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Publications of the Unioersity of Virginia
PhelpsStqkes Fellowship Papers

Rural Land Ownership Among the
Negroes of Virginia
With Special Reference to Albemarle County

BY ;
SAMUEL T. BITTING

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

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, 1015.

CONTENTS.

Chapter I.-
Modern Agricultural Virginia  7
Chapter II.
Freedom and Property Holding  22
Chapter III.
The Present Conditions  36
Chapter IV.
Negro Land Ownership in Albemarle County  56
Chapter V.
Economic Conditions Among the Negroes in Albemarle
County  67
Chapter VI.
Social Conditions  87
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
7

8 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
the small fanner who works at the plow himself or hires a few
'hands' to work under his own eye." * 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 unsuited 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
ily. 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. Nelson Page, "The Old Dominion," 325-6.
2. Ibid, 320.

RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 9
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," 8 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 5 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 below.

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,6 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.
__ ^^^ igog
No. established  3,186 3,187 5,685
Persons engaged  88,898 120,797
Proprietors  3,643 6,570
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

7. Thos. Nelson Page, "The Old Dominion," 327.

RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 13
in 1880 about $52,000,0O0.8 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 tobacco* 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 AGRICULTURE.

Per cent.
in last
1870
1880
1890
1900
1910 decade
1,225,163
1,512,565
1,655,980
1,854,184
2,061,612 11.251
73,849
118,517*
127,600
167,886
184,081 9.67,
Land in farmsf 
18,145,911
19,835,785
19,104,951
19,907,883
19,495,636 -2,1%
Imp. land in farms
8,165,040
8,510,113
9,125,545
10,094,805
9,807,058 -2.251
Acres per farm...
245.7
167.4
149.7
118.6
105.9§-10.75S
Value per farm...
$2,666
$2,088
$2,308
$1,927
$3,397 76%
Total val. farms . .
$196,906,040 $247,476,536 $294,488,569
$325,515,977
$625,065,383 93.3%
Per cent, of farms
operated by owners
70.5%
73.1%
69.3%
73.5%
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.
¦fTotal 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 33,472 share. The bal
ance are not reported in the census. The number of tenants re
porting in 19110 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 farmers White farmers Negro farmers
1900 1910 1900 1910 1900 1910
Owners  68% 72.6% 71.2% 74.6% 59.3% 67%
Managers  1.3% .9% 1.5% 1.1% .5% .4%
Tenants  30.7% 26.5% 27.3% 24.3% 40.2% 32.6%
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-

12. Because, however, of the comparatively small number of ne
gro owners in 1900 this increase is not so real as it is apparent.

—2

18 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
erated by negroes, 35.5% are less than 20 acres as compared
with 16.6% 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.
1860  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
been 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 1910. 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 of
the Nation," VI, 69.

RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP

19

TABLE V: AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS.

Acres har
vested*

Amount

Value

Corn over $28,000,000 ~\
Wheat over $8,000,000 j>
Oats over $1,000,000 J
Peanuts. 
Grass seeds, etc 
Hay and Forage  ,
Potatoes  ,
Sweets 
Tobacco 
Cotton 
Cotton Seed 
Sugar Crops 
Miscel. Vegetables 
Miscellaneous 
Nursery Products 
Small Fruits  ,
Fruits -and Nuts 
Maple Sugar & Sugar. . . ,
Forest Products 

2,841,114 50,283,074 bu.

162,180 4,381,413 bu.

773,577 86,927
40,838
185,427 25,147 8,308
124,350

823,382 tons
8,779,778 bu.
5,270,202 bu.
132,979,390 lbs.
10,480 bales
5,240 tons

Total . . i 
Total for previous census (1899) .

$39,993,929 4,430,384 80,562
10,256,998 5,667,557
2,681,472
12,169,086 695,721
126,546
224,094
8,989,467 123,029522,480671,843
3,770,491 12,223
10,118,851
$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 Book of State Dept. of Agriculture (1906).

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 21
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. 35.

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." 2
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." s 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,3 "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 Negro."
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. J. 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." 8
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." 9 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. Flemming, "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." " 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 1870, 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." 16 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; -flis 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." 18
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 Negro 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 1890 and il910, 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%. 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 67% 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% 4.8%
Rented  1,197,787 856,997 38.3% —29.5%
Average size  49.7 46.5 — 6.9%
Owned  42.9
Rented  53.9
*180 managers operate farms averaging 150 acres each.

RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 33
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 7.3% 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 154.8
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 7.2.
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  3,615,286
Total value farm property  24,529,016
Value per acre  6-5^
Value per farm  547

1910

increase

$32,553,640

124.8

12,670,864

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 $67,219,538. There was an increase in the
value of all white farm property of 90.7% 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.

