It is not, however, certain that the Negroes have accumulated in their own hands so much as the value of one year's output. A. H. Stone, a practical planter, says that, on his plantation, negro property was irregularly subdivided; his renters had property accumulated to an average of $400 a family, while the share hands did not average $50 a family. That is, the greater part of the negro property is owned by the smaller part of the population. That is not peculiar to Negroes; in New York City nearly the whole property is said to be owned by 20,000 people; and in Galveston most of the valuable real estate is said to be in the hands of, or controlled by, a score of individuals. In the cities and towns, many prosperous Negroes are rent payers, and own no real estate, but there may be 50,000 owners besides the 190,000 farm owners. In Kentucky half the Negroes who are working land independently own their farms. Even in Mississippi the owners and renters together are more than the share hands. Since no Negro can successfully rent unless he owns mules and farm tools, and the renters are considerably more numerous than the owners, we may add 250,000 more families on the land who have accumulated something. That makes 550,000 families, or between a third and a fourth of the Southern Negroes, who are getting ahead. If the 550,000 families averaged $900 each of land and personal property they would hold $500,000,000; $900 is, however, a high figure, and it may be roughly estimated that negro land owners and renters had accumulated in 1900 not more than $300,000,000 or $400,000,000 worth of property. The rest of the Southern Negroes are about 7,000,000 in number; at the low average of $15 a head of accumulations they would count up nearly $150,000,000 more. A fair estimate of negro wealth in the South, therefore, would be something above $500,000,000, and constantly rising.