All testimony points to the conclusion that there is now real enthusiasm for education among the Southern whites. The school terms are being extended, often by means of local taxes levied in addition to the minimum fixed by the State; the quality of the teaching is improving; and popular interest is growing. In many sections, the school is developing into a real community center. Good buildings are replacing the shacks formerly so common. North Carolina is proud of the fact that for more than fourteen years an average of more than one new school a day has been built from plans approved by the educational department. More and more attention is being paid to the surroundings of the buildings. School gardens are common, and some schools even cultivate an acre or two of ground, the proceeds of which go to furnish apparatus or supplies. Many of the Southern towns and cities have schools which need not fear comparison with those in other sections. The crying need is more money which can come only in two ways, by reforming the system of taxation, and by increasing the amount of taxable property. All through the South the chief reliance is a general property tax with local assessors who are either incompetent or else desirous of keeping down assessments. The proportion of assessment to value varies widely, but on the average it can hardly be more than fifty per cent; and, as invariably happens, the assessment of the more valuable properties is proportionately less than that of the small farm or the mechanic's home. The South is growing richer, but the conflict with the North set the section back thirty or forty years, while the remainder of the country was increasing in wealth. Even today the South must build two school systems without the aid of government land grants, which have had so much to do with the successful development of the schools of the Western States, and without the commercial prosperity which has come to the East. The rate of taxation levied for schools in many Southern communities is now among the highest in the United States.