ensus of 1880 gave proof of the superiority of the
whites in cotton production. For purposes of comparison the
cotton area may be divided into three regions: first, the
Black Belt, in which the farmers were black, the soil
fertile, the plantations large, the credit evil at its
worst, and the yield of cotton per acre the least; second,
the white districts, where the soil was the poorest, the
farms small, the workers nearly all white, and the yield per
acre better than on the fertile Black Belt lands; third, the
regions in which the races were nearly equal in numbers or
where the whites were in a slight majority, with soil of
medium fertility, good methods of agriculture, and, owing to
better controlled labor, the best yield. In ether words,
Negroes, fertile soil, and poor crops went together; and on
the other hand the whites got better crops on less fertile
soil. The Black Belt has never again reached the level of
production it had in 1880. But the white district kept
improving slowly.

"By the use of commercial fertilizers, vast regions once considered
barren have been brought into profitable cultivation, and really afford
a more reliable and constant crop than the rich alluvial lands of the
old slave plantations. In nearly every agricultural county in the South
there is to be observed, on the one hand, this section of fertile soils,
once the heart, of the old civilization, now abandoned by the whites,
held in tenantry by a dense Negro population, full of dilapidation and
ruin; while on the other hand, there is the region of light, thin soils,
occupied by the small white freeholder, filled with schools, churches,
and good roads, and all the elements of a happy, enlightened country
life."

All the systems devised for handling Negro labor proved to be only
partially successful. The laborer was migratory, wanted easy work, with
one or two holidays a week, and the privilege of attending political
meetings, camp meetings, and circuses. A thrifty Negro could not
make headway because his fellows stole from him or his less energetic
relations and friends visited him and ate up his substance. One Alabama
planter declared that he could not raise a turkey, a chicken, a hog, or
a cow; and another asserted that "a hog has no more chance to live among
these thieving Negro farmers than a June bug in a gang of puddle ducks."
Lands were mortgaged to