that they are inclined to take advantage of these economies. ' It is inherent in the character of the negro to fail to utilize those economies which make farming so profitable to the Chinese and Japanese in California and to the Italians in the South. A correlative characteristic is the negro's tendency toward extravagance which is well illustrated by the presence of various useless things in the homes. It would, indeed, seem that the limit of what they will buy is only determined by the extent of their credit.
Tenants, and sometimes owners, in the tobacco regions usu- ally find it necessary to arrange for advances in food and cloth- ing at the country store until harvest. Money is seldom lent directly by the banks, but merchants, who are often also tobacco buyers, make such advances as are necessary and take a lien on the crop as security. In counties such as Albemarle, however, where agriculture is diversified and where the principle products are grain and stock this practice is reduced to a minimum and
2. The same condition that is found in the far South is more or less true of the tobacco raising counties on the South Side.
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 39
the operations are, as a rule, carried on on a strictly cash basis. The owners of rural property with some other principal means of support rarely ask for credit for more than a week's dura- tion and settlement is regularly made on Saturdays. Many of this class in Albemarle have said, with no small degree of pride, that they could have credit if so desired, but that it was better to "keep up." And then they have added that they have not
borrowed "mo'an a quarter since Mr. died," or "when
Mr. was living I used to borrow." The disadvantages
of the crop lien system in the districts where the great staple is raised have often been fully discussed and it is not necessary to go into this subject here.3 It is enough to say that in Vir- ginia, where more diversification occurs, this system which fosters the negro's natural tendency toward improvidence has been reduced to a minimum and, in many cases, by the negroes' own choice. The more fundamental cause, however, is the fact that the more frequent receipts from the sale of farm products or from wages renders it unnecessary for the merchant to ex- tend long time credit. Long credit is. on the other hand, in- herent in the agricultural system which depends on one great staple and this is one of its principal disadvantages.
We have already called attention to the fact that the question of the welfare of the negro is a different proposition in each locality. Indeed, no question of sociology can be isolated from its environment of time and place and be stated in absolute and general terms without the danger of reaching erroneous conclu- sions. From these general considerations, then, let us pass to a brief discussion of the actual conditions as they are found in the three principal divisions of the state of Virginia.
West of the Piedmont Section the negro population is rel- atively small and does not present any serious problem. In all of the counties west of the Blue Ridge there were in PXX) only 61 ,939 4 negroes and in 1910 this number had been reduced to 54,555, or 13.5%. They constituted, in this whole section, but 10.5% of the total population, a proportion that is exceeded for the United States as a whole (10.7%) and by such states as
3. See W. D. Weatherford. "Present Forces in Negro Progress."
4. See appendix for tables of population by sections.
40 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
Delaware, Maryland, Texas, Kentucky, and Tennessee which are not regarded as negro states. In some of the counties of this section the ratio of negro to total population falls as low as .03% (Buchanan), 2% (Bland), 1% ( Carroll ), .08% (Dick- enson), etc. From this it is apparent that in this section of the state where a different agricultural system was evolved in early times, the negro question is an entirely different one and the proportion is so small as to admit of an entirely different pro- gram.
Negro farmers in this whole section totalled but 1,993 — or about one farmer to every 27 of the total negro population, a ratio which is hardly half of that in either the Piedmont or Tide- water sections. It is, of course, due to the fact that the negroes in this section who are not engaged in domestic service are either in mining or lumbering. But when we come to the individual farmer we find conditions here more favorable than in either of the other sections: in this section they owned 1,616, or 81%, of the 1.993 farms that they operated, a percentage ahead by about 15% of that in either of the other principal sections. Ac- cording to the most accurate estimate that can be made the to- tal value of their farm holdings in this section is $4,064,000 5 or about $61.90 per acre for land and buildings, which is about double that in the Tidewater and more than double that in the Piedmont section. This fact is probably to be accounted for by the relative smallness of the negro holdings in this section which means that those who buy at all are apt to be of the best class. In this section in 1914 negroes owned 65,561 acres, or, in 32 of the 100 counties negroes owned less than 4% of their total acreage in the state and but .8% of the total farm acreage in the section. It is a well known fact that the negroes make greater progress in sections where their proportion to the whites is small, 6 and this is borne out by conditions in this section.
5. See Appendix for the derivation of this estimate.
6. Careful investigations carried on by R. P. Brooks for Georgia show that the proportion of negro land-owners is greater where two- thirds of the population is white and smallest where two-thirds is black. "A Local Study of the Race Problem." Pol. Sc. Quar. June, 1911.
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 41
The same is true in many of the individual counties, where it is seen that the black districts tend to grow blacker and poorer, while when under the influence of the whites the negroes pro- gress better.
In this section the smaller number of negroes in the rural population makes education for them more difficult but, generally speaking, the schools in this section are as good as elsewhere and they seem to be progressing. In Smythe County, which is typical of the Southwest, there is a school population of 6,143, 7 of whom 5,813 are white and 330 are colored. The total num- ber of whites enrolled is 4,848 or 83% : and the total number of negroes is 22f> or 70r ', . The small negro percentage is prob- ably to be explained here, as elsewhere, by the fact that few negro children above the age of fifteen attend. The average monthly salary for the negro teachers who manage the six schools in the county is $40 for males and $28 for females. Some of the negro schools in the county are aided by private subscription to continue for a longer term and the average term is seven months, which is only about two weeks less than that for the white schools.
Turning, now, from a section where the negroes are already few and are growing less numerous to one where they form nearly half of the population and are increasing, it will be natural if we find conditions considerably different. In the thirty-three counties which were arbitrarily selected as the Tidewater Sec- tion s there were in 1900 some 221.367 negroes, and in 1910 this number had increased to 221,387. In the latter year ne- groes comprised 49.4% of the population exclusive of the in- corporated cities and in some counties, such as Charles City, Caroline, Cumberland, Essex. Isle of Wight, Middlesex, etc., they comprised over half of the population. In this section, therefore, as far as the ratio of population is concerned, the race question reaches something like the same degree of com- plexity that it does in the Gulf states. There are, however,
7. For these figures I am indebted to Mr. B. E. Copenhaver, Sup't of Schools for Smythe County.
8. See tables in appendix.
42 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
local conditions in the Tidewater which alter the situation and it is, rather, in the South Side of the Piedmont Section where con- ditions resemble those that have been described by Mr. A. .H Stone, W. E. B. DuBois, etc., in the lower South.
In 1910 there were in this section 18,654 negro farms, 12,735 or 68.1^-0 of which were operated by their owners, and there was one negro farmer to every twelve of total negro population. This is a proportion over twice as great as in the western part of the state. The negro owned acreage last year was 600,809 or 11.5% of all the farm acreage in the section and the total value of all negro farm property was $18,056,000.1' If we ac- cept the estimate that at the close of the war the negroes in this section owned 6,000 acres worth $90,000 lu remarkable prog- ress is shown. The average value of land and improvements per acre for negroes is about $30 which is about $5 less than the same average for the whites. The difference in land value, however, is probably considerably greater than this since on account of the relative smallness of negro holdings, the build- ings are worth more per acre than those of the whites. Actual conditions in this section can probably be best understood by studying some of the typical counties.
Gloucester, in Eastern Virginia, has a population of 12,477 of which 5,907, or nearly half, are negroes. In 1900 the ne- groes were in the majority. While this county has been se- lected as typical of the section it is, in some respects, a little better off than the others. In regard to illiteracy, for instance, the 1910 census shows 1,147 or 27.4% illiterates among the ne- groes, while in Hanover the same percentage is 33. The effect of communication with the outside world by water and early contact with the Hampton Institute account for Gloucester's ad- vantage over its neighboring counties in those qualities which have lead to material progress. But, on the whole, this county is typical of the more advanced counties of the section and what is said of it is applicable in little less degree to the others.
9. See appendix.
10. Walker, "Xegro Property Holding in Tidewater, Ya."
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 43
In an interesting little study,11 Thomas C. Walker estimates that at the close of the War there were 537 acres of land owned by the free negroes in Gloucester County. In 1880 "there were 195 negroes who owned about 2,300 acres of land." The Audit- or's Report for 1912 shows a negro acreage of 19,772 acres, and by 1914 this number had increased to 20,292 assessed at about $145,000, and, with improvements, $270,000. Taking the ratio between assessed value and the value based on sales at about one-third this makes the real value about $800,9004 2 Prior to 1880 says Walker, there were no buildings and improvements worth counting as most of them lived in log cabins, but at present they are worth some $350,000.
The value of the negro farm lands in this county is increas- ing materially each year with the better knowledge of agricul- tural methods. Walker thinks that "the greatest agency em- ployed in the development of the Tidewater counties * * * in the education and material condition of the negroes is the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute." For some forty- five years this school has been sending its graduates into these counties, and other parts of the state and the South, where they have, as a rule, cultivated industrial habits and desirable inter- racial relations.
Another agency employed in the development of the soil is Hampton's cooperative demonstration farm work carried on with the United States Department of Agriculture under the supervision of J. B. Pierce, a Hampton graduate. In Glou- cester, however, as is the case in all but the tobacco counties, other means than farming exist to furnish a livelihood for the negroes, and there are few negro families some member of which does not spend part of his time fishing or oystering. The oyster- ing season lasts from September 1st to May 1st and good work- men often earn as much as $2 per day. According to a careful study of the negroes of Litwalton,13 made some years ago, it
11. T. C. Walker, "Xegro Property Holding in Tidewater. Va." Annals American Academy of Pol. and Sc. Science. Sept., 1913.
12. See the Report of the Virginia Tax Commission. 1914.
13. W. T. Thorn. "The Negroes of Litwalton. Va.," Bulletin De- partment of Labor. :;T.
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was found that the oystermen, i. e. those who dig the oysters from the rocks, make about $8 per month, while families occu- pied in shucking oysters can earn up to $400 per year, three- fourths of them getting less than $250.
This industry has had a two-fold effect on the negroes of Gloucester and Lancaster Counties. In the first place it brings in a good deal of money, which seems to be invested in land, "and it is noticeable in that part of the county where the men are oystermen are the largest farms and the best homes owned by negroes." 14 But, on the other hand, it takes the men away from the crops too early in the fall and they return too late in the spring to get the best results from their farm work. An- other result has been that it caused scarcity of farm labor, and while negro labor still remains predominant in this section, there has been some white labor brought in. Although the average holding is something over ten acres, almost half are under this size and are commonly regarded as too small to furnish a living even under good cultivation, and the owners must either rent, oyster, or labor out on white farms. According to the observa- tions of Williams 15 both renting and the oystering industry are on the wane in Gloucester County, and in the future the bulk of the negro population will be engaged in peasant fanning and laboring on the white farms. This pronounced material im- provement among the negroes in Gloucester seems to be re- flected in the schools and other social agencies.
According to the County Superintendent's books there was in Gloucester, in 1914, a school population of 3,946 lfi of whom 1,806 were white and 2.140 negro. The total number of whites enrolled last session was 1,172 or 64% and the total number of blacks enrolled was 1.386, or 65%. For the 1,172 white chil- dren forty-seven schools were open and for the 1,386 negro children there were thirty-two school houses. The average monthly salary for white male teachers is $60 ; for white female,
14. W. T. B. Williams, "Local Conditions among Negroes," bulle- tin published by the Hampton Institute Press.
15. Ibid. 4.
16. For these and the succeeding figures I am indebted to Mr. R. A. Folkes, Sup't of Schools of Gloucester Co.
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP
45
$35; for negro male, $30; and for negro female, $27.50, which is higher than that usually paid the negro teachers. The length of the session for both white and negro schools is about seven months, but many of the negroes are forced to leave before the end of the session on account of farm work. All of the schools in the county, both white and black, are aided by private sub- scription to continue for a longer session. All of the negro schools are held in fairly well equipped frame buildings and there are many Hampton graduates and ex-students among the teachers.
"The negro's opportunity to earn money and his superior average intelligence have led to the building of unusually good houses in Gloucester. In one of the better districts I found, in a school of thirty pupils, ten who lived in houses of six rooms each and only one in a house of one room. The log cabin is rare in Gloucester. These good houses have had ap- parently a marked influence upon the morals of the colored people. For instance, twenty-five years ago, when three-fourths of the people lived in cabins, bastardy was common.17 A half- dozen cases among the colored people, and two, by the way, among the whites, in 1903 was regarded as an alarmingly high rate. In 1904 there was but one case among the negroes within a radius of ten miles from the court house. There is also but very little miscegenation. In a dozen school houses I saw only one child whose father was undoubtedly white. The criminal record of the county also reflects credit upon the homes. For instance, there were thirty arrests for misdemeanors in 1903. Of these sixteen were white and fourteen colored. In 1904 there were fifteen — fourteen white and one colored. Of the felony cases for 1904 there were seven for the county — two white and five colored. This is said to be an unusually large record." 1S The housing conditions are, indeed, according to Kelsey,19 better in this county than in any rural district of the South.
17. The effect of the houses is. of course, indirect since the real cause is in better economic and educational conditions.
18. W. T. B. Williams. "Local Condition among Xegroes." 5-6. Pamphlet of Hampton Institute Press.
19. Carl Kelsey. The Negro Farmer, 34.
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On the regular negro farms in this county there are also many evidences of progress. Here no women are found working in the fields but their time is spent around the houses and gardens. The crop lien system is unknown and each farmer raises his own vegetables, smokes his own meat, raises the grain for his own meal and flour, and buys for cash or short credit at the local store. That many negroes are gradually acquiring small places is borne out by the Census figures which show that in this county 96$ of the negro farmers are owners while the same percentage for the state as a whole is 66. Kelsey cites 20 the case of one negro farmer who, by thrift and industry, now owns part of the place on which he was a slave and his slave time cabin is now used as a shed. "He began by buying land in 1873 paying from $10 to $11.50 per acre, and by hard work and economy, now owns sixty acres which are worth more than their first cost. With the help of his boys, whom he has man- aged to keep at home, he derives a comfortable income from his land. His daughter, now his housekeeper, teaches school during the winter. What he has done others can do. he says.*' An- other who has succeeded made his first payments from the sale of wood cut in clearing. In 1903 his acres were planted as fol- lows: orchard, 2; woodland, 8; pasture, 10; corn, 8; rye, 1; and garden. His children go to Hampton and he says that "one boy is already telling him how to get more produce from his land."
In brief it may be said that here, as elsewhere, agriculture is somewhat neglected for the opportunities to earn money by quicker means, but that numerous single examples illustrate the possibilities. There is room for improvement in the meth- ods of tilling the soil, in the use of fertilizers, and in the rota- tion of crops, but this is true universally. The general social and moral improvement has been noted and, as Kelsey says, "It is a pleasure to find that one of the stronger factors in this improvement is due to the presence in the country of a number of graduates of Hampton."
