Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/126

 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

��and Hungarians. By 1920 the number of foreign born will have creased greatly. In 1900 about two per cent, of the population w negro, and in 1910 two and one half per cent. In three counties tb were no negroes; and in sixteen, less than 20.

The problem presented in the region by the rapid increase in po| lation with no corresponding increase in foodstuffs probably is i greatly overdrawn in the following statements by a mountain gradu of Berea College:

The pioneer of ISoO who sat in his front door watching the deer rove unbroken forest, to-daj Bitting in the same place ean see acres of spoiled ft land, A few years ago the people produced enough on their farms to aupj themselvea. To-day one half of the food consumed is brought in \>j the n chants. Twentj-five jears ago our hUlsidee produced forty bushels of com acre. To-day the average yield of com per acre is a little leas thaji twet iive bushels. (In 1909 it was 1S.7 in the region.) The independent fanner jesterdaj has been transformed in the last few years to a man dependent u; his staves and ties for support. Now, his farm is grown up In bushes, and timber supply is almost exhausted. . . . Such is the condition of a vast num of our mountain fanners.

There is an emigration of the mountain families, or of sons a daughters, particularly from the marginal counties, where a fringe mountain territory has been put in touch with outside progress a humanity, and where mountain peoples are buying adjacent lowlan Some are moving to Oklahoma and the far west. This in part aecou- for a decrease in the population of five counties. Not all of the ei grants become Lincolns (he was of their stock), though the mounti mind, not having been subjected to the specializations of our age, ter to remain fluid. Indeed many leaders in the mountains, including 5 J. C. Campbell, secretary of the Southern Appalachian division of \

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