How far has this rate of progress been continued since 1880 as shown by the inexorable method of comparing groups of Southern states with groups of Northwestern states of equal population? The tax valuation shows about the same proportion, so far as can be ascertained, to real values in one section as in the other. The local differences of mode of assessment when averaged would probably not disturb the result by more then ten per cent. The whole South (16 communities) as compared with a Northern group of the same number of people in 1907 showed 8.5 billions of assessed property against 13.7 billions in the North. It may therefore be set down as proven that the taxable wealth of the lower agricultural South is less than half that of similar agricultural communities in the North; so that while mining and manufacturing states like Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri have about the same wealth as similar Northern communities, the South as a whole has not one half the wealth. Take the former slaveholding states all together, including such a rich commonwealth as Missouri, and the farm value in the whole region in 1900, with 28 millions of people, was under 5,000 millions; while 28 million people in the West and Northwest owned farms to the amount of about 11,000 millions, or more than double. The total Southern crops in 1899, the last year in which the totals are obtainable, were worth 1,360 millions, the Northern crops counted up to 2,390 millions. The value of the Southern corn crop in 1905 was 416 million dollars; the equivalent population in the Northwest raised 601 million dollars' worth of corn. The whole South raises about 32 million dollars' worth of oats; the North raises 201 millions. The Southern potato crop is worth 19 millions; the Northern, 76 millions. Southern hay counts up to 66 millions and Northern to 258 millions. Even in tobacco, the North furnishes 7 million dollars' worth against 35 million dollars in the South. Cotton is the one crop that is exclusively Southern, and the crop of 1905, the year that we are considering, including the seed, was worth 632 million dollars. The Southern group had 127,000 teachers, school property of 84 millions, and total school revenue of 45 millions, against competing Northern figures of 199,000, of 293 millions, and of 120 millions. It is difficult in these figures to find justification for the notion that the South as an agricultural region is richer than the North, or is likely ever to rival it.