Hanover, a county on the border between the Tidewater
20. Ibid, 34.
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 47
Section and Middle Virginia, is typical of those less favored counties. Its total population is 17,200 of which 7,040 is ne- gro. Collectively the negroes make a very good showing along material lines : in Henry District there are 409 negro owners, 242 of whom own less than 10 acres each, 109 from 10 to 25, 58 over 25, and a few over a hundred. Out of a total of 289,332 acres in the county exclusive of the town of Ashland negroes owned in 1914, according to the Auditor's Report, some 30,076 acres as against 261,538 owned by the whites. Of the total farm property in the county assessed at $2,981,201 negroes own $317,714. Allowing for the under assessment this represents a true value of a little over S^OO.OOO.-'1 But the individual hold- ings are in most cases too small to enable them to earn a living from this alone and they must rent additional land or work out. So far, in this county, most of their efforts at acquiring prop- erty have gone into land getting and little attention seems to have been given to the matter of housing. While improvements in Gloucester are assessed at about the same as the land, they are in Hanover assessed at only about half as much.
Social conditions are not nearly so favorable here. Of the 5,091 negroes over ten years of age in 1910, 1,687 or 33y0 were illiterate, while 459c of those of voting age could neither read nor write. According to the Superintendent's Report — the en- rollment in the schools is small for both races and only 43% for the negroes. "One of the teachers I visited rarely used a correct sentence. Yet he has been given a license annually for sixteen years." During the fall the boys are kept home to work on the tobacco farms and the ignorance and indifference on the part of the parents accounts for the irregular attendance of the younger children.
The churches are numerous and have a large membership but they do not seem to contribute much to the general uplift of the people. One reason that has been assigned for this is the preva- lence of absentee preachers, who do not come into vital con-
21. See Report of the Virginia Tax Commission, 1914.
22. Report for 1902 quoted by "Williams, Local Conditions among Negroes," 6.
48 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
tact with the people but leave the real work to the less able members of the profession. On the whole the county lacks the best efforts of both the church and school, and the result is a vast amount of ignorance which, in turn, reacts upon the morals of the people. Williams gives as the cause of much of the crime the sale of liquor in the county: "The common opinion of the white and colored people is that the crime is such as comes from ignorance, poor morals, and the use of liquors, rather than crime of a worse nature. Carrying concealed weapons, petty thieving, and impudence to white people are the occasions for most of the arrests according to the colored people and the county officials. * * * The nearness of Richmond and Pe- tersburg has perhaps something to do with Hanover's criminal record."
The relations between the races in Hanover are, as is usually the case in Virginia, amicable but they are hardly as good as in Gloucester and in the counties at the foot of the Blue Ridge. The whites depend on the negroes for farm labor and there are but few white men employed as laborers at present, though they seem to be on the increase because of negro emigration and the presence of two railroads in the county which employs them as section hands at better wages than the farmers are able to offer. A number of the negroes employ all of their time as agricultural undertakers on their own small farms and, as this number in- creases, the available supply of farm laborers will naturally de- crease.
When conditions in Hanover and Gloucester are contrasted the effect of the kind of industrial training given at Hampton is very apparent. "Hanover's greatest needs, it would seem, are more effective schools and churches, and especially better homes. There are too few good homes to exert a helpful influence upon the mass of the others. There is a marked absence among the residents of the county of graduates of the better schools and colleges and especially from those that lay stress in their train- ing upon home making. A few young women, well trained in domestic science and having the missionary spirit, could do a great deal of good here either as teachers or house-keepers."
The central portion of Virginia which forms a triangle be-
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 49
tvveen the North Carolina line, the Blue Ridge, and the fall line of the Atlantic rivers may, for the present purposes, be consid- ered under two heads : ( 1 ) those counties such as Prince Ed- ward where the negroes exist in large numbers and where the great staple is raised, and ( 2 ) those such as Albemarle where the negroes comprise about one-third of the rural population and either work as laborers or farm their own small food crops. This second type of rural economy need not receive our atten- tion here since it will be considered at length later, but before turning to Prince Edward which may be taken as representative of the first type let us examine the statistics for the section as a whole and see wherein it differs as a whole from the Tidewater and Valley Sections.
For the thirty-five counties which compose this central part of Virginia the 1910 Census shows a total negro population (exclusive of cities) of 254,972 and a total white population of 364,698; but in the tobacco counties on the South Side there are often more negroes than whites, and in the counties at the foot of the Blue Ridge the whites form from sixtv to eighty per cent, of the population. The percentage of negro owned farms to total negro farms is smaller in this section than in any other portion of the state, 17,859 farms out of a total of 27,444, or 65%, being operated by the owners. But if owners are fewer in this section, the negro farmers are more numerous since there is one negro farmer to every nine of the total negro rural population. A farm, however, especially in the cereal raising counties, often means merely a rural home where the owner derives his principal income from some other source. 'The total negro population decreased in this section 7.5% in the last census period whereas there was an increase for the whole state of 1.6% as against 16.5% for the whites.
Taken collectively the negroes own considerable property in this section. In 1914 the Auditor's Report showed 1,024,264 acres owned by negroes or 11.2% as much as that owned by the whites.23 This land with its improvements was assessed at
23. For the derivation of these and the succeeding figures see tables in the Appendix.
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$7,634,131 which represents an actual value of nearly $24,000,000. The estimated value of the same class of white property is a little over ten times as much or $245,022,325. The estimated value of negro land and improvements per acre is $23 and for the whites almost S27.
The condition of the negroes in the South Side is probably poorer than in any other part of the state. Traveling through the counties of Prince Edward, Mecklenburg, Pittslyvania, etc. the homes of the negroes can be seen at every clearing and they range in character from the filthy log hut to very plain but substantial frame buildings. Although here agriculture is much more diversified than in the cotton states, still tobacco is the one big staple crop, and both the negro owners and renters still find it necessary to obtain advances from the country stores for food and fertilizer. Advances begin early in the spring and continue until near the close of the year when the tobacco is shipped to Farmville. Petersburg, Danville, and the other mar- kets. The merchant usually receives an interest charge of 6' ,' and a commission for selling the tobacco in addition to high in- itial prices.
The average value of an acre of tobacco is almost impossible to estimate because of the varying market prices, qualities, and quantities. Speaking of Prince Edward County, Kelsey says : "It is probably safe to say that the negroes do not average over $20 per acre, ranging from $15 to $25, and have, perhaps, three or four acres in tobacco." 2i Since negroes as a rule live up to their income this would indicate advances ranging from $6.0 to $100. In Prince Edward County, and the others of which it is typical, wheat and corn are rotated with tobacco and thus about half of the land is in tobacco at a time. Its productive- ness, however, is lower than in such counties as Albemarle and corn rarely runs over three barrels to the acre. Nevertheless this enables the negroes to supplement their incomes by fur- nishing the corn for their own meal.
Renters either furnish three-fourths of the fertilizer and their own mules and implements and receive three-fourths of the
24. Carl Kelsey, "The Negro Farmer." 36.
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 51
crop, or one-half of the crop when the land-owner furnishes the mules and implements and one-half of the fertilizer. Tobacco is by nature a very exhausting crop and demands some four hundred pounds of fertilizer to the acre which, at one cent per pound, represents about four dollars to the acre. The average cash rental is about $3 to $3.50 per acre, which is, considering the cost of fertilizer, a little less than rent paid in kind. The average negro family in Prince Edward County, then, just about meets his advances with his tobacco, his wheat about supplies him with flour, his corn and fodder feed his stock, and an oc- casional odd job by himself or member of his family furnishes money for luxuries.
Kelsey cites the budget of a family which is more or less typ- ical of the tenants on the South Side : "B — has a family of children and lives in a large cabin, one room with a loft. He owns a pair of oxen and manages to raise enough to feed them. He also raises about enough meat for his family. During the season of 1902 he raised $175 worth of tobacco; corn valued at S37.50 and sixteen bushels of wheat, a total of $221. De- ducting one-fourth for rent and estimating his expenses for fer- tilizer at $25, he had about $140 out of which to pay all other expenses." 25 Odd jobs, gardens, poultry, etc., however, sup- plement the income of the more industrious, and renting does, to a few of the tenants, offer a good living and the means to own- ership.
But on the whole the acquisition of property by the negroes has been slower in this section than any where else in the state. Bruce says that the "negroes of the tobacco region of Virginia have, since emancipation, been afforded the most favorable opportunities of improving their condition by pur- chasing land. Its cheapness has put it in the power of every laborer to secure a small homestead. * * *_"26 That the masses, however, have not had the qualities necessary to pro- vide the purchase money seems evident by the fact that their acquisition of property has been slower here than elsewhere. It
25. Ibid.
26. P. A. Bruce, "The Plantation Xegro as a Free Man," 222.
5Z PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
is probably to be accounted for by the fact that because of the reliance on the one crop system, agriculture, and hence the wealth of the section, has not been developed to its greatest possibilities. But in recent years the negroes have been making greater prog- ress and in Prince Edward County the negro owners in 1910 constituted 72c/c of all negro farmers. Many of these own a dozen or so acres and rent their actual farms but in Prince Ed- ward, which is, however, better off in this respect than other tobacco counties, many of the negroes own outright. In Buffalo District, for example, which is the largest in the county, there are 258 negro holdings ; 54 of these are less than ten acres ; 43 are from thirty to forty-nine; and 70 are over 50 acres. Of the total of 220,082 acres in the county, negroes owned in 1914 42.103 acres. That this land was not of a poorer quality is shown by the fact that about five times as much white land was assessed at about five times as much.
In general it may be said that while the negroes of the South Side and of Prince Edward County still lag behind, they have recently begun to acquire land and in some districts have made material progress. In the matter of housing and education, how- ever, the backwardness is more evident. The log cabin is still the rule in this section while it is rare in Gloucester, and Wil- liams says that in all of the schools that he visited he only found two pupils into whose homes magazines or newspapers went reg- ularly. The Superintendent of Schools expresses the hope that school conditions in Prince Edward "compare very unfavorably with conditions in other Virginia counties, for it would be sad to think others were in a like fix."
There were, in 1914, 3,104 negro children of school age and 1,624 whites.27 The percentage of enrollment for whites is 87 ' , and for negroes only 64% ," again, the percentage of attendance is 54% for the whites and only 34% for the negroes. The av- erage salary for negro teachers is only $25 and five years ago it was sometimes as low as $12. Twenty-five of the negro
27. For this information I am indebted to Mr. P. T. Atkinson, Sup't of Schools for Prince Edward County.
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 53
schools are aided by private subscription to continue for a longer session, but even with this help the average session is now only a little over five months. Of the forty-one negro schools in the county, five are held in log cabins. School conditions are, in- deed, worse in these counties than anywhere else in the state, but with the increased number of Hampton and Petersburg grad- uates as teachers they may normally be expected to improve.
Realizing the need of good schools to keep the negroes in the country where they succeed best and to make them efficient rural workers, there has been a general movement recently throughout the state to improve the rural school facilities. The General Education Board has provided for a State Supervisor of Negro Rural Schools for Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee, and the Jeannes and Slater Funds, by various arrangements with local authorities, aid in- dustrial education in the rural districts. The training in indus- trial and domestic sciences in the rural schools is gradually spreading throughout the state and that it is practical in its nature is shown by the following report of Jackson Davis, Su- pervisor for Virginia :
"During the year 1912-13, twenty-three supervising industrial teachers were employed for the negro rural schools of twenty- five counties. There were in these counties 591 negro schools; 417 of these were visited regularly by the industrial teachers, who introduced and taught cooking, sewing, shuck mat making, and various forms of practical industrial work. They made a total of 2,853 visits during the school term, 189 of the schools having a short term, extended the term by private subscription one month, so that an average term of six months was main- tained in these twenty-five counties. Twenty new school houses were built, costing S23.S08 and fifteen were enlarged at a cost of $2,212.09.
"Forty-six buildings were painted and eighty-one white- washed ; 370 schools used individual drinking cups and in 102 sanitary outhouses were built. The 428 school improvement leagues raised in cash for new buildings, extended terms, equip- ment and other improvements, $22,655.80. I think it is safe to
54 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
say that labor and materials of various sorts were contributed by the various leagues to the value of $10,000, though the teach- ers had no uniform standard by which to estimate this.
"Summer Garden and Canning work for the girls was carried on by thirteen of these teachers in fourteen counties during the summer months; 617 girls were reported enrolled in the clubs and 416 gardens were reported good and 122 poor. The girls put up 10,504 jars of vegetables and fruits and their mothers put up 12,269, making a total of 22,773 jars. Almost none of this is sold but is used in the homes for the table in the winter.
"In addition to this work, the teachers gave the girls in their meetings in the different homes during the summer months, 193 cooking lessons, and 178 sewing lessons; 136 of these homes were whitewashed."
In view of the varying conditions in the different localities it is apparent that whatever education of this character is given should be adapted to the needs of the particular community. And this is, indeed, the basis for the so-called Halifax Plan28 which is now in operation under the direction of the state su- pervisor and which consists in placing in each county a super- visor who is acquainted with the social, agricultural, and phys- ical conditions, and who is, therefore capable of determining what actually is utilitarian education. Such a plan makes it possible to give the kind of agricultural and industrial training that is adapted to the needs of the particular locality and thus work toward making the negro an efficient citizen at home. To make them this obviates the white antagonism to spending one- third of the school fund on the education of the negroes, who only pay one-thirtieth of the taxes, by giving value received. The supervisor in Halifax is financed jointly by Hampton, the General Education Board, the County Board, and by private subscriptions and the whole work is under the direction of the State Supervisor. This plan has been put into operation in several of the counties and where it is done the United States Department of Agriculture has agreed to and is placing negro
23. See "The Halifax Plan for the Practical Education of the Ne- gro," J. W. Church. Hampton Institute Press 1910.
RVRAL LAND OWNERSHIP 55
farm demonstrators. All of these movements are based on the assumption that to improve the economic condition of the state, the efficiency of the producers, no matter what their color, must be raised. And as far as can be judged by results in those coun- ties where the negroes have been in closer contact with practical education, it may be taken as a maxim that greater efficiency is best obtained by industrial education. This has been true throughout the ages ; the European barbarians were benefited bv contact with Rome not because of its literature or militarism, but because of its experience in agriculture and the agricultural arts which, when adopted by the people, laid the foundation for the later German civilization.
In this very inadequate discussion we have reviewed the note- worthy rapidity with which the negro is acquiring property in Virginia,29 and the conditions among the negro rural population in the several most typical sections of the state. One point stands out above all the rest : the economic environment varies greatly even within the bounds of a single state and whatever course the negro pursues in working out his problem must be related to this. More or less overlooked in the discussion, but none the less important, is the necessity for sympathetic white counsel and direction. In Virginia this element of help seems to be forthcoming and the negro leaders of the Tidewater Sec- tion especially bear witness to the fact that the members of their race have been "greatly encouraged in their efforts to accu- mulate property and become substantial citizens by the best ele- ment of the native white people." "° It will become more and more apparent, as we consider actual conditions, that the own- ership of land by the negroes does foster and develop those qualities which work for a substantial citizenship and a greater social production of wealth.
29. "It is safe to say that when it comes to the matter of prop- erty holding, the negro in the North is a century behind his brother in the South." J. T. Hewin. "Hampton Negro Conference Report," 1904, 35.