White
Under 3 acres  183
3 to 9 acres  10,485
10 to 19 acres  11,976
20 to 49 acres  25,925
50 to 99 acres  29,657
100 to 174 acres  28,831
175 to 259 acres  13,893
260 to 499 acres  10,608
500 to 999 acres  3,338
1,000 and over  974

Per cent.

of

Per

cent, of

all w. farm

ers

alln

. farmers

Total

.1

.5

277

7.6

36.3
17,464
8.7
20.8
22,055
19.1
34.1
42,390
21.7
18.
38,342
21.2
8.6
32,997
10.2
2.6
14,963
7.8
1.1
11,138
2.4
.2
3,450
.7
.03
992
RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP

35

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 ifor 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.

CHAPTER III.
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." x
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
ity 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 apt 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 staplfe
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 1900 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 226 or 70%. 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 8 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% 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 $18,056,000.9 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 10 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, "Negro Property Holding in Tidewater, Va.:

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 $800,900.12 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, "Negro 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, 37.

44 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
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 farming 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 16 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." 18 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 Negroes," 5-6.
Pamphlet of Hampton Institute Press.
19. Carl Kelsey, The Negro Farmer, 34.

46 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
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 cites20 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 $600,000.21 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 3-3% were
illiterate, while 45% of those of voting age could neither read
nor write. According to the Superintendent's Report 22 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
tween 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 sixty 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.
—4

50 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
$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 $27.
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." 24 Since negroes as a rule live up
to their income this would indicate advances ranging from $60
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 $37.50 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 Negro as a Free Man," 222.

52 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 72% 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 $23,808 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 Han28
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

£8. See "The Halifax Plan for the Practical Education of the Ne
gro," J. W. Church. Hampton Institute Press 1910.

R\jRAL 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
by 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." 30 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., 1913.

CHAPTER IV.
Negro Land Ownership in AlbemarlB 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 1745.2 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 imanner it did before the commencement
of hostilities." 3 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, 8.
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 orchardis-ts 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
principal 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 $182,169. 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 White Slave Free Negro % Negro
1850 
1860 
1870 
1880 
1890 
1900 
1910 
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

11,875

13,338

587

53.9%

12,103

13,916

606

54.5%

12,550

14,994

54.4

15,959

16,659

51.

18,252*

14,126

43.6

18,135

10,337
36.3
20,198
9,673
32.4
?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 white negro white negro
1850  11,875 13,925 18,983 5,637 6,423 10,268
I860  12,103 14,522- 21,547 6,202 6,183 10,518
1870  12,550 14,994 22,026 6,737 6,269 10,063
18801890  18,252 14,126 28,596 8,407 7,192 9,805
1900  18,135 10',337 26,670* 5,700 7,896 8,621
1910  20,198 9,673 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."

:ite pop.

negro pop.

% neg

3,505

2,321

39.8%

4,271

1,966

31.5

3,269

897

21.5

980

535

35.3

3,918

2,481

38.8

4,255

1,473

25.7

20,198

9,673

32.4

RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 61
TABLE XII: POPULATION BY DISTRICTS.6

Districts Taxpayers
Rivanna  572
Charlottesville  181
White Hall  10
Ivy  39
Scottsville  541
Samuel Miller  211
Totals  1,554
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 25,862 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% 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 7,000. 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 paper 7 that negroes did not begin to acquire property in
large numbers much before 1I88O.
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.

Tenants

Managers

493

121

97

7

1900 Owners and
Farms part owners
White  1,969 1,355
Negro  667 563
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
mers 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, 37.3% ; 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 corn and
wheat, vegetables, a few fruit trees, and possibly a few head of
stock. During the last census period the total negro population in the
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 farmers 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. 9
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, carpentry, plastering, blacksmithing
and 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," 184.

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 106, 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 2 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 SPRINGS3 NEGROES,
AND OF TOTAL POPULATION OF U. S. EN
GAGED IN EACH CLASS OF GAIN
FUL OCCUPATION.
¦ 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
Trades and
trans  23 1 24 13.95
Mfgs. and trades. 13 13 7.57
Total  128 44 172 100.00
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

Sandy Sp'

gs U.S.

per cent.

per cent.

45.48

39.65

2.76

4.15

43.97

19.18

1.51

14.63

6.28

22.39

100.00

100.00

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 "?, -^ "£ <+*
1> 0J O o
JS" •* £ i> £ 3 S o „; —
" * " '5 S °- « ^ co 6 u 2,
 < & w£ £§ ^ g. <s £ e h
R. R. hand  40 m 5 32 $9.00 $288 $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
Farmhand  42 m 6 52 4.50- 234 234
Farm hand  55 m 5 30 4.50 135 100t 235
Farm hand  42 m 2 52 180 180
Dairyman  50 m 9 52 6.00 312 25 337
Stableman  40 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 40o ioo* 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 ..38 f 3 52 144 144
Washwoman . . 52 f 2 52 72 72
*Wife cooks.

fSon's wages and sale of crop.
JSale price of crop.
§Sale price of crop.

