THE WESTERN BELT The movement to the Western Belt came compara tively late. Texas was added to the list of cotton states in 1845 and in the statistics of 1859 and 1869 ranked fifth in production. By the census of 1890 the state had assumed the leading place in the Cotton Kingdom and cultivation was well under way in the Indian Territory. Texas and Oklahoma are regarded as the frontier of the Cotton Belt, having been but recently reclaimed from the long and short grasses of prairie and plains. Together they comprise one-sixth of the area of the Cotton Belt.
"The general characteristics of Texas and Oklahoma are a rich and alluvial soil belt with stretches of poorer land on the outskirts, but everywhere a rolling country like the western prairies." 38 The cotton produced in this area is likely to have a staple longer and stronger than that of the East but not equal to that of the valley.' The leading subregions are the Interior Coastal Plain, Eastern Oklahoma and Red Prairies, the Black Waxy, the Grand Prairie of Texas, and the Great Plains.
The Interior Coastal Plain extends through Northwest Louisiana, Southwest Arkansas and Northeast Texas. The topography is rolling, the soil, grayish and reddish sandy loam, the vegetation, pines and oak giving way to prairie area in Texas. One-third of the improved land is in cotton, and almost half of the farms are operated by owners. An acre of cotton produces about 165 pounds and the whole area averages almost a million bales.
The Eastern Prairies of Oklahoma comprise almost half the eastern part of the state. The soil is black to reddish, topography rolling, and vegetation prairie grasses. The area is mostly given to corn, hay, and pas
ture land. In 1909 it produced over a third of a million bales averaging 182 pounds to the cotton acre.
The Red Prairies in Western Oklahoma and North Central Texas are rough in contour and given mostly to grazing, produce about 105 pounds of cotton to the acre, but bid fair to become important because of large area. They produced 825,000 bales in the 1909 figures.
The outstanding cotton section of the West is the Black Waxy of Texas, so called from its dark calcareous clays. It has the highest per cent of its area in farms, 86, the highest per cent improved, 62, and the highest in cotton, 31.6. It is also unique in that it is an area of white tenancy, for although only 14.5 per cent of the farm land is in plantations, 55.7 per cent of all farms are run by white tenants. In the per cent of white ownership the region comes second only to the Interior Coastal Plains. The size of farms is over sixty-five acres, second to the Red Prairies with their hundred-acre farms—much of which is in pasture. The land is rich and fresh and practically no fertilizer is needed. West Texas has a po tentially fertile soil but the desert is too close and the "droughts are frequently devastating." The story of the spread of cotton culture to the Great Plains must be left to a later chapter. The black land, however, does not suffer so much from drought, for "it holds water like a sponge." 39