30. T. C. Walker, "Negro Property Holding in Tidewater Virginia." Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sc, Sept., 1'.':::.
CHAPTER IV. Negro Land Ownership in Albemarle County.
In the previous discussion the divergence in rural conditions in the different localities has been noted. And it has been noted further that Central Virginia, as a section, may be divided into two smaller groups : the one typified by such counties as Prince Edward where one staple crop continues to be raised largely by negroes, and the other typified in those counties where the cereals and fruits are raised on land usually owned by the oper- ator and where the crops are greatly diversified.
Albemarle belongs to the latter class, and yet, if any one county can be taken as representative of the whole group, a better one could not be chosen. Indeed, the county is half in Middle Vir- ginia and half in the Piedmont Section and a line drawn from North to South running through Charlottesville, the county seat, may be said to be the division. The elevation ranges from 400 feet in the eastern and southern part of the county to 3,000 feet at Jarman's Gap at the summit of the Blue Ridge.
In a number of ways Albemarle County is typical of the state as a whole. Its population in 1910, exclusive of the city of Charlottesville, was 29,871, of which 20,198 were white and 9,673 colored, a ratio about the same as that for the state. The land area of the county is about 750 square miles and its popula- tion density is 39.8 per square mile which is nearly the same as that for the state as a whole. In its history, also, Albemarle is representative of both the old and new counties of the Old Do- minion.
Albemarle County was populated by two streams of people; one coming from the older counties of the Tidewater Section and bringing with them their slaves and their plantation system, and the other coming east from the Valley where they had been ac- customed to small farms. The first patents were taken out in 1727 and were for holdings of from three to thirteen thousand
56
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 57
acres,1 which early assured the establishment of the plantation system in the eastern part of the county. The act creating the county was passed by the legislature in 1744, and the organiza- tion took place near the present town of Scottsville in 1745.- In 1869 the present county of Albemarle was divided into the five townships, subsequently termed magisterial districts, of Rivanna, White Hall, Samuel Miller, Scottsville, and Charlottesville. In 1875 Ivy District was added and the county retains these same districts today.
In the published letters of Major Thomas Anbury, a British Officer and prisoner in Albermarle during the Revolutionary War, there are some interesting observations on early life in Albemarle which may help us to understand better the present conditions. "The plantations are scattered here and there," he says, "over the land which is thickly covered with timber. On these there is a dwelling house, with kitchen, smokehouse, and other out- houses detached, and from the various buildings each plantation has the appearance of a small village. At some distance from the houses are peach and apple orchards, and scattered over the plantations are the negro's huts, and tobacco barns, which are large and built of wood for the cure of that article. * Most of the planters consign the care of their plantations and negroes to an overseer ; even the man whose house we rent has an overseer, though he could with ease superintend it him- self. * * * There were, and still are, three degrees of rank among the inhabitants, exclusive of the negroes ; but I am afraid the advantage of this distinction will never exist again in this country in the same manner it did before the commencement of hostilities." s At the risk of being irrelevant these passages have been quoted to show that in its early history the eastern part of Albemarle resembled the older counties of Virginia while the western part resembled, in its agricultural economy, the Val- ley of Virginia. The effects of the early settlement can be traced in the different parts of the county today.
1. Edgar Woods, "History of Albemarle," 2.
2. Ibid, S.
3. Quoted by Woods, Ibid, 39-42.
58 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
In the western part of the county, where the negroes are less numerous and the white farms generally smaller, lies the great fruit belt which is the original home of the celebrated Albemarle pippin. On the lower lands below eight or nine hundred feet elevation in the central and eastern part of the county the sandy Cecil clay soil is fertile and capable of producing fine fruit and cereal crops. Lands in these various parts of the county have a wide range in value; the old field lands often selling for as low as $4 per acre while that land which is used for orchards and country homes brings often as much as $500. Average farming land, including buildings thereon, is assessed at about $12 per acre which, according to 'the findings of the Virginia Tax Com- mission, represents an actual value of about $40. The value of land and improvements per acre owned by the negroes runs con- siderably less than that owned by the white. This condition, however, is not due solely to the fact that the negro land is in- ferior because the orchardists are all white and there are many valuable country estates in the county.
There are, in general, two types of farms in the county: those in the western part of the county which raise fruit almost ex- clusively, and those devoted to general agriculture east of the line running through Charlottesville. Crozet, a village just at the foot of the Blue Ridge, is the largest fruit shipping point in the state and in good years some 35,000 to 40,000 barrels of apples are shipped from here. This district merges into Green- wood, also a fruit center and shipping point five miles off, Bates- ville, seven miles off at the foot of the Ragged mountains, and White Hall, also at the foot of the Blue Ridge. In general ag- riculture the county is well adapted to the production of all of the cereals with the possible exception of barley. Corn, of course, is the principal cereal and average farming land properly managed may be expected to yield from 6 to 10 barrels to the acre. Wheat, under similar conditions, may be expected to pro- duce from 3 to 6 barrels and winter oats produces about 30 bushels to the acre.4 Tobacco was, before the war, one of the
4. These figures were obtained from farmers.
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 59
princioal crops but with the changed conditions its production has been reduced to practically nil.
The Census gives the value of all of the crops for Albemarle County at $1,486,629 divided as follows: cereals $697,816; other grains $1,416: hay and forage $258,808: vegetables $183,109; fruits $163,316; and all other crops SlS2.16r>. These estimates are of course inaccurate, but they at least show the extent of di- versification in the county.
In brief, then, by its history, location, density and inter-racial ratio of population, and by the diversity of its agriculture Albe- marle is typical of the older counties at the foot of the Blue Ridge, and what is said of the negroes in its rural district is alike applicable to many other counties of the state.
The statistics for the white and negro population in the county reflect the agricultural conditions before the War and show the present conditions :
TABLE X: POPULATION BY DECADES.
|
Year 1850 |
White 11.875 |
Slave 13,916 |
Free Negro 587 60G 14,994 16,659 14,126 10,337 'J. I'm 1 |
% Negro 53.9% |
|
12,103 |
54.5% |
|||
|
12,550 |
54.4 |
|||
|
15.959 |
51. |
|||
|
18,252* |
43.6 |
|||
|
1900 |
18,135 |
36.3 |
||
|
20,1 '.is |
32.4 |
|||
|
|
|
Prior to the War there were two agricultural systems in the county : the one, which was general in the foothills, was a small farm system where the farmers with a few slaves, and sometimes indeed with none at all, raised small food crops ; the other was the tobacco plantation with large slave holdings. The two sys- tems did, indeed, reflect the agricultural economy of the two types of people who settled in Albemarle ; in the west there were those who had come from the Valley where the small farm was
*Charlottesville not included after 1890. Population of Charlottes- ville 1910, 4,241 whites and 2,524 negroes.
60 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
general and in the east there were the planters who had come from eastern Virginia. That the plantation greatly predom- inated, however, is shown by the high percentage of negroes up until the time when the large single staple crop was abandoned.
It will be interesting to compare the white and negro popula- tion of Albemarle with that of its neighbors, Augusta, in the Valley, and Louisa, in Middle Virginia.
TABLE XI: POPULATION MOVEMENTS IN THREE ADJA- CENT COUNTIES.
Albemarle Augusta Louisa
Year white negro
1850 11.S75 13,925
I860 12,103 14,523
1870 12,550 14,994
1880
1890 1S.252 14,126
1900 18,135 10,337
1910 20.198 9.673
|
white |
negro |
white |
negro |
|
18,983 |
5,637 |
6,423 |
10,268 |
|
21.547 |
6,202 |
6,183 |
10,518 |
|
22,026 |
6,737 |
6,269 |
10,063 |
|
28,596 |
8,407 |
7,192 |
9,805 |
|
26,670* |
5,700 |
7,896 |
8,621 |
|
27,904 |
4,541 |
8,695 |
7,883 |
The slaves were greatly in the minority in Augusta because here the small farm system was in operation, while in Louisa, a plantation county, the reverse condition was true. Albemarle, as would be expected by its location between the two and the conditions of its settlement, was in an intermediate position and has since remained so as far as the negro population is con- cerned.
Within the boundary of the county the same tendency is shown in the distribution of the negro population. In the eastern dis- trict where the slaves were numerous the negroes are numerous today, and in the mountain districts where they were always few they are few now. The black districts, furthermore, seem to be growing blacker while the white districts are growing whiter : 5
♦Includes Staunton to 1900.
5. This tendency seems to be universally true. See R. P. Brooks, "A Local Study of the Race Problem," Pol. Sc. Quar. 1911 and Du- Bois, "The Souls of the Black Folk."
|
te pop. |
negro pop. |
io neg |
|
3,505 |
2,321 |
39.87c |
|
4,271 |
1,966 |
31.5 |
|
3,269 |
897 |
21.5 |
|
9S0 |
535 |
35.3 |
|
3,918 |
3,481 |
38.8 |
|
4,255 |
L.473 |
25.7 |
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 61
TABLE XII: POPULATION BY DISTRICTS.*'
Districts Taxpayers
Rivanna 572
Charlottesville 181
White Hall 10
Ivy 39
Scottsville 541
Samuel Miller 211
Totals 1,554 20.198 9,673 32.4
In three of the magisterial districts the negro population is greater than that for the county as a whole. In the case of Rivanna and Scottsville this condition is to be explained by the fact that here there are the greatest number of negro land-own- ers, and in the Ivy District it is to be explained by the greater demand in this section for servants and farm hands. In White Hall, Samuel Miller, and Ivy the white holdings are smaller and there are few negro holdings; a condition which would naturally lead us to expect a smaller negro population. In the Charlottes- ville District the negroes are about the same as in Charlottes- ville.
Of the 480,000 acres forming the approximate area of Albe- marle County, 386,491 are in farms and 226,830 are improved. The average acreage per farm is 141 acres, something more than for the state as a whole, and the average improved acreage is 82.8.
The last census shows a 100% increase in the value of farm property and gives the value in 1910 of all farm property at $14,945,561. This increase, however, which the census shows to be more or less universal, is to be partly explained by the fact that the last census was taken during a period of reaction from the 1907 panic when land values were on a "boom" while the previous one was taken during a period of depression. The real increase was hardly half of this.
6. These figures for population were compiled especially by the Census Bureau and are not in any printed report.
62 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
The Census does not report property ownership for the county by races, but from the books of the County Treasurer the assess- ment can be derived, and these, corrected according to the ratio between assessed value and the value of property based on recent sales, will give a reasonably accurate idea of the value of land and buildings owned in the county by the respective races.
TABLES XIII: FARM VALUES BY RACES.
White Negro % Negro
Number of acres 426,455 25.S62 5.7%
Assessed value of land $2,700,080.00 $146,858.00 5.1
Assessed value of buildings... 2,447.252.00 153,235.00 5.8
Total 5,147,332.00 300.093.00 5.5
Ratio of Ass. V. to Sales V. 30% 30%
Est. true value $17,157,773.00 $1,000,310.00 5.5
Value land per acre 21.10 18.92 89.6
V. land and bldgs. per acre... 42.33 38.67 91.3
The negro ownership is confined almost exclusively to the Ri- vanna and Scottsville Districts where they own about 80^e> of their acreage. In the other four districts together they own but 4,438 acres while in the Scottsville District alone they own over 10.000 acres and in the Rivanna over ",000. The white improved land is worth considerably more per acre than is indicated by the figures because the negro land, which is all in small holdings, is apt to be improved and in crops while much of the larger white holdings is in pasture or woodland. The average size of holdings for the negroes run considerably higher in the Scottsville than in the Rivanna District, but it is worth only $12 an acre as against about $22 in the Rivanna District. There is a still greater dif- ference in the value of improvements.
The thirteenth census gives the total number of farms in the county at 2,741, of which 637 belong to negroes and 2,104 to whites. Thus where the negroes compose 32.4 per cent, of the population, they are 30.2^ of the farmers. There are few ten- ants in the county of any race and fewer negro tenants. Indeed there are in Albemarle only 408 tenants and of these 364 are white men operating under their own supervision and not as a part of a plantation. The Tax Receiver's books show some 1,554
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 63
negro land owners, but often two or three acres are held by different members of the same family and it is safe to estimate that in 1914 the separate negro places were not over 900 and probably not this many. At any rate it shows a considerable increase over the 1910 census figures and personal observation bears out the assumption that there have been a number of places acquired in the past few years.
Estimating that there are 850 separate negro places in the county, the average size of a farm owned by one family is about 30 acres while the average individual holding is 16.6 acres. The average size of a negro owned farm for the state is about 40 acres with about half of this improved. There are at present in the county 30 negroes who own over 100 acres, ten of whom own over 200 acres and three of whom own over 300 acres. There are 63 who own between 50 and 100 acres. But the vast majority of them are small and, as will appear later, serve only as homes for the negroes who have some other means of sup- port. In the Rivanna District alone, where there are some 572 holdings, 379 of them are under ten acres and many of these con- sist of only one or two acres. When compared with the holdings of the whites the subdivisions are, indeed, very small, but it is no evidence of widespread intensive cultivation.
But while the holdings are small, they are most of them owned outright, and the negroes have little debt. Of the negroes inter- viewed practically all, or 96% of them, had finished paying for their land and were free from debt. One of the best farmers questioned had begun acquiring land immediately after the war and now owns two good farms totalling 205 acres free from debt. Others had owned their property for twenty or thirty years and the average period of negro ownership was found to be about twenty years. Allowing for the recent purchases in this average, this further bears out our conclusion reached earlier in this paper7 that negroes did not begin to acquire property in large numbers much before 1880.
The tendency since the War in Albemarle, as elsewhere, has been for the size of farms to steadily decrease. After the War
7. See above, 30 & 31.
64 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
the plantation system was impossible to maintain because of the difficulty of controlling the negroes, and after a few years of un- successful attempts was given up. In 1850 the average size of a farm in Albemarle County was probably about 300 acres,8 or some sixty acres larger than the average farm for the state as a whole; in 1880 this average had shrunk to 202 acres and in 1910 to 141 acres. Thus the breaking up of the plantations tended to- ward the creation of small farms for both whites and blacks and enabled the poor whites as well as the negroes to become owners and operate their own farms. That tenantry, especially for the negroes, is a thing of the past and that the farmers are becoming more and more owners is shown by the following :
TABLE XIV: FARM TENURE 1900-1910.
100O
Owners and
Farms part owners Tenants Managers
White 1,969 1,355 493 121
Negro 6(37 563 97 7
1910
White 2,104 1,615 364 125
Negro 637 581 44 12
The negro owners increased 28 and the tenants decreased 53 making their total practically negligible. The negro rural popu- lation of the county may, therefore, be considered not as a ten- ant class, but as a laboring and owning class exclusively. So far as can be learned from observation the two go together and the owners usually come into this class from laboring rather than from cropping. Only a small percentage of the owners inter- viewed had ever been croppers, but most of them had been, or still are, farm or railway laborers or semi-skilled artisans.