RURAL LAND OWNERSHIP 71
A brief discussion of each class of occupation found among
the negroes in Albemarle County will be instructive :
Broadly speaking the negro undertaker dn 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 tlhe 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 $50 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, corn, 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 if arms 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 farad 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 i77 years old and was raised in slavery, but has gradually
acquired this little iarm 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 bouse 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 tilings 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 $30 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
coming 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." 5
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." 6 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 79
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.io
Rivanna S. S. Farmville
Family of Fam. Per. Fam. Per. Fam. Per.
1 member  2 2
2 members  21 42
3 members  21 63
4 members  11 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
Out of 103 economic families questioned in the Rivanna Dis
trict there are 66, or 64%, of from 2 to 5 members while the
same percentages for Sandy Springs and Farmville are 48 and
63 respectively. -Since we are here dealing with a rural district

9

9

13

13

19

38

52

104

20

60

34

102

17

68

48

192

23

115

31

155

26

156

26

156

14

98

19

133

9

72

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
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 23456789 10 Total
$50 or less  1 1 2
$50 to $100  6 3 2 1 12
$100 to $150  2 3 2 2 1 10
$150 to $200  323324 1 2 20
$200 to $250  34132321 19
$250 to $350  32122 12 13
$350 to $450  12 1 2 2 7
over $450  21 2 1 7
Not reported  1 37 ll 13

Total  2 21211113 9 10 5 6

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% 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 70% of the cases,
supplement materially the incomes of the Albemarle negroes.

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 Rivanna 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

82

PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS

Man (laborer) . . .
Woman (washing)

$180.00 36.00

Total  $216.00

Woman (washing)
Sale of eggs, etc. . .

$ 48.00 50.00

Total  $ 98.00

Food  $120-00
Clothes  60.00
Church  3-00
Tobacco  i-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  10.60
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  7 3
Miscellaneous  17 50
100% 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.
under $200 $3 to $400
Food  49% 29% 49.64% 45.59
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 given as normal for the United States. The fact that

8

15.48

14.98

5

12.82

14.14

5

8.08

7.02

53

13.98

18.27

100%

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 increas-ed 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. 3. 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 ef
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." 15 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 — they insist on having two stories if there is only

1. Thorn, 91 and Woofter, 17. 87

88 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
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 Not
Size of fam. rooms 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 rep't Total
1 member  2
2 members  4 5 3 12 121 2 21
3 members  3 42421 16
4 members  6 7 1 1*
5 members  3 135112 16
6 members  1 1313 9
7 members  1 11 311 8
8 members  12111 6
9 members  1 1211 6
10 members  21 3
12 members  1 1
13 members  1 1
Total families  13 21 27 15 13 4 6 1 1 2 103
Total rooms  26 63 108 75 78 28 48 9 10 445*
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 dea.ths 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.2
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 77.7^0
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 2.9% 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, while
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.

1,226

2,272

85.6

147

384

14.4

1,335

2,515

57.1

1,002

1,895

42.9

2,561

4,787

67.7

1,149

2,279

32.3

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
Illiterate  237
21 years and over
Literate  1,180
Illiterate  803
Total Literate  2,226
Illiterate   1,130
The last tabulated statistics in the office of the Division Su
perintendent of Schools 4 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%. 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 57.4% 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 schoo!
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 35 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 Nezu 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 wish 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 Davis7 "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 : 9 "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." 2 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 iby 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 the 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 irate 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 farmers 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 : 4 "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." Now, 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 AMD 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% 32% 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 18,588,161 16,99-6,805
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. i
Tidewater Piedmont Val. & S. W.
White pop. 1910  226,846 364,698 518,818
Negro pop. 1900  211,367 274,295 61,939
Negro pop. 1910  221,387 254,972 54,555
White farms 1910  26,887 50,746 58,122
Negro farms 1910  18,654 27,444 1,993
Negro owned acreage 1914  600,809 1,024,264 65,561
White owned acreage 1914  4,635,184 9,141,699 8,034,745
Negro owned farms in 1910  12,735 17,854 1,616
% of negro farms op. by owners. 68.1% 62.5% 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 Negro." 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, Nb. 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, No. 32.)
"The Negroes of Litwalton, Va." (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 Negro Conferences 1898-1911.

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