Evening star., 1915-12-19
COURTHOUSE OF CHARLES COUNTY.

COURTHOUSE OF CHARLES COUNTY
was 6.096 and the number attending
school 3,157, or SIS per cent. OF in
habitants of six to fourteen years in
elusive, there were 4,09S and the num-
ber attending school 2,621, or 81 per
cent The percentage of, native white
children of native parentage between
the ages noted attending school was
1876 and the percentage of colored 53.7.
The number of families in the county
vas 3,019 and the number of dwellings
3.050
There has been a marked increase in
the attendance at school among the
children of the white people and a re-
markable increase in school attendance
among colored children, and the schools
themselves, besides being more numer-
Gus, are better kept and better taught
than was the case a generation ago.
The people of this very old Maryland
county have always held the cause of
popular education in high regard.
Charles county is an agricultural
county and its chief products are corn
and tobacco. staples which have been
cultivated there since the white settlers
spread slowly northward from the
st. Marys river and first put the lands
of Charles county under tfllage, and
the time when the primeval woods were
cleared away and the pJow began to
turn the fertile soil may be roughly
set down as 215 years ago. Those
lands have born the strain of nearly
U
of that cultivation has been unskillful,
often being carried on by men who
had little or no understanding of the
merit of rotation of crops, or the fer
tilizing of the soil with plant food
Yet land worn down by unskillful
cropping and apparently worn out IS
capable of being restored, and many
prosperous and productive farms have
been built up on this rundown land
For two centuries tobacco was the
great crop of Charles county, as 1t was
of the other counties of southern Mary
land, and, in fact. for something more
than century after the European set
tlement of this region tobacco was the
main crop throughout the coastal plain
from the Carolinas to Pennsylvania.
Then the culture of wheat and corn be-
gan to come into favor and were found
so profitable that a reduction of the
tobacco-planted area began to appear,
with the result that over the coastal
plain region in the valleys of the Poto-
mac, Patuxent, Rappahannock, York
and James the only considerable areas
now under cultivation in tobacco are
in the southern Maryland counties of
Charles, St. Marys, Prince Georges.
Anne Arundel and Calvert. New to-
bacco areas have been opened up in
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Connecticut, Ken
lucky. West Virginia and southwestern
Virginia and western North Carolina,
while the tobacco area in the neigh
borhood of Washington is constantly
growing less, though the industry is
tenacious.
At the time of the outbreak of the
civil war nearly all the open land of
Charles county was under cultivation
in tobacco The overturn in the indus
trial and social conditions of the coun-
ty causing the impoverishmen of the
old land-holding families and making
it impossible for them to work their
farms, resulted in much of the farm
land growing up in pine and hard
woods. The tenant system of farming
came In, and it seemed to be the OBJ
ject of most tenants to Skin" the land
that is, to get out of it all they could
put nothing into 1t and then move to
another piece of land. Conditions have
steadily been growing better for gem
GRAFTON, or for two generations; the
great old farms are being divided, and
the number of small farmers, little de-
pendent on transient labor, usually of
low efficiency, is increasing. The to-
bacco area is slowly being reduced and
diversified farming is making progress
Waste woodland Is being reclaimed and
brought under the plow. Charles coun-
ty has aligned itself as prohibition ter
ritory, and progressive men in the
county point out many other factors
which. they believe. will make for the
prosperity and contentment of the neo-
pie of the county.
In any consideration of the economic
conditions of Charles and other coun
ties or southern Maryland it should be
kept in mind that for hundred years
restless, energetic and ambitious bows
and girls have been leaving the old
homes and going out into the broader
world. and usually they have struck
out for the west. This tide of emigra-
tion has been flowing from southern
Maryland ever since men began to con-
quer the wilderness of western Mary
land and western Virginia, and the tide
ran strong when the cheap new lands
began to be opened up In the Ohio.
Mississippi and Missouri valleys. While
this good Maryland blood has been flow
ing west for more than a century, new
blood has been coming into southern
Maryland very slowly. Just after the
close of the civil war small current
Of English immigration set in, and
during the '70s and early sos quite a
number of German families settled in
southern Maryland. Various efforts at
colonization are being made. and some
of them promise success.
A small current of immigration is set
ting IN. and new German and English
families may be found settled In va
rious parts of the county. There is a
big cpionization project in the making,
. called the Panama colony. Between
1000 and 5000 acres of land have been
bought in and around White Plains,
and will be cut up into farms for culti-
vation by men now in government en-
ploy in the Canal Zone. The land is
naturally good soil, and is responsive
to skillful cultivation with enough cap
ital behind 1t for fertilization, ma
ehinery and labor. Much of this land
is now upgrown in thinned-out woods,
and this is being cleared.
There is another condition in south
: ern Maryland affecting immigration ana