Scattered everywhere throughout the South are enormous areas of swamp land, partly in the deltas of the rivers, and partly caught between the hills. Under various acts of Congress 8,000,000 acres of so-called "swamp lands" were given to the states including much rich bottom land. The South is now making a demand upon the Federal Government to assume toward those lands a responsibility akin to that for the irrigated tracts in the Far West, and it seems likely that either a Federal or State system will undertake the reclamation of large tracts. The legislature of Florida, for instance, has authorized the levy of a drainage tax for the drainage of the everglades, where millions of acres could be made available. At present all the Federal projects under way, though they involve 2,000,000 acres and $70,000,000 of expenditure, are in the Far West and on the Pacific Slope. The fundamental fact that the South is mainly agricultural is brought out by the statistics of occupations in 1900. The greater part of the population of both white and black races is on the soil. By the census of 1900, in sixteen states counted Southern, thirty-eight per cent of the population were bread-winners. Out of the total population of 23,000,000 there were 8,100,000 persons engaged in gainful occupations, of whom 814,000 were in large cities and the remaining 7,300,000 in small cities and the country. The rapid growth of towns and small cities is due to the prosperity of the open country; and hence the large city is less important and less likely to absorb the rural population than is the case in the North.