The 1900 Census gives the number of white and negro far- meis classified by principal source of income for the state as a whole, but not for the counties. At the time of this classification
8. This is an estimate made on the basis of area in farms and agri- cultural population.
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 65
26. 7%. of the farms in the state were operated by negroes. Of the hay and grain farms 21.8% were operated by negroes; of vegetable farms, 37.9(,, ; of fruit farms, 15.5' , ; of stock farms, 15.2% ; of cotton, 57.1 ; of tobacco, 37.3r',_ ; and of farms raising miscellaneous crops 33.6% were operated by negroes. As far as observation can be relied upon, the conditions in Albemarle are scarcely what is indicated by these figures ; there are no ne- gro orchardists and very few negro stock raisers. There are, of course, no cotton farms in the county, but vegetable and mis- cellaneous crops are raised by the negroes more than other speci- fied crops. In fact the negro farms of the county might almost all be put in the miscellaneous class raising a little com and wheat, vegetables, a few fruit trees, and possibly a few head of stock.
During the last census period the total negro population in trie county decreased from 10,337 to 9,673 or 6.9%, but the number of negro farmers decreased only from 667 to 637 or 4.5%. Among the whites just the reverse tendering was true; while there was an increase in population of 11.3% there was an in- crease of only 6.8%, in the number of white farmers. If the ab- solute number of negro farmers were low these figures would not be significant, but since the ratio of negro farmers to total negro population is as great as the same ratio for the whites, they show that, while the county is getting whiter, the negroes are staying on the farms relatively better than the whites. The negro fanners increased 1.53 times as fast as did the negro pop- ulation, while the white farmers only .60 times as fast as their population. The decrease in ratio of total negro population is, therefore, due to the moving away of the non-land-owning class rather than the farmers. There was an absolute increase in ne- gro farm owners and the decrease noted above is accounted for by the decrease in tenants.
The negroes in Charlottesville have always been relatively a little more numerous than those in the county, but during the last census period the decrease in the city was as great as that in the county. Thus on the negative side too, the figures show that the negroes of Albemarle are not going to town but are staying in the country. This condition is not true all over the South and
—5
66 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
there has been much alarm occasioned by the tendency of the ne- gro to move to the city, but it is true in Albemarle County and it is true for the state as a whole. y
It has been pointed out that what is said of Albemarle is true in large measure of other counties at the foot of the Blue Ridge and the population movements for the two races, the land values, the relative size of white and negro farms, the absence of ten- ancy among the negroes, and the crops grown by the negroes have been discussed. It has been pointed out, further, that the figures tend to show that in Albemarle County, at least, the ne- groes are staying in the country. From this we can proceed to a study of the actual conditions among the individual negro inhab- itants of the rural districts of the county.
9. The figures are given in Chap. II above.
CHAPTER V.
Economic Conditions Among the Negroes in Albemarle
County.
The occupations found among the rural negroes in Albemarle County are those characteristic of a county where most of the agriculture is undertaken by the whites, where there is consider- able wealth, where the agriculture is diversified, and where the population is fairly dense. We have noticed the diversity of the agriculture : cereals, peaches, apples, grapes, hay, cattle, dairying, etc., and the mere mentioning of these products suggests several occupations which are to be added to the usual routine of work in a section devoted solely to the cultivation of corn and wheat. Furthermore, there is always a demand for domestic service and the two railroads which run through the county employ a num- ber of negroes as section hands.
Since the War there have been two tendencies affecting the oc- cupations of the negroes: (1) increased diversification as a re- sult of the more complex economic society, and (2) the compe- tition of the whites has tended to limit the pursuits of the negroes to those callings not requiring particular skill. In Albemarle County before the war, the bulk of the negroes were slaves and were either agricultural laborers or domestics. There were, how- ever, as elsewhere in Virginia, a considerable number of free negroes, many of whom owned small farms or were trained ar- tisans. Among the slaves, also, there were negroes trained in such trades as shoemaking, caq^entry, plastering, blacksmithing ?nd the like. The presence of these negroes, trained in skilled labor, prevented the growth of the white artisan class, and the negroes, immediately after the War, came almost to monopolize these trades. This fact, together with the negroes natural tend- ency to "move on," accounted for the movement to the cities after the war where all who were trained during slavery became barbers, masons, carpenters, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, negro shopkeepers, etc.
In the past twenty-five years, however, the industrial changes
67
68 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
which have taken place in the South have done much to minimize the feeling on the part of the whites that these trades were meant solely for the negroes, and negroes have had to face their competition in all of these pursuits. In all of the building trades the negroes, who once had a monopoly on them, are being forced into the background and in the towns the Greeks have taken the shoeshining and restaurant business from them. According to the testimony of old residents, twenty years ago negro black- smiths and carpenters were more numerous in the country than were the whites. Today, while a considerable number of negro carpenters and blacksmiths remain scattered through the country, the bulk of this business is done by whites.1 The negroes have either gone to farm laboring or have moved to towns, where they can, as merchants or artisans, cater to negro trade; their utter failure to compete with the whites has usually driven them out of those occupations where they must serve white customers.
In the Rivanna District of Albemarle County 103 homes were visited by the writer and the occupations asked. These homes were taken from about three times that many scattered all over the District, and the attempt was made to visit some of all kinds in each group, so the results, while not complete, are typical. The total number of people for which a record was obtained was 486, those above ten years of age are divided among occu-
1. This, however, is due solely to the competition of the more efficient white workers, and not to any prejudice existing against working in the same trade as is the case in the North. Stone, in his "Studies in the American Race Problem," says that this is the place "where the negro profits by the drawing of the Southern color line. The white masons and carpenters work side by side with the negro because they know that this line exists for them just exactly as it does for the lawyer or the doctor. The negro recognizes that the white man is not lowered one particle in the estimation of the community, because of his occupation. Each knows that the status of the other remains unchanged." 166.
Speaking on the same subject, Booker T. Washington says, "It is in 'the South that the black man finds an open sesame in labor, in- dustry, and business that is not surpassed anywhere. It is here that that form of slavery which prevents a man from selling his labor to whom he pleases on account of his color, is almost unknown." Quoted in E. G. Murphy. "Problems of the Present South." 1S4.
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 69
pations as follows: regular farm hands 41; railroad and road hands 20; carpenters, masons and cement workers 9; blacksmiths 3 ; shoemaker 1 ; chauffeurs and coachmen 4 ; store keepers 3 ; "blind tiger" keeper 1; farmers (devoting all of their time to owned or rented land ) 24 ; housewives ( devoting all time to their own places ) 67 ; washerwomen and housemaids ( also house- wives) 36; teachers 3; preachers 2; living at home unoccupied and dependent 105, 94 of whom are children above the age of ten, but still attending school. This is a total of 341, the 145 children make up the balance. Following the classification used in the Farmville report - for those over 10, we have : those work- ing on their own account, 50; laborers 82; house service 103; day domestic service 36; at home unoccupied and dependent, 106.
TABLE: XV: PER CENT. OF NEGROES VISITED IN ALBE- MARLE COUNTY, OF SANDY SPRINGS- NEGROES, AND OF TOTAL POPULATION OF U. S. EN- GAGED IN EACH CLASS OF GAIN- FUL OCCUPATION.
|
Sandy Sp' |
gs U.S. |
|
per cent |
per cent |
|
45.48 |
39.65 |
|
2.76 |
4.15 |
Class of Albemarle
Occupation Males Females Total Per cent.
Agriculture 86 4 90 52.3
Professional .... 2 3 5 2.91 Domestic and
personal 4 36 40 23.25 43.97 19.18
Trades and
trans 23 1 24 13.95
Mfgs. and trades. 13 13 7.57
Total 128 44 172 100.00
|
1.51 |
14.63 |
|
6.28 |
22.39 |
|
00.00 |
100.00 |
The percentage for trade and transportation, it will be noticed, is unusually high and is accounted for by the demand for ne- groes as workmen on the railroads in the county. Because of the double tracking now being done in the county by the South- ern Railway this is perhaps a little above normal although all
2. W. E. DuBois, "Negroes of Farmville, Virginia," Bulletin of Dept. of Labor No. 14.
3. W. T. Thorn, "The Negroes of Sandy Springs, Md.." Bulletin Department of Labor, No. 32.
70
PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
but two of the twenty railway hands gave this as their regular occupation.
The following table gives the occupations and incomes of twenty families interviewed. It must be remembered that the real income is somewhat higher than would be indicated by the figures because practically all of the negroes supplement their incomes with gardens and poultry.
TABLE XVI: OCCUPATIONS AND INCOMES OF 22 TYPICAL HEADS OF FAMILIES IN THE RIVANNA DISTRICT.
|
Occupation ho |
V in |
N C iJ5 £ |
■a V •* s. |
in u v £ M |
"3 % 3 C C O C u < .5 |
o "o ■ u ►5 B |
o |
|
|
R. R. hand... |
. 40 |
m |
5 |
32 |
$9.00 |
?2S8 |
$288 |
|
|
R. R. hand... |
. 38 |
m |
7 |
52 |
9.00 |
468 |
468 |
|
|
R. R. hand... |
. 30 |
m |
3 |
30 |
9.00 |
270 |
50 |
320 |
|
Farmer |
. 48 |
m |
12 |
350 |
350 |
|||
|
Farmer |
. 69 |
m |
5 |
250 |
100 |
350 |
||
|
Farmer |
. 30 |
m |
2 |
100 |
150* |
250 |
||
|
Farmer |
77 |
m |
3 |
300 |
300 |
|||
|
Farm hand. . . |
. 42 |
m |
6 |
52 |
4.50 |
234 |
234 |
|
|
Farm hand. . . |
. 55 |
m |
5 |
30 |
4.50 |
135 |
100f |
235 |
|
Farm hand. . . |
. 42 |
m |
o |
52 |
ISO |
180 |
||
|
Dairyman . . . |
. 50 |
m |
9 |
52 |
6.00 |
312 |
25 |
337 |
|
Stableman ... |
. 4i> |
m |
7 |
52 |
600 |
600 |
||
|
Chauffeur .... |
37 |
m |
10 |
52 |
360 |
50 |
410 |
|
|
Carpenter . . . |
37 |
m |
2 |
30 |
15.00 |
450 |
450 |
|
|
Carpenter . . . |
. 35 |
m |
9 |
35 |
9.00 |
315 |
50 |
365 |
|
Shoemaker . . |
. 50 |
m |
4 |
300 |
300 |
|||
|
Storekeeper . |
. 44 |
m |
4 |
400 |
100J |
500 |
||
|
Preacher .... |
. 68 |
m |
3 |
120 |
100§ |
220 |
||
|
Blacksmith .. |
. 70 |
m |
2 |
250 |
50 |
300 |
||
|
Day laborer . |
. 40 |
m |
7 |
30 |
6.00 |
180 |
50 |
230 |
|
Washwoman |
. 3S |
f |
3 |
52 |
144 |
144 |
||
|
Washwoman |
. 52 |
f |
2 |
52 |
72 |
72 |
||
|
*Wife cooks |
||||||||
|
fSon's wages and sa |
e of |
crop. |
||||||
|
{Sale price of crop. |
||||||||
|
§Sale price |
>f crop. |
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 71
A brief discussion of eaoh class of occupation found among the negroes in Albemarle County will be instructive :
Broadly speaking the negro undertaker in business enterprise is a new thing. But the negro foreman on the plantation was a comparatively familiar figure and many of the slaves who were trained as cobblers, blacksmiths, carpenters, cooks, etc., went into business on their own account after the War. But the ef- fect of white competition and the fact that so many of the younger generation have not had the necessary training has tended to crowd the negroes out of these trades. Those who are left are, almost without exception, either the very old negroes or those who have attended one of the industrial schools in the state.
Of the three blacksmiths visited, two own their own shops and the other rents from the widow of its former owner. Two are well along in years, one having been a slave ; and the third, hav- ing but little work to do in his shop farms twenty acres of corn on shares. One owner has only his shop, but he earns on an average of $5 per week from his trade; the other, who owns four acres of land besides his shop, has a business of about $300 and the proceeds of his garden. The third blacksmith visited gave his income at about $350, $200 of which is derived from the sale of his wheat and corn. There are several white black- smith shops in the same district which, with better equipment, appear to be doing a better business, but the negroes make a fairly good living.
The shoemaker interviewed owns his home near the commun- ity of Stony Point, but not his shop. He is a free born native of Washington, D. C, but has been living in this county for twenty-two years and his grown sons remained in the coun- try. He gave his income at $25 per month and his home is worth about $200.
Three store keepers and one "blind tiger" keeper were inter- viewed. One store keeper, near Keswick, owns his own home and store and fifteen acres of land, his whole property being worth $1,200. His mercantile business, he says, nets him some $400 per year and his crop he sells for from S50 to $100. The second merchant, in the same district, owns his store and twelve
72 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
acres of land which are worth about $600 and carry a mortgage of $175 which was borrowed to finish payment on his place. His store nets him about $400 per year and his wife earns some- thing from washing. The third store keeper questioned owns a store and home valued at about $800 and he nets about $250 from his business. His whole place is tidy and in good repair and he carries a savings account in one of the Charlottesville banks. The fourth "merchant," a woman living with her mother, has a place worth about $1,000 and fifteen acres in timber. The pro- ceeds from her illicit sale of liquor net her about $150 per year and her mother earns about half that amount doing day service in neighboring white homes. While there are many white stores scattered throughout the county, the negroes cater to the trade of their own race and are not seriously handicapped by the white competition. The store keepers questioned were all, however, exceptionally good negroes which probably accounts for their success more than their vocation. Be that as it may, few negroes were found in better economic condition.
Of most importance among the undertakers of the county are, of course, the farmers. Of 103 negro rural land owners taken all over the Rivanna District, 24 or not quite one fourth devote all of their time to the care of their crops, and in several of these families the income is supplemented by the wages of grown sons who work on white farms or by domestic service done by the women of the family. There is a great diversity in the condition of the farmers ; there are some, usually old negroes, who own farms of 100 acres or more of excellent land in good cultivation, and there are others who, on twenty or thirty acres of inferior land bought at a low rate, try to eke out an existence. Besides these there are the fifty or sixty owners of small farms who work at regular or odd jobs and leave the care of their crops to their families, but these are not considered here as agricultural entre- preneurs. The best farm operator in the district who was ques- tioned is an old man born before the war. He owns a farm near Earlysville of 70 acres which, with improvements, is worth some $2,500. Two miles below he owns another place of 136 acres which he uses for grazing hogs, cattle, and horses. His stock, exclusive of young pigs and poultry, is worth about $2,000 and
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP
73
includes 14 horses, 20 cattle, and 10 hogs. Sixty acres of his upper place he has planted in wheat, com, oats, and hay and he raises on an average of five barrels of corn to an acre. His flour and meal is all ground from his own grains and his poultry and meat are all raised on the place. He feeds up practically all of his crop and last year sold his cattle and hogs for $250. In bet- ter years he says that he has done much better than this ; he said, "I ain't making much now. but I has made it as you can see by looking around." And, indeed, it was very apparent : the house, a two story frame building of eight rooms, is well painted, all of the fences and outhouses are in perfect repair, and his equip- ment includes wagons, two-horse plows, and several small plows. While he can neither read nor write himself he has sent his chil- dren to school and has kept his grown sons in the country where they own smaller farms of their own.
