From the collection of the I d z m o PreTinger v Jjibrary t San Francisco, California THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA SOCIAL STUDY SERIES HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA SOCIAL STUDY SERIES Odum and Johnson: The Negro and His Songs $3.00 Puckett: Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro 5.00 Odum and Johnson: Negro Workaday Songs 3.00 Odum and others: Southern Pioneers 2.00 Pound: Law and Morals 2.00 Giddings: The Scientific Study of Human Society 2.00 Odum and Willard: Systems of Public Welfare 2.00 Branson : Farm Life Abroad 2.00 Ross : Roads to Social Peace 1.50 Willey: The Country Newspaper 1.50 Jordan: Children's Interests in Reading 1.50 Odum: Public Welfare and Social Work 1.50 North : Social Differentiation 2.50 Knight: Among the Danes 2.50 Steiner and Brown: The North Carolina Chain Gang 2.00 Lou: Juvenile Courts in the United States 3.00 Carter: The Social Theories of L. T. Hobhouse 1.50 Brown: A State Movement in Railroad Development 5.00 Miller: Town and Country 2.00 Mitchell: William Gregg: Factory Master of the Old South 3.00 Metfessel: Phonophotography in Folk Music 3.00 Wager: County Government in North Carolina 5.00 Brown: Public Poor Relief in North Carolina 2.00 Walker: Social Work and the Training of Social Workers 2.00 Herring: Welfare Work in Mill Villages 5.00 Vance: Human Factors in Cotton Culture 3.00 The University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill, N. C. The Baker and Taylor Co. New York Oxford University Press London Maruzen-Kabushiki-Kaisha Tokyo HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE A Study in the Social Geography of the American South BY RUPERT B. VANCE, PH. D. Research Associate, Institute for Research in Social Science, University of North Carolina I \ CHAPEL HILL THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS 1929 COPYRIGHT, 1929, BY THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE KINGSPOBT PRESS, KINOSPORT, TENNESSEE THIS BOOK IS FOR MY FATHER AND MY MOTHER What a royal plant it is! The world waits in attendance on its growth; the shower that falls whispering on its leaves is heard around the earth; the sun that shmes on it is tempered by the prayers of all the people; the frost that chills it and the dews that descend from the stars are noted. . . . Its fiber is current in every bank, and when loosing its fleeces to the sun it floats a snowy banner that glorifies the fields of the humblest farmer, that man is marshalled under a flag that will compel the allegiance of the world and wring a subsidy from every nation on earth. — Henry W. Grady. Cotton is the master of them all, in spring as well as autumn, in winter as in summer. Yellow or white or black, all men in the South are slaves of cotton, subject to its power, prospering as those white fields flourish, and failing as they fail. — Dorothy Scarborough. PREFACE THE SETTLEMENT of America, viewed by the social geog- rapher, involved an adjustment of previously existent cultures to such factors of natural environment as topog- raphy, climate, and societies of plants and animals. The South early in its development was conditioned by the de- mands of the cotton plant. "Whenever man depends upon agriculture and has found a permanent abode," writes R. Mukerjee, "the growing of different staple crops such as rice, wheat, or Indian corn, and the rearing of dif- ferent domestic animals, selected from among the native stock of a region, govern not merely man's interests and habits, but also his social organization." "In the Belt — Black, Cotton, or Bible, as you prefer," a flippant journalist has put it, "cotton is Religion, Politics, Law, Economics, and Art." Without accepting geographic determinism, one must admit that much that is distinctive of southern culture, its plantation system, its sectionalism, its agricultural life, its rural practices, has developed as a kind of complex around the cotton plant. Without pushing this thesis to any unreasonable limits, the present study has grown out of an attempt to estimate the status of the human factors in cotton culture. The warmth of an emotional interest in the South has as far as possible been restrained by an appeal to the cold and impartial fact. It must be admitted, how- ever, that the great human nexus surrounding cotton culture is too intricate to be set forth adequately by sta- tistics and cases. The primeval, unconquered data of Vlll PREFACE society always prove greater than man's conventionalized representations. Such a study, then, is likely to lead to a sense of failure — to a feeling that the cotton culture complex is there, but that it has not been put on paper. Nevertheless, though the picture be incomplete, the writer