Page:EB1911 - Volume 02.djvu/591

 full vigour of growth nearer to the margin of forest growth in this part of the Mississippi valley than in any other part of the United States; and some species, such as the holly, the osage orange and the pecan, attain their fullest growth in Arkansas (Shaler). There are two Federal forest reserves (4968 sq. m.).

Soil.—The soils of Arkansas are of peculiar variety. That of the highlands is mostly but a thin covering, and their larger portion is relatively poorly fitted for agriculture. The uplands are generally fertile. Their poor soils are distinctively sandy, those of the lowlands clayey; but these elements are usually found combined in rich loams characterized by the predominance of one or the other constituent. Finally the alluvial bottoms are of wonderful richness.

Agriculture.—This variety of soils, a considerable range of moderate altitudes and favourable factors of heat and moisture promote a rich diversity in agriculture. Arkansas is predominantly an agricultural state. The farm area of 1860 was only 28·2% of the whole area of the state, that of 1900 (16,636,719 acres) was 49%; and while only a fifth of this farm area was actually improved in 1860, two-fifths were improved in 1900; thus, the part of the state’s area actually cultivated approximately quadrupled in four decades. The value of products in 1900 ($79·6 millions) was 44% of the total farm values ($181·4 millions). The rise in average value of farm lands since 1870 has not been a fifth of the increase of the aggregate value of all farm property.

The Civil War wrought a havoc from which a full recovery was hardly reached before 1890. The economic evolution of the state since Reconstruction has been in the main that common to all the old slave states developing from the plantation system of ante-bellum days, somewhat diversified and complicated by the special features of a young and border community. The farms of Arkansas increased in number 357·8%, in area 73·7% and in total true (as distinguished from tax) valuation about 53·8% between 1860 and 1900; the decade of most extraordinary growth being that of 1870–1880. Thus Arkansas has shared that fall in the average size of farms common to all sections of the Union (save the north central) since 1850, but especially marked since the Civil War in the “Cotton States,” owing to the subdivision of large holdings with the introduction of the tenant system. The rapidity of the movement has not been exceptional in Arkansas, but the size of its average farm, less in 1850 than that of the other cotton states, was in 1900, 93·1 acres (108·8 for white farmers alone, 49·0 for blacks alone), which was even less than that of the North Atlantic states (96·5 acres, the smallest sectional unit of the Union). The percentage of farms worked by owners fell from 69·1% in 1880 to 54·6% in 1900; the difference of the balances or 14·5% indicates the increase of tenant holdings, two-thirds of these being for shares.

It is interesting to compare in this matter the whites and the negroes. In actual numbers the white farmers heavily predominate, whether as owners, tenants for cash or tenants on shares; but if we look at the numbers within each race holding by these respective tenures (65·0, 8·7 and 26·3% respectively for whites; 25·6, 33·7 and 40·7% for negroes, in 1900), we see the lesser independence of the negro farmer. The cotton counties, which are the counties of densest coloured habitancy, exemplify this fact with great clearness. The few negroes in the white counties of the uplands are much better off than those in the cotton lowlands; more than three times as large a part of them owners; the poorer element is segregated in the cotton region. In Arkansas, as elsewhere in the south, negro tenants, like white tenants, are more efficient than owners working their own lands. The black farmer is in bondage to cotton; for him still “Cotton is King.” He gives it four-fifths of his land; while his white rival allows it only a quarter of his, less by half than the area he gives to live-stock, dairying, hay and grains. At Sunnyside, on the west bank of the Mississippi, negro tenant farmers have been practically forced out of business by Italians, who produced in 1899–1904 more than twice as much lint cotton per working hand, and 70% more per acre. The general place of the negro in agriculture is shown also by the fact that more than four-fifths of the farm acreage and farm values of the state are in the hands of the whites. The white farmer gives an outlay in labour and fertilizers on his farm greater by 61·4% than the black, gathers a produce greater by 22·5%, and possesses a farm of a value 53·5% greater (Census, 1900).

Cotton is the leading product. It absorbs about a third of the area under crops, and its returns ($28,000,000 in 1899) are about a half of the value of all crops. A part of the cotton lands of Arkansas are among the richest in the south. Other distinctively southern products (tobacco, &c.) are of no importance in Arkansas. Cereals are given more than twice as much acreage as cotton, but yield only a third as great aggregate returns, Indian corn being much the most remunerative; about three-fourths of the cereal acreage are given to its cultivation, and it ranks after cotton in value of harvest. For all the other staple agricultural products of the central states the showing of Arkansas is uniformly good, but not noteworthy. But its rank as a fruitgrowing country is exceptional. Plums, prunes, peaches, pears and grapes are cultivated very generally over the western half of the state (grapes in the east also), but with greatest success in the south-west; apples prosper best in the north-west. Small berries are a very important product. All fruits are of the finest quality. For apples the state makes probably a finer showing than that of any other state except Oregon. About ninety varieties are habitually entered in national competitions. The fruit industry generally has developed with extreme rapidity.

Manufactures.—Although Arkansas is rich in minerals and in forests, in 1900 only 2% of its population were engaged in manufacturing. But the development has been rapid; the value of products multiplied seven times, the wages paid nine, and the capital invested twelve, in the years 1880–1900; and the increase in the same categories from 1900–1905 was 35, 42·8 and 82·4% respectively. It must be noted as characteristic of the state that of the total manufactures in 1905, 80·3% were produced in rural districts (83·7 in 1900). About two-thirds of the increase between 1890 and 1900 was in the lumber industry which was of slight importance before the former year; it represented more than half the total value of the manufactures of the state in 1905 (output, 1905, $28,065,171 and of mill products $3,786,772 additional); in the value of lumber and timber products the state ranked sixth among the states of the United States in 1900, and seventh in 1905. After the lumber and timber industry ranked in 1905 the manufacture of cotton-seed oil and cake ($4,939,919) and flour and grist milling. Cotton ginning increased 739% from 1890 to 1900.