Another farmer, also successful, owns 60 acres of land and values his place at $1,400. He rotates wheat with corn and grazes his land the third year and uses both manure and a chem- ical fertilizer. He sold his crop from thirty acres last year, after taking out what was needed for his own use, for nearly $300. He is 77 years old and was raised in slavery, but has gradually acquired this little farm which affords him and his wife a good living. His children have not remained in the country. H. T., typical of the less prosperous farmers but thrifty, owns three acres and rents six. He sold his crop last year for $50 and enough poultry and eggs to bring the total to $90. His daughter, the only child living with him, helps him by her washing and the three people live comfortably on the income. His house and out- houses are in good repair and his place, including equipment, is worth $1,200. Another thrifty negro questioned is a breeder and on his six acres of land raises enough corn and hay to feed a jack, a cow, and a horse, besides a large garden for his own use. His income is about $15 per month which is increased to about $20 by his wife's washing. J. K., who owns 22 acres of land and a home worth about $1,000, makes a good living for a family of twelve on his own land and fifty adjoining acres which he farms on shares. He raises wheat, corn, and stock and last year received $350 for his share of the crop. In his large garden
74 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
he raises more than enough for his own use and his wife cans both fruit and vegetables for the winter.
These instances of negro farmers in the county are not excep- tional but typical of the upper group who work hard and practice thrift. Of the twenty four interviewed about half have a money income of over $200 and in some cases it is over $300. Among the other half the incomes are found dropping as low as $50 and reporting no other means of support. These, however, are usually so ignorant of all things connected with money that their state- ments can hardly be relied upon. By the sale of chickens, an occasional hog, or by an odd job probably all of them pick up enough to make their annual income total $100 which, from ob- servation, seems to be about the minimum. With the help of a garden, chickens, and hogs a family of four or five can live with reasonable comfort on this amount.
In general, then, it may be said that the negro farmers in Ri- vanna District range all the way from those whose incomes are large enough to afford a good living and an opportunity to lay something away to those who are contented to eke out a bare existence by raising a little corn on rocky land and earning a dollar or two here and there wherever opportunity offers. But even this class, which is decidedly poorer than the home owning farm hand class, is better off than the same under group in the cities. With a garden and a few chickens, and a wife to do the work, they can make a living in spite of their shiftlessness, and being removed from many of the temptations of the city they can not become such heavy burdens on society.
There are no negro lawyers in the county and no negro doctors in the negro communities studied. There is, however, a negro doctor in Charlottesville, a graduate of Harvard and respected by both races, who has some considerable practice -among the negroes in the county. Both of the preachers interviewed were farmers rather than ministers, but both were reasonably well in- formed and one was very intelligent. He has no regular church but preaches around at various places for whatever is given him. His living he makes from a farm of 23 acres and the help of his daughter who is a house servant. The other preacher is buying a farm. They both appear to be intelligently interested in the
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 75
welfare of their people. One gave his politics as Republican, while the other, who said he was going to vote the Democratic ticket hereafter, frankly said that most negroes were Republicans through ignorance.
Of the 53 negro teachers in Albemarle County 40 are women. In the Rivanna District there are 12 negro teachers, of whom 3 are men and 9 are women. The average salary paid to negro teachers is $26.87, the average for negro men being $28.50 and that for negro women $24.90 for an average session of 6.8 months. The highest salary paid to a negro is $45 which is paid to the principal of the Union Ridge School in Charlottesville Dis- trict.
All of the negroes who are in the professions occupy high po- sitions with the members of their race. The negro preacher is probably the most influential of all, and there was hardly a negro visited who did not speak with a certain amount of awe and pride of "the reverend so-and-so." The negro doctor of Char- lottesville is known, by reputation at least, and held in high es- teem by practically every negro in the Rivanna District.
Of the skilled workmen visited there were seven carpenters, one brick worker, one cement worker, one linesman, and two chauffeurs. Two of the carpenters are skilled workmen earning $2.50 and $3 per day, one of them having learned the trade at the Petersburg Normal and Industrial School and the other in Cleveland, Ohio. Of the remaining five, three are regularly em- ployed as carpentry workers at $1.50 per day while the other two work at odd jobs for the same wages. All seven own their homes, and farm from seven to ten acres of land. With gardens, poultry, and a few head of livestock, their condition is, generally speaking, about the same as that of the better class of farm operators.
The brick worker interviewed is regularly employed in the Charlottesville yards at $2.50 per day. He owns his place some ten miles from town with 65 acres worth about $1,500. About thirty acres of his place is planted in wheat and corn and is tended by his brother who lives on an adjoining farm. In the same sec- tion, J. W., a cement worker who is regularly employed at $3 per day has ten acres of land with a good house and orderly
76 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
premises. The telephone linesman, who is reported here rather than among the common laborers, is regularly employed in Char- lottesville at $1.50 per day and his place, some seven miles south of town, is worth about $350 including three acres of land. He raises on this little place his own vegetables, meat, and lard. Of the two chauffeurs reported, one owns a two acre place well stocked with poultry and worth about $300, and the other owns a place worth about $3,000, but does not live there with his fam- ily.
Here, as in the case of the merchants, it is probably due to the character of the negroes who enter these callings, rather than to the callings themselves, that makes the class as a whole pros- perous. With a home and several acres of land in the country they are able to make a large part of their living on their gardens, poultry, and hogs. These items, added to their already higher nominal wages, give them a real wage considerably higher than any other class of the negro rural population unless, perhaps, the store keepers.
The laborers in the county may be divided roughly into three classes : ( 1 ) farm laborers, working regularly either throughout the year or during nine months of the year for $.75 per day, (2) railway and road laborers who work as section hands or on the county roads for $1.50 per day, and (3) those who work at odd jobs for $.75 and $1 per day. Of the negro rural land own- ers visited there were 41 of the first class, 20 of the second, and 21 of the third.
A few of the most prosperous homes in the Rivanna District were found to belong to the negroes of the first class, i. e. farm hands. One negro who was interviewed, for instance, works regularly as a farm hand and his wife washes for two families for which she receives $5 per month. This brings the family in- come in money to about $23 ; and on his place, which is worth about $500 and includes six acres of land, he has a garden and some 75 chickens. But "if I didn't can things for the winter," he said, "I would certainly go to the poor-house." As this well illustrates, he is one of the more thrifty class which comprises about 30 or 40% of the home owning farm laborers. An ex- ample of the less thrifty 60 or 70% is L. B. who owns two acres
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 77
of very good land and receives $.75 per day for about nine months of the year. But his garden is poor, he cans no fruit or vegetables, and his livestock and poultry is limited to about ten hens of the poorest variety. The small land owners who work out on white farms fall, therefore, between these two extremes.4 By exercising thrift they can, and many of them do, accumulate enough for neat and orderly little homes. But for the less in- dustrious their little piece of land offers no opportunity ; they are content to live from hand to mouth on their bare wage of $.75 per day.
Conditions among the second class, i. e. section and road hands who received $1.50 per day. are much the same. Those who work regularly and take advantage of the possibilities of their own land do well, while those who work only part of the year and make no attempt to supplement their income with gardens and poultry manage to "scrape along" on an income of from $12 to $15 per month and allow their places to run down. R. M., for instance, who works regularly as a section hand, owns a place of four acres with garden and chickens worth about $400 and spends about S30 per month to support his family. L. S., on the other hand, does not work regularly, and while he makes a pre- tense at a garden, its production is small and he is compelled to buy the groceries and canned goods that he should raise. He spends, according to his own calculations, about $17 per month, or all that he makes. In one case it is a matter of working every day and then spending what is necessary ; in the other, $17 is spent and then the necessary amount of work is done.
The third class of laborers mentioned, twenty-one in number, with hardly any exceptions, live from hand to mouth and make practically nothing from the soil. The same type exists every- where and they are no different in Albemarle County. Woofter describes the same class in Athens, Ga. : "All of these laborers look upon themselves as doing 'public work.' That is to say, they shift their employment as the public demands. Many of this class work only when they can not see where the next meal is comine from. This means that in many instances some other
4. See below, 19.
78 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
member of the family besides the father has to seek some steady source of income, such as washing or domestic service. The majority of this group are of the most shiftless class." B
The shiftless class just referred to is very largely responsible for the 28 wives of the 103 negro landowners who find it neces- sary to take in washing and for the 6 who act as house servants. And the reason for the inefficiency of the modern negro servants is to be explained, very largely, by the fact that they come from this shiftless class. As has been so often pointed out, domestic service has, in the estimation of the negroes, dropped from the highest to the lowest place since 1860. Formerly the domestics were the picked slaves ; now they are apt to come from the fam- ilies of the most worthless class. DuBois summarizes the situa- tion as follows : "The negroes are coming to regard the work as a relic of slavery and degrading, and only enter it from sheer necessity, and then as a makeshift. Employers find an increas- ing number of careless and impudent young people who neglect their work, and in some cases show vicious tendencies, and de- moralize the children of the families. * * * The servants, receiving less than they think they ought, are often careful to render as little for it as possible." ° Real wages are, on the other hand, very high and it is probably not an overstatement to say that domestic service is as costly in Albemarle County as in any other rural portion of the United States.7 The remedy for such well paid inefficiency lies, of course, in finding a modern substi- tute for the domestic training that was formerly given in the master's kitchen.8 From the negroes' standpoint, except for the very thrifty families, domestic service was, in the cases observed, always a makeshift.
Carrying out the enumeration used in the Sandy Springs Re- port,9 questions were asked to obtain the data for the three con-
5. Woofter, "The Negroes of Athens, Ga.," 41.
6. W. E. B. DuBois, "Negroes of Farmville, Va.," Bulletin De- partment of Labor, No. 14, 21.
7. This is the opinion of people who have lived elsewhere and have considered the elements entering into the real wages of the negroes.
8. Virginia Church, "The Servant Question," Press of the Hamp- ton Institute, 1912.
9. W. T. Thorn, "The Negroes of Sandy Springs, Md.," 85.
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP /V
ceptions of the word "family:" (1 ) the possible family, i. e. the parents and all children ever born to them living; (2) the real family, i. e. the parents and all children living at present; and (3) the economic family, i. e. all persons, related or unrelated, living under one roof under the conditions of family life. For this purpose it is the economic family that is of importance and this, compared with that of Sandy Springs, and of Farmville, is given in the table below. The resulting average of persons per economic family seems to be too low when compared with the Sandy Springs family, but it is higher than that shown in the Farmville Report.
TABLE XVII: NUMBER AND SIZE OF ECONOMIC FAMILIES
INTERVIEWED IN RIVANNA DISTRICT COMPARED
WITH SANDY SPRINGS AND FARMVILLE.i"
Rivanna
Family of Fam. Per.
1 member ~ 2
2 members 21 42
:; members 21 63
4 members H 44
5 members 13 65
6 members 9 54
7 members 10 70
8 members 5 40
9 members 6 54
10 members 3 30
11 members
12 members 1 12
13 members 1 13
14 members
Total 103 4.89
Average 4.74
|
s. s |
Farmville |
||
|
•am. |
Per. |
Fam |
Per. |
|
9 |
9 |
13 |
13 |
|
19 |
3S |
52 |
104 |
|
20 |
60 |
34 |
102 |
|
17 |
68 |
4S |
192 |
|
23 |
115 |
31 |
155 |
|
26 |
156 |
26 |
156 |
|
14 |
98 |
19 |
133 |
|
9 |
7° |
16 |
128 |
|
15 |
135 |
11 |
99 |
|
5 |
50 |
5 |
50 |
|
5 |
55 |
7 |
77 |
|
1 |
12 |
||
|
1 |
13 |
||
|
1 |
14 |
||
|
1.65 |
8.95 |
2.62 |
12.09 |
|
5.42 |
4.61 |
Out of 103 economic families questioned in the Rivanna Dis- trict there are 66, or 64^c, of from 2 to 5 members while the same percentages for Sandy Springs and Farmville are 4S and 63 respectively. Since we are here dealing with a rural district
10. The figures for Sandy Springs and Farmville are taken from Labor Department Bulletin, No. 32, "The Negroes of Sandy Springs. '
80 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
we would expect conditions to approximate those of Sandy Springs rather than those of Farmville, and the fact that the eco- nomic family is a little smaller in the Rivanna District is prob- ably to be accounted for by the fact that few grown children or otherwise dependent people were found among the families inter- viewed. The families usually consisted only of the parents and children not yet old enough to be economically independent.
The table of number of families by size of family and annual income, which follows, must be taken with a good many grains of precaution. For the laborers, storekeepers, and artisans the estimates are reasonably accurate but for the others it is largely a matter of guess-work and in some instance is probably too low.
TABLE XVIII: NUMBER OF FAMILIES INTERVIEWED BY SIZE AND ANNUAL INCOME.
1 mem- over
Annual income ber 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Total
$50 or less 1
$50 to $100
$100 to $150
$150 to $200
$200 to $250
$250 to $350
$350 to $450
over $450
Not reported 1 3 7 11 13
Total 2 21 21 11 13 9 10 5 6 5 103
Of 90 Rivanna Families, 14, or 15.5%, made incomes of less than $100. The same percentage in Farmville was found to be 10.7%, but even granted that these estimates are correct, it does not follow that the Rivanna negroes are in a poorer economic condition, because in the country the money income does not represent the real income. In the Rivanna District, judging from those questioned, 54.4^,* of the negroes make between $100 and $250, while in Sandy Springs 61 <f0 of them and in Farmville 34.8% of them make this amount. In comparing all of these figures it must be remembered that no account is taken of the gardens, poultry, and hogs which, in about 70fo of the cases, supplement materially the incomes of the Albemarle negroes.
|
6 |
1 |
o |
2 |
1 |
2 12 |
||||
|
g |
3 |
o |
>^ |
1 |
10 |
||||
|
3 |
o |
3 |
3 |
2 |
4 |
1 |
2 |
20 |
|
|
3 |
4 |
1 |
3 |
2 |
3 |
2 |
1 |
19 |
|
|
3 |
2 |
1 |
2 |
g |
1 |
>> |
13 |
||
|
1 |
2 |
1 |
2 |
2 |
7 |
||||
|
2 |
1 |
2 |
1 |
7 |
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP
81
Taking these things into consideration the real income is easily in excess of that in Sandy Springs and the economic family is only 87. 4% as large as in that community. Taking these things into consideration, and the difference in the purchasing power of money since the time that the Sandy Springs study was made, the income per economic family is approximately the same as in Sandy Springs, a semi-rural community. In both cases there is a variation for the better from conditions shown to exist in Farmville, a town in Prince Edward County.11
The following budgets of family expenditures are selected from a number which were obtained from the negroes in Riivanna Dis- trict :
TABLE XIX: BUDGETS OF FAMILY EXPENDITURES.
Income Expenditures
Items Amts. Items. Amts.
