garden on the waste patches he allows to grow up in weeds, he would be able to save considerable sums of money. The garden furnishes the Italian with fresh vegetables from early spring to late fall, when they are harvested, and with this harvest and the dried vegetables, which have been cured during the summer, the Italian is able to pass the winter with a comparatively small outlay for market foods. Corn, onions, potatoes, cabbage, tomatoes, peppers, beans, peas, and okra principally are raised in quantities sufficient for the needs of the family.

IMPROVEMENTS, BUILDINGS, AND SURROUNDINGS.

The houses furnished by the company are small one-story frame buildings containing two, three, or four rooms. They are built of rough lumber and when first erected are whitewashed both inside and out. At the front of most of the houses is a veranda, and during cottonpicking season this is sometimes partly boarded in to make a place for storing seed cotton until the Italian is ready to haul it to the gin. At the rear of every house is a small veranda, invariably used to hold the overflow from the kitchen. Pans of all descriptions, kettles, coffee pots, spiders, and various other kitchen utensils may be seen hanging from nails in this sheltered space. Strings of peppers, onions, dried butter beans, okra, and other garden products hang from the ceilings of the Italian's home, while on the veranda rows of corn may be seen curing in the summer sun. As noted, the original intention was to sell the houses to the immigrants, but now that the Italians do not own their farms and the company is leasing the whole plantation, the houses as a rule are badly run down and are rapidly deteriorating for lack of necessary repairs. The company is not a good landlord in this respect and the colonists are easily imposed upon in the matter of housing.

At a short distance from each house is the typical Italian oven, built of stones and bricks, covered with cement. In these ovens the Italians bake their bread once a week. One of the conspicuous features of the farmyard, a feature often conspicuously absent elsewhere in the South, is the generous wood pile always found near the Italian's house.

MARKETS AND MARKETING FACILITIES.

The plantation under consideration has over 4,000 acres under cultivation, of which 2,700 acres were planted in cotton in the spring of 1909. The plantation is so extensive that the company maintains a railroad through it. This railroad aids the tenants to get their cotton to the plantation gin more easily and quickly than if they depended on their own teams. A small transportation rate is charged the tenants for this use of the railroad. The haul averages 5 to 8 miles. The use of the railroad, however, is not imperative, since good roads extend the whole length and breadth of the plantation and it is little trouble to haul a load of cotton to the gin.

The company runs the gin and charges $0.50 per hundred for ginning the cotton and, in 1908, $1.35 a bale was charged for wrapping, bagging, and fastening. This price varies a little, depending on the cost of materials, the tenant paying only the actual cost of materials used and time consumed. The total cost to the tenant

of hauling, ginning, and baling is almost exactly one cent per pound of lint.

The cotton is baled, numbered with the tenant's number, and hauled to the boat landing, whence it is sent to Greenville to be placed in a warehouse. The tenants all sell their cotton to the company, though after they have paid their indebtedness to the company they can hold their cotton or take their samples and sell wherever they wish.

A few of the more prosperous Italians will receive enough money at their first ginning to pay the rent of their farms for the season, the rents and other debts being paid at the time the first of the crop is harvested. When the company's claims in this regard have been satisfied, the renter has an unrestricted ownership of the remainder of the crop, and can sell at once or hold it for speculative purposes, as he may choose.

Many of the Italians living close to the railroad have made handcars from odd pieces of lumber and parts of farm machinery. They have invented a unique method of propelling these cars, and use them in transporting purchases from the store, hay that they have cut on the banks of the levee, or a load of wood chopped in the near-by woodlots.

PROPERTY OWNED.

An Italian coming to the plantation is usually obliged to secure all his supplies on credit during the first year. If he is unable to purchase a mule or farm implements he can hire them, but in such case, after his first cotton crop is harvested, he is in position to buy his own mule and machinery, and thus equipped he is ready to operate a piece of land on a money-rent basis.

Much of the money saved is sent back to Italy for various purposes, although many keep large sums at home, and all are said to have plenty of ready money at all times. The company pays 4 per cent interest per year on all money deposited with them by their tenants. In this way the Italians can deposit their money, if they care to do so, and many of them avail themselves of this opportunity. The largest amount that any individual had to his credit at one time was $1,500. Many of the Italians keep a balance of $100 or $200 in cash to their credit at the "store" as a reserve fund against a rainy day.

ITALIAN VERSUS NEGRO.

