Fully ninety-four per cent have
struggled for land and failed, and half of them sit in hopeless
serfdom. For these there is one other avenue of escape toward
which they have turned in increasing numbers, namely, mi-
gration to town. A glance at the distribution of land among
the black owners curiously reveals this fact. In 1898 the
holdings were as follows: Under forty acres, forty-nine fami-
lies; forty to two hundred and fifty acres, seventeen families;
two hundred and fifty to one thousand acres, thirteen fami-
lies; one thousand or more acres, two families. Now in 1890
there were forty-four holdings, but only nine of these were
under forty acres. The great increase of holdings, then, has
come in the buying of small homesteads near town, where
their owners really share in the town life; this is a part of the
rush to town. And for every land-owner who has thus hurried
away from the narrow and hard conditions of country life,
how many field-hands, how many tenants, how many ruined
renters, have joined that long procession? Is it not strange
compensation? The sin of the country districts is visited on
the town, and the social sores of city life to-day may, here in
Dougherty County, and perhaps in many places near and far,
look for their final healing without the city walls.
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