Man's wages (odd jobs) $120.00 Food $216.00
Sale of crop 200.00 Clothes 120.00
Wife's washing (52 weeks Church 12.00
@ $1.50) 78.00 Liquor 3.00
Tobacco 4.00
Lodge 13.00
Doctor's bill 2.00
Patent medicines 6.00
Fuel 15.00
Balance 17.00
Total $398.00 Total $398.00
Income (shoemaker) ... $300.00 Food $156.00
Clothes 72.00
Church 12.00
Liquor 6.00
Tobacco 3.00
Lodge 15.00
Doctor's bill 5.00
Patent medicines 3.00
Fuel 15.00
Balance 13.00
Total $300.00 Total $300.00
11. W. E. B. DuBois, "The Negroes of Farmville, Va.." Labor De- partment Bulletin, No. 14.
—6
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PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
Man (laborer) . . . Woman (washing)
flSO.OO 36.00
Total
Woman (washing) Sale of eggs, etc. . .
$216.00
$ 48.00 50.00
Total $ 98.00
Food $120.00
Clothes 60.00
Church 3.00
Tobacco 1.20
Lodge 4.80
Doctor's bills 3.00
Patent medicines 3.00
Fuel 12.00
Balance 9.00
Total $216.00
Food $ 60.00
Clothes 12.00
Church 2.40
Lodge 10. SO
Doctor's bill 2.00
Fuel 9.00
Balance 1.80
Total $ 98.00
While the budgets are derived more or less from the imperfect memory of the negro informants and can not therefore be con- sidered as absolutely accurate, they at least give an idea of how the negroes in the county divide their incomes. Taking the average for twenty families, whose accounts are most apt to be accurate, we can obtain the percentage of total outlay for the five classes of expenditure, which, when compared with the con- ditions shown to exist in Athens, Ga.,12 indicate that the country negroes are more thrifty than those in the cities.
TABLE XX: EXPENDITURES OF RIVANNA AND ATHENS NEGROES COMPARED.
Item Rivanna Athens
% of total outlay % total outlay
Food 49% 29%
Clothing 24 8
Fuel 3 5
Lodging 0 5
Insurance " 3
Miscellaneous 17 50
1009fc 100%
12. Woofter, "The Negroes of Athens, Ga.." 50-51.
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 83
From this it would appear that the ratios of Engle's Law 13 come much nearer being approximated by the rural negroes in Rivanna District than is the case in Athens. This is as would be expected since the naturally wasteful tendencies of the negro are curbed in the rural districts by the absence of many of the temptations. In the following table is given the amounts spent for five classes of expenditures in Athens, Rivanna, and by the people of the United States in general who earn about the same incomes.
TABLE XXI: EXPENDITURES OF NEGROES OF RIVANNA,
OF ATHENS, AND OF NORMAL FAMILIES
IN THE U. S."
Rivanna Athens U. S. Inc. U. S. Inc.
Food 49%
Clothing 24
Lodging
Fuel and lights 3
Miscellaneous 24
100%
"The negro's standard of living, in Athens, is so low that he is able to spend the bulk of his earnings not on the necessities of life, but on pleasure and recreation." This condition, as far as it is possible to judge from limited investigations, does not exist to any great extent in the rural district ten miles from Charlottesville. The amount spent for food closely approxi- mates that eiven as normal for the United States. The fact that
|
under $200 |
$3 |
to $400 |
|
|
29% |
49.64% |
45.59 |
|
|
8 |
15.48 |
14.98 |
|
|
5 |
12.82 |
14.14 |
|
|
5 |
8.08 |
7.02 |
|
|
53 |
13.98 |
18.27 |
|
|
00% |
100% |
100% |
13. Investigations made by LePlay (1855), Engle (1857), and by the U. S. Commissioner of Labor (1891) all seem to agree with the following general inferences drawn by Engle: (1) As the income of a family increases a smaller amount is spent for food, and the ex- penditure for clothes remains practically the same. (2) The ex- penditure for rent, fuel, and light remains practically the same. (3) With increased income an increasing amount is spent for education, health, amusements, etc.
14. The figures for Athens are taken from Woofter, Ibid, pp. 51, and those for normal families in the U. S. are from the Report of the U. S. Commissioner of Agriculture for 1891.
84 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
the negroes raise much of their food would tend to raise this percentage, but this is probably overbalanced by the errors made by the negroes reporting by including other grocery store pur- chases such as oil, soap, matches, and the like with food. In the rural districts there is, of course, no such thing as a "service basket" which is given as one of the reasons for the low ex- penditure for food in Athens. The difference in the amount spent for clothes is considerable and the estimates given by the Rivanna negroes are probably too high. There is this to be noted, however: in towns where the negroes are largely house servants they are practically clothed by gifts while in the rural districts there is practically none of this. Furthermore, probably much of the money that is spent for lodging and incidentals in the cities is, in the country, to be registered in this column. The low amount expended for fuel is accounted for by the fact that many of the negroes cut their own wood from woodland or earn wood by chopping for the whites. The principal items included under "miscellaneous" for the Rivanna District are church, lodge (which is a form of insurance), doctor's bills, liquor, patent medicines and tobacco. The negroes in these sections seldom go to town and the proverbial "cheap prints, organs, and bric-a-brac" are, in this section at least, lacking. Thriftlessness, in the rural dis- tricts of Albemarle, makes itself noticeable not in the money wasted, but in what is never earned by the practice of numerous little economies on the farms.
In trying to analyse a population for its thrift, whether it lives in the "hand to mouth" manner or whether it is looking out for the future, we are accustomed to look for three things: (1) savings in money and property (2) insurance, and (3) to what extent an effort is made to produce the maximum wealth from the natural resources. We will examine briefly each of these as found among the negroes in the Rivanna District.
Of the 103 heads of families questioned only six had bank accounts, three being savings accounts and three current accounts. No attempt was made to ascertain what earnings had been put into property, but several of those interviewed had added to their holdings in the past year. In the matter of insurance conditions are much better. Of the 103 negro heads of families visited,
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 85
72 belong to some kind of a lodge which pays from $1.50 to $5.00 per week in case of sickness and funeral expenses in case of death. In addition to these 29 other negroes, who are not heads of families, carry such insurance. "The Southern Aid" with dues of 25 cents per week pays $5 per week in case of sick- ness and $70 at death; "St. Lukes," a mutual Society with dues of 25 cents per month pays from $1.50 to $2 per week in case of sickness and $100 at death. A great majority of the negroes interviewed belonged to one of these organizations, and others represented were "The Odd Fellows" with its widows and or- phans insurance, "The Central Relief," "The Providential Relief Association," "The Richmond Beneficial," etc. The rates in all of these societies are, as insurance, excessive, but they serve as social organizations as well, and their protection, if not altogether certain and very expensive, is much better than nothing. As for fire insurance it was found that most of the negroes whose houses were of any value had them insured ; few of those in log or inferior frame houses did.
In the country it is under the third heading where we should expect to find the greatest opportunity for the exercise of thrift. Here, indeed, there is the opportunity and those negroes who make the most of it do well while those who do not live poorly and accumulate nothing. Among the land owners interviewed there were only three without some kind of a garden and only eleven without a few chickens. But the gardens range all the way from a poorly scratched patch of corn and onions to those which are large and well cultivated and raise all kinds of vegeta- bles. L. M., for instance, who is not a regular farmer but an outside laborer as well, canned 100 cans of peas, corn, snaps, and tomatoes from his own garden for winter use. For all of the families except those of the most improvident class the number of chickens ranges from fifteen to thirty and a few of the farm- ers have a hundred or more. If there is anyone thing which might be taken as an index to the thrift of the negroes in this section, it is, perhaps, whether or not they keep any hogs. Of those interviewed 36 did not and 67 did ; and of those interviewed just about two thirds showed some evidence of a conscious e f- fort to improve their conditions, while the balance seemed con-
86 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
tent to live in more or less squalor and work only when neces- sary.
The occupations which employ the rural negroes of Albemarle County have been outlined and, in the survey of family econom- ics, it has been shown that for the industrious the incomes are sufficient to form the "nest egg" for economic independence. When such answers as "God Almighty knows," "all we can get," and the like are given to the questions asked relative to the differ- ent elements in the family expenditures, it is a mistake to place too much emphasis on the results ascertained.
But this much is obvious: (1) In the county there are fewer abnormalities in the negro's budget than in the city, and: (2) Even in the country, where a larger amount goes for necessities and less for incidentals, the standard of living is not sufficiently high to make all of the negroes work all of the time. Jackson Davis, the Supervisor of Rural Education in Virginia, says that "if only one third of their land (negroes') could be brought to its proper degree of production it ought to add to the wealth of the state by something like fifteen or twenty per cent." ls What- ever the amounts, the principle that inefficient producers are a drain on the wealth of the people as a whole remains the same. The problem, therefore, is to so diversify the wants of the negro producer that he will put forth his best efforts to attain them. But as a race the negroes are inferior in efficiency and they will always have to stand away from the effects of white competition. It is in the country, on the small farms and in the semi-skilled trades, where the negroes, better educated and with better indus- trial training, must try to make their place. Here the effect of white competition is reduced to a minimum and the absence of temptation curbs many of their weaknesses.
15. In an address delivered at the Rural Life Conference at the University of Virginia, 1911.
\\
CHAPTER VI. Social Conditions.
The sanitary conditions in the negro communities in the county, are, as is apt to be the case in the rural districts, far better than in the towns and cities. There is, of course, a great diversity in the cleanliness and orderliness of the places. The premises of those negro owners of the upper group are usually tidy and well kept, while those of the lower group are apt to be dirty and the fences and outhouses in poor repair.
Of the 103 homes visited, 65 were either painted or white- washed and 32 were unpainted. 36 of the former group were well painted and the remainder were whitewashed. Notice was also taken of the condition of the outhouses and fences, and the fences were arbitrarily classed as in "good condition,*' "fair con- dition," "poor condition, and "no fences." There were of the first group 60: 13 were classed as fair, and on 27 of the places there were either no fences or they were in a very "run-down" condition. Throughout the observations this approximate ratio of two families who show some degree of thrift to one that is totally shiftless seems to hold good.
The houses occupied by the families in the rural districts of Albemarle County which were visited contain from two to ten rooms, the greater number being of from three to five rooms. There is an average number of occupants per room of 1.1 per- sons, while in Sandy Springs the same average is 1.26 and in Athens it is 1.32.1 The following table shows the distribution of the families in the houses :
Many of the two and three room houses are log built, but not a majority of them. A majority of the three and four room houses are two story frame buildings with one room on each floor and a shed kitchen. Such houses are, indeed, typical of the negroes — thev insist on having two stories if there is only
1. Thorn, 91 and Woofter, 17.
87
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TABLE XXII: FAMILIES BY SIZE OF FAMILY AND NUM- BER OF ROOMS TO A HOUSE AMONG THE 103 FAMILIES VISITED IN THE RIVANNA DISTRICT.
Families according to houses of
Two Size of fam. rooms
1 member
2 members 4
3 members 3
4 members
5 members 3
6 members 1
7 members 1
8 members
9 members 1
10 members
12 members
13 members
Total families 13
Total rooms 26
6 7
10
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5 3 |
1 |
2 |
o |
1 |
||
|
4 2 |
4 |
2 |
||||
|
6 7 |
1 |
|||||
|
1 3 |
5 |
1 |
o |
|||
|
1 3 |
1 |
3 |
||||
|
1 1 |
3 |
1 |
||||
|
1 "^ |
1 |
1 |
||||
|
1 2 |
1 |
1 |
||||
|
2 |
1 |
1 |
||||
|
1 |
||||||
|
21 27 |
15 |
13 |
4 |
6 |
1 |
1 |
|
63 108 |
75 |
78 |
28 |
48 |
9 |
10 |
Xot
rep't Total 2
2 21
16
14
16
9
8
6
6
3
1
1
2 103
445*
one room above. Most of the houses above three rooms are fairly good frame buildings usually painted or whitewashed and in good repair. The rooms, in the best of the houses, are of fair size, well ventilated, and fairly well furnished. Careful no- tice was taken of the furnishings which, in point of neatness and repair, were found to correspond very closely to the fences, outhouses, and exterior of the houses. We would naturally ex- pect to find these conditions better among home owning country negroes than among city renters and, as far as can be judged from observation, they are materially better. That the houses are less crowded is shown by comparing the figures for Athens: there two and three room houses are the most usual while in Albemarle County three and four room houses prevail. In Athens 93% of the families live in houses of fewer than five rooms while among those families in Albemarle County visited the same percentage was 73. No case was found where two
*Not including rooms occupied by 2 families not reported.
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP
89
distinct families occupied one house though in several instances there was one or more outside member.
Again, as would be expected in the country, the conditions of sanitation are far better than are shown by observation in Char- lottesville. As a rule the houses in the country are fairly clean and not more than ten per cent, of them appear to be unclean to the point of endangering health. The ventilation is always good and, since the negro communities are usually on ridges rather than in the bottoms, the drainage is good. Particular notice was taken of the privies which were found, in most cases, to be built at a reasonably safe distance from the house and water supply and in sanitary condition. In the 103 homes visited there had not been a single case of typhoid fever for over two years and, as far as the memory of the informants can be trusted, there had only been six deaths from it in the present families. The water supply is usually either from wells or springs on the premises or those of neighbors. Judging from the typhoid record the supply is evidently free from pollution. -
The Negro Organization Society has undertaken, and is carry- ing through, an extensive program for the betterment of health conditions among the negroes throughout the state. At the request of this society the Department of Health of Virginia annually issues a handbook of health especially adapted for use among the colored people and distributes it among them gratis. It contains instructions of how to keep the springs and wells clean, how to construct sanitary privies, instructions in venti- lation, personal cleanliness, etc. The society has also under- taken the organization of a league among the negroes, the mem- bers of which will pledge themselves to build a sanitary privy, to provide adequate fresh air, to keep the body clean, and to protect the water supply. The effect of these movements will undoubtedly be beneficial to the negroes in both town and coun- try.
The moral and sanitary conditions in the homes are, normally.
2. A careful investigation of this is being made in conjunction with the school census. The results will be published with those of the sociological survey now being undertaken by the public institutions of the county and city.
90 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
in large measure determined by the character of the women who, under present social conditions, are the home-makers. Im- morality or much outside work on the part of the housewives would naturally be expected to entail evil consequences. As has been seen only six housewives work out regularly and the remainder can, if they so desire, give most of their time to mak- ing their houses homes. Conjugal conditions also affect the home environment and it is important to notice the extent of widowhood, separation, and illegitimacy. The following con- ditions were found among those families visited: 80, or 77.7c/0 married or living together as man and wife; 15 or 14.6% of the heads of families either widows or widowers; 5 or 4.8% separated; and there were 3 or 2.9c/0 women unmarried with children. Compared with similar statistics for other localities the percentage of illegitimacy is low in the Rivanna District, and the percentage of men and women living together as man and wife is high. There are eleven widows and four widowers not married again. Now, where illegitimacy and separation are low and where few of the women have to give all of their time to breadwinning, we should expect to find home conditions pro- portionately better. Add to this the abundance of fresh air and room afforded in the country and it is apparent that, whiie conditions are much better here than in the towns, there is yet room for much improvement. Industry and frugality on the part of the women who can devote their time to the home should bring these results in direct proportion as they are practiced. These, however, are characteristics biologically lacking in the negroes and must, if the best results are to be expected, be sup- plied by domestic training in the schools.