hopes that it is not misleading. This volume is planned as a part of a series of studies in the regional South undertaken by the Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North Carolina. Taking for their general subject the southern regional field, they attempt to set forth the culture pe- culiar to the American South in terms of its conditioning by natural environment. The writer, as his part of the task, hopes to complete within the next three years a human geography of the South. It is a pleasure and a duty to acknowledge my indebted- ness to the experts of the United States Department of Agriculture. Such men as C. O. Brannen, E. L. Kirk- patrick, J. T. Sanders, B. R. Coad, W. J. Spillman, O. E. Baker, and Dr. Joseph Goldberger, until his recent death a member of the U. S. Public Health Service, have no doubt become accustomed to anonymity by seeing their researches quoted as Government Bulletin No. 2. It is to such caliber of scholarship as theirs that the publica- tions of the United States government owe their high scientific rank. No less emphatic are my obligations to the historians of the South, W. E. Dodd, M. B. Ham- mond, Ulrich B. Phillips, the late John Spencer Bassett, and Walter L. Fleming. Their researches must become the common property of all who seek to understand the American South. Acknowledgments are due Dr. Howard W. Odum, Di- rector of the Institute for Research in Social Science and PREFACE ix Kenan Professor of Sociology, for direction, encourage- ment, and aid in securing case studies of the farmer and his cotton. Dr. E. C. Branson, Kenan Professor of Rural Social Economics, and Miss H. R. Smedes, librarian, aided in the use of the immense amount of materials on southern agriculture and rural life in the files of the Rural Social Economics Library. Miss Katharine Jocher, Assistant Director of the Institute for Research in Social Science, made valuable suggestions, and Miss Nancy Herndon prepared the manuscript. The editorial staff of the University of North Carolina Press has been very kind to an author whose ignorance of form, appearance, and technology has proved amazing even to himself. On the other hand, the writer is compelled to reserve for himself the undivided distinction of having made every mistake to be found in this volume. E. B. V. CHAPEL HILL, N. C. January 19, 1929 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE Preface vii I. Cotton and Regionalism 1 II. The Cotton Belt : Its Regions and Its Hu- man Ecology 11 III. The Evolution of the Cotton System . . 34 IV. The Risks of Cotton Production: The Weather and the Weevil 80 V. The Risks of the Cotton Market ... 108 VI. Around the Year with Cotton Growers . 150 VII. The Cotton System at the Turn of the Quarter Century 174 VIII. How the Cotton Farmer Lives . . . . 205 IX. Human Elements in Cotton Culture . . 252 X. The Cotton Culture Complex .... 295 Selected Bibliography 321 Index 339 CHAPTER I COTTON AND REGIONALISM THE REGIONS OF THE UNITED STATES THAT THE extraordinary diversity of geographic con- ditions in the United States is accompanied by a sur- prising uniformity of economic opportunity and social conditions and a similarity of culture has often been commented upon. Russia, for instance, is the only nation which compares with the United States in the variety and extent of agricultural regions. Dr. Oliver E. Baker * has traced our unity of culture amid diversity of environments to three factors: (1) the strong pressure of economic competition, (2) the facilities for the dissemina- tion of new ideas, (3) and the mobility of capital and labor. "I suppose," writes Professor E. A. Ross, "no large population shows so faint and doubtful a response to region as we Americans. Never before were folk of forest or valley, of sea or river delta, so little insulated. Our education, reading matter, films, sports, standard- ized articles of consumption, religious denominations, trade and professional unions, political parties and com- mon institutions pull us into a national or at least a sec- tional plane." 2 Frederick Jackson Turner sees in the cultural homogeneity of the United States a lack of the 1See his "Agricultural Regions of North America," Part I, in Economic Geography (Oct., 1926), pp. 459-93. 