A little to the northeast of Bibb County lies Baldwin, of which Milledgeville, the former state capital, is the chief town. This was a very wealthy ante-bellum section, with large holdings in slaves as well as lands. When the Civil War began Baldwin County could muster 5,000 slaves, although of the whites, rich and poor, there were only 4,000. When the census of 1890 was taken the negroes had increased to 9,343, the whites only to 5,262. Last year the negroes were paying taxes on 6,501 acres of Baldwin County land, valued at $26,599, besides a large amount of city and town property and other possessions, the whole aggregating $104,592.
Take another county in Middle Georgia, a county of good lands but without a town of any size in it, therefore representing more nearly a plain agricultural average. Any one of a score might be selected. Let us say Butts, a small but prosperous county which was laid out in 1825 and at the outbreak of the war had 3,082 slaves and 3,375 whites. A quarter of a century ago its freedmen, numbering approximately 4,000 people, owned but ninety-seven acres of land in the entire county and $350 worth of town property. Have they climbed since 1875? In numbers they are now estimated at 7,000, against a like number of whites, and last year these negroes paid taxes on 1,613 acres of good average farming land, and on other property which ran the total valuation in Butts up to $49,941.
In the mountain counties of Georgia it has been different, the increase in number of negroes as well as their possessions being slow and uncertain, while the whites have maintained a steady progress in such sections. This, however, is clearly accounted for by the lesser ratio the agricultural interests bear to others in mountainous districts, and the dependence of the negroes upon the former. Glance at Gilmer County, with its sixty-nine blacks and almost 10,000 whites, the former paying taxes on a few hundred acres of rocky hillsides, and their whole county property aggregating, by the most recent returns, only $957, while the latter show taxable possessions valued at $728,000. In Rabun, Towns, Flannin and neighboring counties the situation shows much the same.
This brief study of typical counties may be closed with certain comparative data from Fulton, which contains the state’s capital, Atlanta, a progressive and rapidly growing city distinctly of the “New South” type. Fulton was not laid out until 1853, hence is relatively young in the sisterhood of counties. Only about 2,000 slaves were set free in this county. Compare the number with the 16,000 manumitted in Chatham. But today there are more than 50,000 negroes in Fulton, and, although they own but a thousand acres of land in the county, yet the aggregate value of their whole property is a bare trifle below one million dollars!
To extract the most important meanings from such figures is not difficult. In connection with them several facts should be kept in mind, the first of which is that the negro’s land-holdings in Georgia as well as in adjoining states are usually parceled out in very small individual lots. In a canvass of fifty-six typical counties of the state, the following table was established to show the average size of the farm lots among negro proprietors:
| CLASSIFIED SIZE | PER CENT. OF TOTAL OWNERS |
| Under 10 acres | 30.50 |
| 10 or under 40 acres | 27.00 |
| 40 or under 100 acres | 21.85 |
| 100 or under 200 acres | 12.80 |
| 200 or under 500 acres | 6.89 |
| 500 acres or over | .93 |
The fifty-six counties canvassed represent the majority of negro holdings in the state, and the average here established may fairly be taken as that of the state at large, or, indeed, of the agricultural South. The fact that a very large proportion of the farms are so limited in size as to amount only to gardens, or, in negro parlance, “patches,” augurs well rather than ill, for it means many small proprietors instead of merely a few large ones and the rest all renters or day laborers. Since out of 369,265 black people in the state ten years of age or over who are engaged in gainful occupations, almost two-thirds are employed in some line of agricultural work, is it not well that the million acres owned by negroes should be distributed in small holdings? It is easy to deduce from this the manifest decline of the metayer, or tenant system of farming. To be sure, these one-acre, or even ten-acre farms will seldom support the owner, though he may have the smallest family, or none at all. Such farms are largely instances of what may be called, in the German phrase, Parzellenbetriebe—that is, farms not large enough to occupy the labor of a family, but serving as sources of partial support to those with supplementary occupations. Yet, in many cases, these little plots of ground will grow to goodly farms within a few years. The same story has been traced a thousand times in the past quarter of a century.
It will be remarked, also, that the negro’s town and city property is increasing greatly. In 1880 the assessed value of such property was only $1,201,992, or 20 per cent. of their entire state property; while in 1902 it is $4,389,422, which is close to 29 per cent. of the state’s aggregate. Thus, while agriculture gave the freedman his start in self-maintenance, and is still his chief dependence, yet paths of employment and sources of revenue in cities are being discovered by him more and more as the years go by and his education progresses.
Before passing to the close, another point is worthy of especial note, interesting both the economist and the sociologist. In 1875 the assessed value of the household and kitchen furniture owned by all the negroes in the state, then numbering between six and seven million souls, was only $21,186, or something like three cents’ worth to each individual. But in 1902 the assessed value of the same class of property was $1,688,541, or a trifle over the value of a dollar and a half to each colored man, woman and child in the state. Upon this phase of development and progress no comment is needed.
In brief, then, the black people of Georgia paid taxes for 1902 on 1,175,291 acres of land, and upon an entire property aggregating $15,188,069 in assessed value. This means, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the negroes of Georgia, or, broadly speaking, the South, are accumulating property and acquiring homes. And since the negro with a home is almost sure to stand for law, order and civic faithfulness, it means, moreover, a reaching out toward higher standards of living, not material living alone, but social life, mental and moral striving and achievements.