Illiteracy among the negroes, as is shown by the figures for the different ages, is decreasing with remarkable rapidity, but there are still a very large number unable to read and write. The following table shows the conditions of illiteracy in Albe- marle County, exclusive of Charlottesville, in 1910: 3
3. This table was prepared especially by the Census Bureau and is not to be found in any printed report.
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 91
TABLE XXIII: AGE AND LITERACY OF NEGROES FOR AL- BEMARLE COUNTY.
Males Females Total %
10 to 20 years
Literate 1,046 1,226 2.272 85.6
Illiterate 237 147 384 14.4
21 years and over
Literate 1.180 1.335 2,515 57.1
Illiterate 893 1,002 1,895 42.9
Total
Literate 2,226 2,561 4.787 07.7
Illiterate 1,130 1,149 2,279 32.3
The last tabulated statistics in the office of the Division Su- perintendent of Schools4 shows a total school population in Al- bemarle County of 10,211, of whom 6,573 are white and 3,638 are negroes. The total number of whites enrolled is 4,120 or 62% and the total number of negro children enrolled is 1,860 or 51 °f0- Both of these percentages, however, are too low be- cause some 850 children from the county attend school in Char- lottesville. Few negro children above the age of fifteen attend, which in part accounts for their low percentage of enrollment. The absence of school facilities for children of this age was, by the way, the occasion of critical comments from several of the negroes interviewed. The percentage of daily attendance throughout the session is ?7 .4 ' ', for the whites and 70.9% for the negroes, the advantage in favor of the negroes being ex- plained by the fact that they live in communities, which makes school attendance in bad weather comparatively easy, while many of the whites live at greater distances from the schools, and by the fact that more white children are taken out of schooi in the spring to work on the farms. For the 4,120 white chil- dren 72 schools are open and for the 1.860 negroes there are 43 schools. For the whites there is one teacher for every 23 pupils and one to every 3? negro pupils.
4. For this and the succeeding information I am indebted to Mr. H. M. McMannaway, Division Supt. of Schools.
92 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
The average salary paid white teachers is $43.65 and the av- erage salary paid the negro teachers is $26.87. The minimum salary paid to negro teachers is $20 per month which is paid to the emergency teachers. There are among the 53 negro teach- ers in the county 25 who have attended Hampton, Petersburg, Lynchburg, or the Hartshorne School in Richmond and most of these are fairly well trained. The others have been trained in the local schools, and, as a whole, are not capable instructors.
The length of the negro session is about the same as that for the whites in the lower grades and, throughout the county, averages about 6.2 months. Many of the schools in the county, both white and negro, are helped by private subscription to con- tinue for a longer session. The county agrees to furnish the balance for an extra month to each community which will raise one-half of the necessary expenses. As a result of this system there was, last year, a 26^, increase in the number of days ac- tually taught.
Next session three of the negro schools will go through the eighth grade, seven through the seventh grade, and thirty-two through the fifth, while one will carry two years of high school work and will be used as a training school for teachers and a state certificate will be issued. This school will be operated with the assistance of the John F. Slater Fund, which will as- sist several such schools next session according to the following conditions recently announced by its director: "For the next session we propose to aid in about thirty, provided the reasonable conditions are fulfilled. These conditions * * * are that the school property shall belong to the state or county, thus fix- ing the school as a part of the public school system; second, that there shall be an appropriation of at least $750 from the public funds for maintenance: third, that the teaching shall be carried strictly and honestly through the eighth grade, including industrial work, and in the last year some training, however elementary, for the work of teaching. Under these conditions the Slater Fund has agreed to appropriate $500 for mainte- nance, and in the first year, where new buildings or repairs may be necessary, to aid in supplying these in cooperation with
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 93
amounts raised from other sources." 5
One object of the questionaire was to ascertain to what ex- tent old negroes who never went to school have learned how to read, and to what extent those who have been to school con- tinue to read. To the question "can you read," the answer "a little" was given both by old negroes who had never been to school and by a few who had been to school. Several were found who could read, but who could not write, and one man said that he could read printing but not writing. These are the negroes who have acquired it without ever having gone to school.
A question was asked relative to whether or not a newspaper or magazine was regularly received in the home. It was found that at least one paper went regularly into 34 homes, but in only five cases was it a farm journal. In 17 of the homes visited, The Charlottesville Messenger, a newspaper published by a negro in Charlottesville, was read, and in 12 others the papers subscribed to were : The Charlottesville Progress, The Toledo Blade, The New York World, The Kansas City Star, The Wash- ington Post, etc.
Twenty-eight of the negro men answered that they voted, and all but one gave their politics as Republican. The greatest possi- ble ignorance was shown in some of the discussions that the literate landowners volunteered in answer to this question. One declared that no colored people were allowed to vote and that "they used to be but not now." In another home, where the questions were answered by a woman who was above the av- erage in intelligence, the whole family except one daughter seemed firmly convinced that the negroes were disfranchised, and when the little girl said that so and so voted, her mother answered that "he must be a democrat." In the matter of party affiliation a still greater ignorance is shown ; many of them ac- tually seem to think that the Democrats wash to re-enslave them and that the Republicans are God-sent saviors to the race.
This is, of course, a heritage of the Reconstruction Period,
5. Report of Director J. H. Dillard, 1915.
94 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
when the negroes were taught by the unscrupulous adventurers from the North and the equally unscrupulous Southerners who tried to use the negro vote for their own ends, that their inter- ests were inherently opposed to those of the whites, and the whites, to maintain their supremacy, were forced to unite in one race party regardless of political belief. This caused a gulf, politically at least, between the better class of Southern whites and the negroes which has never been entirely healed, and which, according to Thomas Nelson Page,6 is the greatest misfortune that has ever befallen the negro race in America, not excepting its ravishment from its native land. To the whites, on the other hand, it meant practical disfranchisement because party names were made synonyms for color, and they were no longer able to divide on grounds of political belief and economic interests. With the partial disfranchisement of the negroes this evil has been lessened and there has of recent years developed a very re- spectable opposition party. But there can never be two strong parties, which are necessary for the welfare of the government, until the negroes are disillusioned and divide along the same economic lines as the whites with the same economic interests. This end will come nearer to realization with the industrial ad- vancement of the negroes, because where there is a vital self- interest economic considerations will bring about a political di- vision.
The only provision for the industrial training of the rural negroes of Albemarle County is a school supervisor of industrial work. She receives a salary of $495 for eleven months service which is provided jointly by the Jeannes Fund, the General Board of Education, and the County Board of Education. While this is, of course, very inadequate, it at least shows that the ten- dency is toward more practical education for the negroes, and the results of her work are very noticeable. She visits the va- rious negro schools of the county, gives lessons in some indus- try, plans for the regular teacher to give succeeding lessons, organizes movements to raise money for longer terms and better
6. "The Negro: The Southerners' Problem."
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 95
equipment, and in general looks after the advancement of prac- tical education in the county.
The supervising industrial teacher last year made 130 visits to 22 schools in the county and raised $1,127 among the negroes for buildings, school extension, and pupils' prizes. In these visits she gave lessons in gardening, cooking, sewing and quilt- ing, organized canning clubs, gave instructions in health and san- itation, etc. In the summer her time is occupied in visiting the negro homes in the county, where the same type of instruction in domestic economy and gardening is given.
After all else is said, the fact remains that the negroes, al- though a decreasing ratio, form a large part of the population of Virginia, and if the agricultural possibilities of the state are to be developed, this sort of training must be further extended. In theory, at least, it is no new idea. Dr. A. D. Mayo says : "Al- most 100 years ago young Thomas Jefferson drew up a scheme for the education of the people of Virginia, which, had it been adopted, would have changed the history of that and of every other state and of the nation. He proposed to emancipate the slaves and fit them by industrial training for freedom ; to es- tablish a free school for every white child. * * and to crown all with a university." But in practice it is a new thing and it is only in the last few years that the results at- tained at Hampton have been recognized and the same methods been put into practice elsewhere.
The agricultural prosperity of Virginia depends largely on the extension of this kind of education which reaches the negroes and makes them more efficient producers. "Because our educa- tional machinery has failed in the past," says Davis ' "to fit the negroes for rural life, wherein lies his greatest opportunity for happiness and gain to himself and state, is no reason why we should condemn negro education ; but it is an excellent rea- son why we should change the character of that education in order that the negro may know how to produce more, live better, and add to the common wealth of the state."
7. Jackson Davis in an address delivered before the Rural Life Con- ference at the University of Virginia in 1911.
96 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
It is only to the enthusiast that the negro's religion appears a vital force in his progress. Although it is urged by those who have studied the question that it is improving with great rapid- ity,8 the religion of the negro is at present one of systematized emotion and lacking in ethical import. Christianity is, indeed, too new a thing with all primitive peoples to be appreciated be- yond its emotional side. Its emotionalism resembles their native religion and appeals to their nature, but they have little desire for its ethical side and in adopting the outward forms of Chris- tianity this has often been omitted. Improved ethical standards may be expected to come with a higher standard of living, be- cause the immoral disposition is produced in all mentally weak people, not by the absence of churches, but by social and eco- nomic conditions which force them along the lines of least resist- ance.
Even in its present primitive condition, however, the negro church has an important mission among its people. The churches and lodges furnish most of the social life for the negroes and, since outside of these there is practically no innocent recreation for them, this is of the greatest practical importance. Since hu- man nature will never tolerate a vacuum, the natural craving for recreation must be met, and unless it is cleanly met it is apt to seek criminal outlets. Says a wise observer:* "Prohibition is good as far as it goes even though in our cities it does not go at all. But it will never, by itself, do very much more than just slick up life on the outside. It is purely a negative measure, a gigantic 'thou shalt not.' " This is equally applicable to every form of prohibition and if our statutes deny certain outlets for the negro's play instinct society must afford others or else the statutes, unsupported by public sentiment, will become, for all practical purposes, nul and void. In so far, then, as the churches, by their long and emotional Sunday "sessions" and their occa- sional "sociables" afford an outlet for the instinct which other- wise might go into immoral channels, they are an agency for the betterment of the race. The lodges have a similar function.
8. See Weatherford, "Negro Life in the South."
9. L. H. Hammond in "In Black and White."
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 97
One appeals to the negro's nature by its emotionalism and one by its ritualism and both, therefore, can afford him a pleasing and innocent form of recreation.
Except for those who were too young and nine more, every one of the 487 negroes represented in the families visited claimed membership in one of the Baptist Churches of the county. One who was not a member had been expelled for "getting drunk" and two more did not "care for preaching." These were, in- deed, singular exceptions to the rule, because most of the ne- groes interviewed said that they never missed a "preaching" or a "meeting." And for all of these negroes the church affords a community center where the better of them can exchange ideas which may be of practical importance.
Because the church has such a hold on the people there are many practical possibilities in it. The negro preacher is a much respected and revered person among his people, and with an in- telligent and industrious preacher this reverence could be put to good use. There are in the state a few negro preachers who have been trained at such institutions as Hampton, and their ministry is of much greater value to their people than that of those who have specialized on a so-called theology. As commu- nity leaders they can exert a great influence over their followers in habits of frugality, industry, health, and morality. With more negro preachers who are well trained in these fundamentals the church can, as a social, intellectual, and economic center, exer- cise a great influence.
CHAPTER VII. Reflections and Conclusions.1
Booker T. Washington, the negro whose wise race leadership, will make him long remembered not only as a valued servant to his race in America but to the entire South, declared that the negro was not given freedom by the Emancipation Proclamation but that independence would come only by self earned economic emancipation. Stability, thrift, industry and purpose, where competition is free, may be said to constitute the prerequisites of economic independence. This much granted it follows that the environment which will best facilitate the development of these traits in a people in which they are more or less organically lack- ing but which is still in the plastic stage of social growth is the one to be desired. Recognized authorities, who base their opin- ion on careful study, are convinced that rural occupations offer the best opportunity for the development of these qualities, and it is the lesson of history that the roots of civilization must be "struck deep into the soil" before the processes of production can be mastered or before the most efficient social group can develop. Of no less importance are the principles of consump- tion— the ability to get the maximum of benefit from the pro- ducts of labor — and these were likewise first learned in the culti- vation of the soil.
"We are living in a country where," says Washington, "if we are to succeed at all, we are going to do so largely by what we raise out of the soil. * * * Plainly, then, the best thing, the logical thing, is to turn the larger part of our strength in a di- rection that will make the negro among the most skilled agricul- tural people in the world. * * * This policy would tend to keep the negro in the country and smaller towns, where he succeeds best, and stop the influx to the cities, where he does not succeed
1. The substance of this chapter appeared in an article by the writer in the May, 1915, "Southern Workman."
98
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 99
so well." - Such quotations as this express the opinions of the most capable negro leaders and most thoughtful writers and lie at the basis of the methods being pursued at Tuskegee, Hamp- ton, and the other lesser schools. Upon examination the rea- sons for this opinion seem to fall under four principal heads.
In the first place there is the question of health. At the pres- ent time when the new science of eugenics is being so widely discussed it is well to remember that the principles of euthenics — or the improvement of the environment — are still necessary supplements to race regeneration. Without healthy bodies the people cannot develop to their greatest potentialities, and with- out healthy bodies the vitality of the generations to come may be materially weakened. And the environment — the food, the housing, the sanitary conditions — largely determines the condi- tion of the body.
Under present urban conditions, where the struggle for ex- istence is severest, the challenge is great to both the white and black races ; but it is greatest to the negro, whose power of re- sistance has been determined by natural selection acting in a different climate and under different conditions. In the case of tuberculosis, for instance, there has been a selection against the susceptibility to the disease in the white race for thousands of years, but it is new to the negroes and consequently works much greater havoc. In Washington, D. C. the death rate of negro infants from this disease is nearly four and a half times as great as that for the whites, and in Virginia there are 221 negroes who die from the disease to every 100 whites. The same is true of other diseases which are new to the negroes. In Virginia negro mortality from lockjaw is over four times as great as the white, from syphilis, over three times as great, and from dysentery, nearly three times as great. All of these diseases — and the others responsible for the sixty per cent, excess of negro mortality — are peculiarly prevalent in the cities.3 The negro in
2. "The Future of the American Negro."
3. Dr. Williams, state health commissioner, in his report to Gov- ernor Stuart, says: "The tuberculosis rate is lowest among the rural white population, next lowest among the urban white population.
100 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
the city is exposed to them because economic conditions force him to live largely in the congested districts, and they are espe- cially hazardous to him because he has not evolved the same re- sistance by long contact and selection against them. Further- more, there are the powerful degenerating forces of alcohol, drugs, and vice to which the negro is more susceptible in the cities. In short, racial regeneration along euthenic lines for the negro is a much simpler problem in the country than in the towns and cities ; in the country better health will permit the develop- ment of the greatest potentialities.