2 In his Introduction to Regional Sociology, by R. Mukerjee, p. ix. 2 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE historical attitudes of Europe. "There are not in the United States," he writes, "the historic memories of so many national wrongs and wars. . . . There is not here the variety of languages nor races nor the sharp con- trasts in cultural types ; there has not been the same bitterness of class conflicts; nor the same pressure of economic need, inducing the various regions to seek by arms to acquire the means of subsistence, the control of natural resources." It is in the traits of her urban-industrial culture that America is most homogeneous; in her rural life she dis- plays more diversity. Possibly the most satisfactory classification of the natural regions of the United States is that worked out by Dr. Oliver E. Baker.4 To him an agricultural region is a large area of land characterized by a homogeneity in crops grown but sufficiently unlike adjacent areas to be noticeable. The economic culture of certain plants and consequently the agricultural re- gions are dependent upon the following physical con- ditions : 1. Moisture conditions, rainfall, and rate of evaporation. 2. Temperature conditions, length of growing season. 3. Topography, contour of the land. 4. Soils, physical, chemical, and bacteriological factors.6 In regard to climatic factors the United States falls roughly into four areas: a cold northern, a warm south- ern, a moist eastern, and a dry western region.6 In regard to soils there are three main regions: the central plains, largely dark-soiled grasslands ; the East and South, largely light-colored forest lands; and the western arid 3 "Sections and Nations," The Tale Review (Oct., 1922), p. 2. 4 Op. cit., p. 468. 5 Ibid., p. 460. ° Ibid., p. 467. COTTON AND REGIONALISM 3 lands.7 In addition to physical factors, W. J. Spillman 8 sees biological and economic factors as determining plant regions. Bacterial content oi soils, the preference of al- falfa for alkaline soils, and the relation of soils and cli- mates to insect pests and fungous diseases he classifies as biological. Under economic factors determining plant production are the value per unit of weight, and the distance to market. The main plants affected by these various factors are corn, wheat, cotton, oats, and hay. Together they nor- mally occupy more than 30,000,000 acres apiece on American farms, taking more than 87 per cent of the total crop area of the country.9 In combination with live stock they make up the various types of farming. Be- ginning with the South, Dr. Baker lists the following agricultural regions of the eastern part of the United States : 1. Subtropical Crops Belt. 2. Cotton Belt. 3. Middle Atlantic Trucking Region. 4. Corn and Winter Wheat Belt. 5. Corn Belt. 6. Hay and Dairying Belt. 7. Spring Wheat Area.10 The western United States he divides according to crops produced into the following areas: 8. Grazing and Irrigated Crops Region. 9. Columbia Plateau Region. 10. Pacific Subtropic Crops Region. 11. North Pacific Hay, Pasture, and Forest Region. 7 Ibid., p. 466. 8 In Distribution of Types of Farming in the United States, Farmers' Bulletin 1289, p. 3. 9 Ibid., p. 2. 10Dept. of Agriculture Yearbook, 1921, Fig. 2, p. 416; ibid., p. 472. 4 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE It is useless to deny that out of these different regions with the different products come varying patterns of rural life. Economic backgrounds, habits of life, and cul- tural routine form significant contrasts.11 The Kansas wheat farmer uses casual labor and tills broad and pro- ductive acres with the most modern of farm machinery. The hog and beef producer of the Corn Belt, slave to his plow, drill, and cultivator until the corn is laid by, rushed for a spell at harvest, spends most of his year in pretty leisurely fashion, watching his live stock turn corn and roughage into good sound meat. The wheat farmer of the Great Plains, the apple producer of the Northwest, the orange grower, and the raisin producer each spends one period of the year in throbbing effort followed by long stretches with nothing special to do. The poultry- man, the dairyman and butter fat producer, faced with a steady round of daily duties, fewer lulls, and fewer periods of intensity, has a life and a diet both full and varied with something new for almost every day in the year. The truck farmer of the South Atlantic coast, a hand and knee farmer on small patches, keeps in close touch with a sophisticated urban market and suffers no lack of vitamins in his diet. The southern cotton tenant, with his one mule and single plow, living on salt pork and corn bread, has cotton to plant, chop, and pick, and nothing to do until next year. Provided due considera- tion is given to America's common institutions and her ubiquitous industrial culture with its standardized prod- ucts, it may be helpful to regard these natural regions in terms of the culture areas of the anthropologist. 