"The two young women from New England--one from Boston, one from New Haven--Hampton teachers who first rang a school-bell ten years ago on the old Shelby plantation in Lowndes County, simply desired to get into the Black Belt, to identify themselves with a community of cotton-raisers as neighbours, to know the people at first hand, and then to meet the human need about them in any way possible; above all, helping the people to help themselves ... in the Black Belt of Alabama, a county containing the largest proportion of blacks to whites. The average ratio for the seventeen counties in Alabama's cotton-belt is less than three to one. In Lowndes County in 1892 the ratio was seven to one--28,000 to 4000. This meant maximum conditions of ignorance and poverty--a county likely to be Africanised if it could not be Americanised." The school at Calhoun had 300 students, and its land extended over 100 acres. As there were such great opportunities, if the right means were taken to secure them, the teachers were moved by a desire to provide openings for their students in the county instead of their being obliged to seek uncertain employment in the distance. Why not buy land and divide it into small holdings, which even negroes could purchase for their own? That would be to show practical sympathy with the native sentiment--"I always did want to own something that wouldn't die; your mule, he'll die, but the land is gwine to live." That idea gained favour; it was strictly in accordance with the negro's economic programme; and thus, when a plantation of nearly 1100 acres was purchased and was divided into over twenty farms, the enterprise was well in hand. In time other estates were purchased; the movement, which is favoured by the whites and ex-planters, is so extremely popular with the blacks that "one man recently sent five cents ten miles by a friend to go towards his farm!" As might be expected, all this has not been carried out without there being some failure and discouragement, but, on the whole, the movement has realised the hopes of its promoters. Mr Dillingham adds:-- "On the economic side, Calhoun's scheme means buying a plantation at wholesale price, and breaking up the plantation into small farms, by a group of men who make advance payments and then finish buying by paying rent for a term of years. The fifty-acre farm means a basis for a new agriculture or intensive farming, also sharp, individual responsibility of buyer, plus family life and labour and friendly co-operation of a neighbourhood. The plantation, with its 'quarters' and renters and croppers, who 'stay' to make and pick crops, but have no home--the plantation, the old, before-the-war, economic unit, is transformed into an American neighbourhood of farms and homes, within sound of church and bell. This is the light set on the hill."