If the gin dates back to Eli Whitney, the cotton oil mill is a much more recent factor. Cotton oil mills have been erected only since the utilization of the seed, begin ning in 1833. In 1915 only about 84 per cent of the cotton seed produced was crushed. The center of the industry is Memphis. The distribution of the cotton oil mills follows the outline of the Belt generally with the tendency to localization in larger cities.
The distribution of rural and urban population re, mains to be considered. The place map of urban popula tion shows, of course, a concentration in the upper northeastern segment of the United States. But the simi lar map for country population shows almost as great a density in the South, east of the Mississippi River, as in the East and North. The densest country population in the South clearly follows the outline of the mountain sec tion of eastern Tennessee, Kentucky, and western North Carolina. "There, although only a small part of the land is cultivated, the population is denser than in Illinois and Iowa where practically all the land is farmed." " Country population, however, is much more concentrated in the Cotton Belt than in the Corn Belt. In the West the Texas Black Lands stand out because of dense rural population. The mapping of villages shows concentration in the East, and near the areas of large cities. There is very little discernable relation to the configurations of the various cotton belts except that the Black Prairie again stands out in Texas. The Alabama Black Land Belt and the Mississippi Bottoms show a sparsity rather than a density of villages." The distribution maps of Negro and white rural population that the Negro follows the contour of the areas of cotton produc tion to a remarkable extent. The Eastern Belt, the Ala bama Black Lands, and the Mississippi River Bottoms again stand out. The Negro population extends outside the Belt northward along the eastern fringe, farther into the rural districts of Virginia, Maryland, and Kentucky. The Texas and Oklahoma cotton areas are notably given over to native whites. The density of the white popula tion is noticeably sparser in the warm and humid areas of the Cotton Belt, but appears concentrated in the moun tainous areas of the Appalachians, Ouachita, and Ozark Mountains where cotton is not cultivated.
In 1910 the Census of the United States made a survey of plantations in the South for selected areas using a special schedule. For purposes of the survey the Census Bureau adopted the following definition of the "tenant plantation": A tenant plantation is a continuous tract of land of con siderable area under the general control or supervision of a single individual or firm, all or a part of such tract being divided into at least five smaller tracts which are leased to tenants." Plantations were found to occupy an important part of the farming area of nine cotton states. A dot map of
the plantations " in the counties selected for the survey shows in clear outline the Eastern Belt, the Mississippi Alabama Black Prairie, the Mississippi River Bottoms and the Black Waxy of Texas. More plantations are found in the eastern areas where slavery was well devel oped before the War and where the soil is fitted for inten sive cotton culture.' In the migration to the Alabama and Mississippi regions planters carried their slaves, but the slavery regime was not fully transplanted to Texas before the outbreak of the Civil War. Consequently, although the Black Waxy has a high percentage of ten ancy, it differs from all the other areas in being over whelmingly white tenancy. White tenants operate 55.7 per cent and Negro 9.5 per cent of farm lands in the Texas Black Lands. With this exception the dot map of cotton farms operated by Negro tenants follows the plantation map accurately. The map of distribution of Negro owners shows them sparsely scattered all over the South. "They are relatively most numerous on the At lantic Coastal Plain and the Interior Coastal Plain in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas. They are least numer ous where the plantation system prevails." 59 While cotton plantations are found in all the cotton states, sugar cane, rice, and tobacco plantations are found confined to special limited areas. Tobacco and cotton are cultivated together on plantations in the Coastal Plains of North and South Carolina. Rice planters with a de veloped tenant system occur in east central Arkansas, Louisiana, and southeast Texas. The sugar cane planta tions are found in southern Louisiana. 80 A mapping of the white tenants 61 shows them most numerous outside the regions of the plantation regime. They are concentrated mainly in the upland regions such as Piedmont, northern Alabama and Mississippi, the Ozark and Ouachita Highlands except in the prairies of Oklahoma and Texas, where they are fairly numerous. The white owners are thickly scattered over all the South, being possibly more concentrated in the upper Piedmont due to the small size of farms.
It is not to be rashly disputed that the cotton plant is something of a map maker. As cotton has thrived in various soils and areas it has brought about the distribu tion of races through the movement of slaves with the masters. Systems of land tenure have followed the migra tion of cotton culture to the Western Belt. Gins, com presses, oil mills, and warehouses have been built to facilitate the handling of the fiber and its seed. As cotton culture has increased cities have grown up to serve as primary markets and points of export. Over and above all is the warm sun that makes cotton the product of the South. Under all is the soil which seems by its texture and topography to sift out races and systems of land tenure to fit with cotton culture.