Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/352

336 There is no portion of the Union surpassing the South in its lumber resources. The annual lumber produced is valued at $400,000,000, almost equaling the value of the cotton crop. In education, equally great progress has been made. As soon as the whites secured control, they proceeded to perfect the system of public school education established in the days of reconstruction, but which was only organized to raise money to be squandered in those corrupt and looting days. Before the war, only such white children as could not be educated by their parents were educated at the public expense. Education was mainly provided in private schools by those able to educate their children. In the twenty years from 1875 to l895 the South increased in population 54 per cent, in school attendance 130 per cent, school property from $16,000,000 to $51,000,000—$2,000,000 a year. In 1896, Dr. A. D. Mayo, an educational expert, reports that education has cost the South since the war $250,000,000, of which amount $75,000,000 has been expended in the education of the negro in public schools, though he pays little tax toward their support. Dr. Mayo also says: "The sixteen Southern States are to-day paying as much for the public schools as the British parliament votes every year for the public school system of the British islands, between $20,000,000 and $30,000,000. Population of the British islands, 38,104,973."

In Georgia, "the whites pay taxes on $436,000,000, while the negroes pay on $15,000,000. " Yet the negroes share the fund in common; no separation of the fund between the races, the separation is in the schools. The proportion of school population in 1893 between the races in Georgia was as 55 whites to 47 blacks. The tax in the other States to educate negroes, where they outnumber the whites, is still more burdensome on the white tax-payers. The tax paid by the South, when we consider the great difference in wealth and area between the two