The Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol.13, page 23, May 1914, U. of Illinois Press

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MAY ' I9I4 states that a large part of the banking business has for its basis the Negro and the mule. If a planter wants to borrow money, the decision of the bank wiD hinge largely on the question of the number of reliable Negro tenants he can control. Here, then, Is a tremendous amount of labor, and in it there are tremendous possibilities. These more than 2,200,000 people are not likely to leave the Southern states. Where they remain in large numbers no other cans of laborers Is likely to come in large number, and ~ also find that the majority of Southern white landowners do not want any other. To put the matter in another form, forty per cent of the tillable land in the Southern states Is in the hands of colored people in one form or another. The large number of colored laborers and the vast territory that they occupy make up a serious but interesting question for the South and for the whole country. In my opinion, in this mass of Negro labor Is an undiscovered gold mine. How to improve the efficiency of these a,ooo,ooo black farmers Is one of the problems that now confronts the South. As ~ have just said, the prosperity of the South is bound up with the improvement that the Negro makes as a farmer. Just in proportion as the Negro becomes efficient, reliable and dependable will the prosperity of the South be increased; for we must keep in mind that ~ oo,ooo,ooo out of the ~ ~o,ooo,ooo acres of improved land in the South is cultivated by Negro labor; that of every eleven bales of cotton raised in the South, seven are produced by Negro labor. One-tenth of ad the farm property In the South Is in the hands of Negroes. If the efficiency of the Negro in the South is increased, say 25 per cent—that is, if his farming is improved so that the average number of bales of cotton raised by Negroes will be increased one-fourth; that the amount of corn that he raises will be doubled and the bushels of sweet potatoes and other crops be proportionately increased, the agricultural wealth of the South will be increased by 25 per cent, that is, over $2,000,000,000 WOU]3 be added annually to the agricultural wealth of the South. These are some of the possibilities of the Negro farmer. That the Negro has great potential possibilities as a farmer Is indicated by the progress that he has made along this line in the past fifty years. In 1863 there were in all the United States only a few farms controlled by Negroes. They now operate In the South 890,~40 farms which are 217,800 more than there were ~ ~ section in 1863. Negro 23