It seems appropriate to review some facts and figures concerning the Italian and the negro, inasmuch as in a few instances the Italian has taken the place of the negro, and in view of the opinions expressed by various plantation owners that time will see a greater movement of Italian immigration into the farming "black belt."

The Italians and negroes operate under almost precisely the same natural conditions. The Italian has slightly better land, because he is willing and able to pay the higher rent, which in this case averages 52 cents more per acre. Comparing the size of farms operated by these two races, the acreage rented per family is practically the same, the Italian farm averaging 20.93 and the negro farm 20.9 acres.

From the cotton crop of 1908, including the cotton and seed, the Italians averaged $895.57 per farm, while the negroes averaged $525.33 per farm. In other words, the Italian farm yields 70 per cent more than the negro farm. If an Italian can get 70 per cent more cotton from a given area, every two Italians can raise as much as three negroes; thus with Italian cotton growers the plantation owners would not need to devote nearly as much land to cotton as they now do, having only negro tenants, to receive the same returns, and in consequence more land would be available for the purpose of diversified farming, a result greatly to be desired.

The Commission's agent was informed that the value of the cotton produced at Sunnyside averaged 9 cents per pound for the year 1908, and about 15 cents in 1909. The Italians average 477 pounds or nearly a bale to an acre from their land, while the negroes average 269 pounds or a trifle over half a bale to the acre.

The following tables present figures taken from the books of the company at Sunnyside and refer only to representative families. These figures were not taken to show that one race is more successful than the other or to show which is the poorer, but were selected as illustrating the economic conditions that obtain where the two races work together.

Family No. 20 in each table has practically every condition equal, yet the Italian raises nearly 40 per cent more cotton per working hand than the negro. Every comparison that can be drawn points. clearly to the superiority of the Italian.

TABLE 63. General condition of 20 Italian families and 20 negro families renting cotton farms, Sunnyside, Ark.

TABLE 63.-General condition of 20 Italian families and 20 negro families renting cotton farms, Sunnyside, Ark.-Continued.

The following statements summarize conditions as found in a study of the 20 Italian and 20 negro families under discussion. The number of the families is the same, and the number of working hands is nearly the same in both races. The Italian works 0.49 acre more per working hand than the negro and pays 52 cents more per acre for his land. When the average number of acres per family is considered it is found that there is a difference of 0.03 acre in favor of the Italian. The striking differences shown by the figures in the product per hand, per acre, and per family in favor of the Italian agree with all expert testimony on the subject.

As shown in the next statement, in the value produced per working hand the Italian excels the negro by 85 per cent. In the value of cotton and cotton seed produced per family the Italian has an advantage of 70 per cent and the value of the Italian's crop per acre exceeds that of the negro by the same percentage.

The negro has always been associated with the growing of cotton, the Italian was taught in many cases by the negroes, yet after a few years the pupils so outdistance their teachers that the negroes can not be considered in anywise the equals of the Italian farmer.

Alfred Holt Stone, in his book ""Studies in the American Race Problem," devotes several pages to the colony at Sunnyside. In his study of the situation there Mr. Stone considered the experience of 52 Italian and 167 negro families during a period of six years, 1899 to 1904. The study was based on original data secured by the author and on data taken from the company's books. In discussing the scope of his study, Mr. Stone says in part:

This gives us a six-year period for a comparative exhibit of the two classes of labor, working literally side by side, their land indiscriminately allotted, each on the same tenure, each under the same conditions of soil, climate, and management. I shall confine this exhibit to the salient features of the operations. These are the numbers of families and hands, cotton acreage and production, and value per hand. I shall consider only the cash commodities of cotton and seed, and shall reduce the figures to annual averages.

The following table summarizes the data employed by Mr. Stone: Average amount and value of the cotton produced per acre and per hand by the Italian and the negro at Sunnyside plantation, 1899 to 1904, inclusive.

"It is apparent," says Mr. Stone, "that in the matter of showing of production per hand the Italian had the advantage of the negro by reason of the fact that his average exhibit is for a smaller number of hands. But he worked 6.2 acres per hand as against 5.1 for the negro and produced 170 pounds more lint per acre.'

If the figures gathered by the Commission are compared with those given by Mr. Stone, slight differences will be found, but in the main, both accounts exhibit the great superiority of the Italian over the negro as a cotton grower.

In the opinion of many the Italians in the Delta region have pointed a way to the solution of some of the labor difficulties of the South by replacing the negro, who seems to be slowly passing from the cotton plantations where the Italian has been given a fair trial. They have proved at Sunnyside that immigrants, whether direct from