The negro's problem is partly biologic: Its solution consists in bringing about the proper adjustment between environment and racial inheritance.
Secondly, it may be stated that in the country house tends more rapidly to become home, and in proportion as this is true there is greater social development. Civilization begins with the sense of possession, and possession finds one of its most per- fect expressions in the ownership of the home. In the cities this is impossible for most negroes — as indeed it is for J;he whites; in the country it is a necessary correlative of farm ownership. Ar- thur Young has said that a man will make a garden spot of a rock in mid-ocean to which he owns title, but that without this sense of proprietorship most of his productive labor will be wasted. There is much wisdom in this statement. Ownership gives the people pride, thrift, and industry ; with pride the house takes on the little niceties that make it a home, with thrift small savings and economies grow to larger beginnings, and industry leads to increased production.
The development of the race as a social group, furthermore, requires that a certain responsibility to fellow-man be developed. By giving the landlord an interest in the affairs of society and government this moral quality follows directly from proprietor- ship, because where there is an interest in the affairs of society there is social responsibility. Until this quality is developed in
with the rural negroes suffering more than the urban whites and the city negroes dying at a rate twice as great as that of the rural whites, and almost twice as great as that of the urban whites."
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 101
the race their religion will remain a system of sensationalism without morals ; their schools can never become mediums for real development ; and there can be no basis for the demand for a participation in the social control. According to the early Sax- ons the land was the man and by this they meant that the man could never be a responsible unit in the group unless he had the conservatism engendered by ownership. The shiftlessness of the nomad tenants in the Lower South offers a negative illustration of this principle ; the thrifty and law-abiding small fanners all over the South show the extent to which personal and social efficiency can be bred by the pride of ownership.
The negro's problem is largely social: This consists in de- veloping the qualities which will make him responsible to him- self and to society.
Third. What may, for want of a better word, be termed "racial education," receives a greater stimulus in the country. This may, because of the uniformly poorer school facilities in the country, seem paradoxical, but racial education does not always begin with books. Dr. H. B. Frissell writes : * "We feel at Hamp- ton that the farm gives our students the best chance for improve- ment that they have, and it is a most excellent training school. Those who come to us, after helping their fathers and mothers to cultivate and pay for a small piece of land, have had a valua- ble experience not otherwise obtainable." It is these guiding principles which must be thoroughly ingrained into the nature of the race that have been termed racial education, and they are necessary before there can be any real adaption to new condi- tions. It was the long task of the Middle Ages to train the Teutons in the concept of authority that they might be prepared to receive the intellectual awakening of the Renaissance without overturning society. In a similar way the laws of racial develop- ment must work slowly to train the negroes in habits of thrift and industry ; such racial education has a better chance for growth in the country than in the city.
This process is along the lines suggested by General Armstrong and developed at Hampton and Tuskegee ; it is the form of train-
4. In a letter to the writer.
102 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
ing which works toward the education of Huxley's definition — to bring man "in harmony with nature." Such a point of view takes the stand that knowledge is useless unless purposeful, and declares that the great end of life is action rather than knowl- edge per se. And yet this is clearly but a beginning; the train- ing, to be effective, must continue for a longer period than it is possible to give in a few brief years. The negro, like every- body else, will never be possessed of anything he does not achieve for himself; and if, with this kind of training, he builds where- ever his capabilities will carry him, he will have accomplished the end.
Much of the negro's problem is educational: The crux of the educational problem is to lay the foundations firm in economic efficiency.
The fourth and final advantage which may be mentioned is the economic. Without economic security the advantages ac- cruing to health, education, social conditions, and what not might be enumerated indefinitely but never with any degree of con- viction. Professor Sumner, says:5 "We are told that moral forces alone can elevate any such people again. But it is plain that a people which has sunk below the reach of the economic forces of self-interest has certainly sunk below the reach of moral forces, and that this objection is superficial and short- sighted. What is true is that economic forces always go before moral forces. Men feel self-interest long before they feel pru- dence, self-control, and temperance. They lose the moral forces long before they lose the economic forces. If they can be re- generated at all it must be first by distress appealing to self-in- terest and forcing recourse to some expedient for relief. * * * The economic forces work with moral forces and are their hand- maids, but the economic forces are far more primitive, original, and universal. The glib generalities in which we sometimes hear people talk, as if you could set moral and economic forces sep- arate from and in antithesis to each other, and discard the one to accept and work by the other, gravely misconstrue the reali- ties of the social order."
5. Sumner, "The Challenge of Facts and Other Essays" quoted in Keller, "Societal Evolution."
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 103
This analysis of the forces of social progress is peculiarly apt in relation to the negro, because it is here, probably more than anywhere else, that students have missed the main point and have tried to find the solution of the race problem in forces other than the economic. But here, as elsewhere, the economic problem lies at the very heart of the welfare of the group, and its laws determine the course of the individuals ; all other social adjust- ments follow as its results.
"Marginal productivity," economists tell us, "is partly deter- mined by the price which the entrepreneur has to pay for the services of the factors in production." Xow, the negro agricul- tural entrepreneur or farmer is, by being his own laborer, one of the factors in production, and since the cost of his standard of living is lower than that of the white he gains a differential ad- vantage over him up to but not beyond the point of diminishing efficiency. Or, as Professor Branson puts it, "Lower standards of living prevail over and gradually displace higher standards of living wherever the higher standards are weakened by luxurious wants and undefended by increasing energy and skill." This principle is less applicable in the cities than in the country, be- cause in the urban vocations the negro is less capable of compet- ing with the white, and because here his extravagance, for all practical purposes, raises his standard of living to near that of the whites. On the farms, however, it is different.
The enormous gains in farm ownership that the negroes have made in recent years all over the South not only illustrate this principle, but show that the negroes are unconsciously taking ad- vantage of it. There is this, however, to be noted : other peo- ples, such as the Italians and other immigrants, are gradually coming South, and with their almost equally low standard of liv- ing and greater economic efficiency have an advantage over the negroes. If the negro, therefore, is to retain the economic ad- vantage as an agricultural worker that he now enjoys, his effici- ency must be maintained and increased.
The negro's problem is essentially economic: It consists in maintaining, by increased efficiency, the advantage which he now enjoys in the rural districts.
APPENDIX AND BIBLIOGRAPHY.
APPENDIX.
In compiling the following tables of statistics for Virginia by sections the counties of the state were arbitrarily divided into three groups as follows :
Tidewater: Accomac, Alexandria, Caroline, Charles City, Elizabeth City, Essex, Fairfax, Greenesville, Gloucester, Isle of Wight, James City, King and Queen, King William, King George, Lancaster, Mathews, Middlesex, Nansemond, New Kent, Norfolk, Northampton, Northumberland, Stafford, Rich- mond, Prince William, Prince George, Princess Anne, South- ampton, Surrey, Sussex, Warwick, Westmoreland, and York.
Piedmont: Albemarle, Amelia, Amherst, Appomattox, Bed- ford, Brunswick, Buckingham, Campbell, Charlotte, Chesterfield, Culpeper, Cumberland, Dinwiddie, Fluvanna, Franklin, Goochland, Halifax, Hanover, Greene, Henrico, Fauquier, Henry, Louisa, Lunenburg, Madison, Mecklenburg, Nelson, Nottoway, Orange, Patrick, Pittsylvania, Powhatan, Prince Edward, Rappahannock, and Spottsylvania.
Valley and Southwest: Alleghany, Augusta, Bath, Bland, Botetourt, Buchanan, Carrol, Clark, Craig, Floyd, Frederick, Giles, Grayson, Highland, Lee, Loudoun, Montgomery, Page, Pulaski, Roanoke, Dickinson, Rockbridge, Rockingham, Russell, Scott, Shenandoah, Smythe, Tazewell, Warren, Washington, Wise, and Wythe.
While it is impossible to put all of the counties in Virginia into one of these three groups without involving a certain amount of inaccuracy, it has been done here in order to make the tables complete for the state. In the final result there is no material difference, and it is convenient to consider the conditions in Vir- ginia as varying in these three sections.
The figures for the first table were compiled from the Re- port of the Auditor of Public Accounts for 1914 and the Re-
104
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 105
port of the Virginia Tax Commission which based its estimate of the ratio between actual value and assessed value on an exam- ination of sale prices in the various counties. These computa- tions were made for each county and compiled into the table by sections. The figures for the second table were taken from the thirteenth census and the Auditor's Report and were compiled in the same manner.
TABLE A: LAND VALUES BY SECTIONS AND RACES.
Tidewater Piedmont Val. & S. W.
Ass. value negro land & bldgs... $ 6,139,015 $ 7,634,131 $ 919,131
Ass. value white land & bldgs... 56,560,543 78,471,144 80,436,301
Ratio to true value 34% .".:.". 22.6%
Est. true value negro land & bldgs. 18,055,926 23,856,659 4,064,287
Est. true value white land & bldgs. 166,354,538 245,222,325 355,912,836
Ass. value negro lots and imp... 1,873,945 879,099 564,949
Ass. value white lots and imps.. 18,633,325 1S,588,161 16,996,805
Ratio to true value 42.6% 43% 31%
Est. true value negro lots and imps. 4,396,593 2,032,742 1,822,419
Est. true value white lots and imps. 43,740,199 43,228,281 54,828,400
TABLE B: POPULATION AND FARMS BY SECTIONS AND
RACES.
Tidewater Piedmont Val. & S W.
White pop. 1910 226,846
Negro pop. 1900 211,367
Negro pop. 1910 221,387
White farms 1910 26,887
Negro farms 1910 18,654
Negro owned acreage 1914 600,809
White owned acreage 1914 4,635,184
Negro owned farms in 1910 12,735
% of negro farms op. by owners. 68.1%
|
364,698 |
518,818 |
|
274,295 |
61,939 |
|
254,972 |
54.555 |
|
50,746 |
58,122 |
|
27,444 |
1,993 |
|
1,024,264 |
65,561 |
|
9,141,699 |
8,034,745 |
|
17,854 |
1,616 |
|
62.57o |
71% |
The whole of the Rivanna District, which extends north and east of Charlottesville some seventeen miles, was traversed by carriage. In these drives the homes of some three hundred ne- groes were seen and records were made, according to the fol- lowing schedule, for 103 families. These were picked from the different communities all over the district and include about the
106 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
proper proportions for each class of negro family. The idea was to interview typical families in each class and the visits were made with this object in view.
QUESTIONAIRE AND OBSERVATIONS. Economic:
Black
Name Age (about) Mulatto
District Acres owned Rented
Assessed Val Value based on
sales Declared value Soil
Fertilizer (any used and what kind)
Type of neighboring white farms
Any other means of support
Any contribution by members of family
Crop Diversification
Tilable area Income : wages per day
days worked sale price of crop
total Expenditures:
clothes food tobacco
liquor church lodge
patent medicines doctors bills
fuel total Have you a bank
account Where Any insurance
Where do you buy what food
quantities cash Do you
borrow purpose security
Live stock (what) Number
Value Poultry
Value Garden patch
what raised Anything canned
House rooms painted
No. occupants furniture Outhouses
What condition Fences
Implements Satisfied with country life
Children leaving
Education:
Can you read write What school did you
attend Do children attend
where Why not (if not)
Do they attend regularly
Grade Do you vote
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 107
party What paper do you take
Do you know any Hampton people . . .
What do you think of them
Health:
Are you married, divorced, separated
Number in family number children
number children lost Diseases: tuberculosis
typhoid fever Privy
Who is your doctor
Social and Religious:
Do you belong to a church Denomination
How many of family belong Do
you attend How often Where
Church sociables
How often Preachers: (see some of them)
Do you belong
to a lodge Name of same
Type: sick funeral death
social life Am't of dues
Am't of benefit
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Barringer, P. B.
"The American Xegro." An address delivered before the Tri-State Medical Society at Charleston, 1900.
Brawley, B. G.
"A Short History of the American Negro."
Brooks, R. P.
"A Local Study of the Race Problem." (Political Science Quarterly, 1911.)
Bruce, P. A.
"The Plantation Negro as a Free Man."
Church, J. W.
"The Halifax Plan for the Practical Education of the Negro." (Hampton Press, 1910.)
108 phelps-stokes fellowship papers
Davis, Jackson.
"The Negro in Country Life." An address delivered be- fore the Rural Life Conference at the University of Virginia, 1911.
DuBois, W. E. B.
"The Negro Artisan" — (Atlanta University Publications.)
"The Negroes of Farmville, Va." (Bulletin of the Depart- ment of Labor, No. 14.)
"Negro Landholders of Georgia." (Bulletin of the Depart- ment of Labor, No. 35. )
"The Souls of the Black Folk."
FlEmming, W. H.
"Documentary History of the Reconstruction."
Hammond, L. H.
"In Black and White: An Interpretation of Southern Life."
Hart, A. B.
"The Southern South."
"American History told by Contemporaries."
Hill, W. B.
"A Rural Survey of Clark County, Ga., with Special Refer- ence to the Negroes." (Phelps-Stokes Fellowship Studies No. 2 Bulletin of the University of Georgia.)
Keller, A. G.
"Societal Evolution."
Kelsey, Carl.
"The Negro Farmer."
Murphy, E. G.
"The Basis of Ascendency." "Problems of the Present South."
Page, Thomas Nelson. "The Old Dominion." "The Negro: The Southerner's Problem."
Patterson,
"The Negro and His Needs."
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 109
Stone, A. H.
"Studies in the American Race Problem."
Thom, W. T.
"The Negroes of Sandy Springs, Md." (Bulletin of the Department of Labor, Xo. 32.)
"The Negroes of Litwalton, Ya." (Bulletin of the Depart- ment of Labor, No. 37. )
Tillinghast, J. A.
"The Negro in Africa and America." ( Publications of the
American Economic Association, 1902. ) "The South in the Building of the Nation" — articles by Flemming, Parker, Clark and Jacobson.
Washington, Booker T.
"The Future of the American Negro."
"Up From Slavery."
"The Story of the Negro."
"The Negro in the South" (joint author with DuBois.)
Walker, T. C.
"Negro Property Holding in Tidewater Virginia." (Annals the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, 1913.)
Weatherford, W. D.
"Negro Life in the South." "Present Forces in Negro Progress."
Williams, W. T. B.
"Local Conditions Among Negroes." (Hampton Press, 1906.)
Woods, Edgar.
"History of Albemarle."
WoOFTER, J. T.
"The Negroes of Athens, Ga." ( Phelps-Stokes Fellowship Studies No. 1, Bulletin of the University of Georgia.)
Work, Monroe N.
"Negro Year Book, 1914-15."
110 phelps-stokes fellowship papers
Reports of the Census Bureau.
"The Southern Workman" — files in the Library of the Uni- versity of Virginia.
Report of the State Auditor of Public Accounts, 1914.
Report of the Virginia Tax Commission, 1914.
Handbook of the Virginia Department of Health.
Year Books of the Virginia Department of Agriculture.
Reports of the Slater and Jeannes Funds.
Reports of the Hampton Xegro Conferences 1898-1911.
The Michie Company, Printers Charlottesville, Virginia
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