While some of the rent-
ers differ little in condition from the metayers, yet on the
whole they are more intelligent and responsible persons, and
are the ones who eventually become land-owners. Their bet-
ter character and greater shrewdness enable them to gain,
perhaps to demand, better terms in rents; rented farms, vary-
ing from forty to a hundred acres, bear an average rental of
about fifty-four dollars a year. The men who conduct such
farms do not long remain renters; either they sink to meta-
yers, or with a successful series of harvests rise to be
land-owners.
In 1870 the tax-books of Dougherty report no Negroes as
landholders. If there were any such at that time,--and there
may have been a few,--their land was probably held in the
name of some white patron,--a method not uncommon
during slavery. In 1875 ownership of land had begun with
seven hundred and fifty acres; ten years later this had in-
creased to over sixty-five hundred acres, to nine thousand
acres in 1890 and ten thousand in 1900. The total assessed
property has in this same period risen from eighty thousand
dollars in 1875 to two hundred and forty thousand dollars in
1900.
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