Note 131:8 — Chapter VI · NEGRO WEALTH OR POVERTY,—WHICH?

The estimate of $7.98 an acre in 1900, and $17.40 an acre in 1910, according to the “Negro Year Book” mentioned above, is undoubtedly too high by at least one-third, but I use it so as to give them the advantage rather than otherwise. I know a body of 1,300 acres of land in my own county, Dorchester, Md., consisting of some cleared land, woodland and brushland, which a real estate man told me could be bought at five dollars an acre. This is such land as the Negro usually buys. Only a short distance from the body of land mentioned in this note land is valued at from twenty-five to one hundred dollars an acre.