11 See Mordecai Ezekiel in Farm Income and Farm Life, ed. San- derson, pp. 82-83. The present writer, unable to improve upon many of Mr. Ezekiel's apt phrases, has adopted them outright. COTTON AND REGIONALISM O Each of these regions has its own resources and eco- nomic capacities based on its products and partly determined, as Professor Turner has said, when the geo- logical foundations were laid down. On topography and agricultural production have been erected industrial su- perstructures which have created other economic interests in fabricated goods. It is these rival economic interests that have resulted in sectionalism. A section may be de- fined as a region seeking to realize economic interests in political action. It is regionalism in politics that has given content to the designation of the American Congress as "an assembly of geographic envoys." It is Professor Turner again who has given this view its brilliant expres- sion: "We in America are in reality a federation of sec- tions rather than states. State sovereignly was never influential except as a constitutional shield of the section. In political matters the states . . . act in sections and are responsible to the respective interests and ideals of these sections. Party policy and congressional legislation emerge from a process of sectional contests and sectional bargainings. . . . Legislation is the result of sectional adjustments to meet national needs." l2 The tariff for the industrial North Atlantic states and the agricultural re- lief demanded by the Farmers' Block of the Corn, Wheat, and Cotton Belts offer an obvious contemporary illus- tration. It has been suggested that the reason for America's cultural unity is the absence of national and racial differ- ences. Again this is an overstatement. Outside cities, there exist racial groups definitely related to regions and to production of particular types of crops. Variety is 12 Op. cit., pp. 6-7. 6 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE added to American economic and cultural life by occa- sional settlements of Italians, French, and Germans en- gaged in vine and truck culture, Mexican casuals in Texas, Japanese and Chinese farmers in California, and Poles in the Connecticut Valley. The place of the Penn- sylvania Dutch and of the Scandinavians and Teutons in the wheat culture of the Central Plains is more im- portant. New York Yankees, Chester County Quakers, Georgia Crackers, though of the same racial stock have developed differently. As Ezekiel points out each group has "its own standards evolved out of custom, tradition, and environment." The Census of 1920 revealed interesting data on the economic levels of the different regions.14 Over one-third of the value of farm property in the United States and two-fifths of the value of the farm land were found in the Corn Belt. The Corn Belt also contained one-fourth of the value of live stock in the country, and about one-half of the value of farm implements and machinery was re- ported from the Corn Belt and the Hay and Pasture Region. The value of farm buildings was found to be high- est in southern Pennsylvania, next in the Corn Belt, the Spring Wheat Area, and the Hay and Dairying Region. It was lowest in the Cotton Belt. Tractors were located chiefly in the Corn Belt, Spring Wheat Area, and South Pacific Region. Over one-third of the automobiles on farms were found in the Corn Belt, and the rural tele- phones were concentrated in the Corn Belt and the Hay and Dairying Region. The lowest ratios for automobiles and telephones were found in the Cotton Belt. Running 13 Sanderson, op. cit., p. 83. 14 See "Graphic Summary of American Agriculture" in Dept. of Agriculture Yearbook, 1921, pp. 493-506. COTTON AND REGIONALISM 7 water and electric lighting systems in farm homes were found mostly in the Hay and Dairying regions of New England and the South Pacific Area. When urban cen- ters are included it is shown that the North Atlantic Coast states, with less than a third of the population, paid over one-half of the income and profit taxes ap- propriated for the nation as a whole.15 A study of read- ing habits of the population shows that New England, New York, and New Jersey have distinct preeminence. The draft records reveal the fact that the best physical fitness was found in North Central and Mountain states, and the lowest in the industrial Northeast. A mapping of the men and women of eminence as listed by Who's Who shows that over half of those included live in the northeast Atlantic states, although a little less than half were from that section. THE SOUTH AND COTTON The inevitable illustration of the trends discussed above is the South. It furnishes the region most defi- nitely committed to the production of one economic plant, the staple of cotton. In the Cotton Kingdom it has fur- nished the most sharply defined section and has led the most aggressive sectional movement in the history of our country. In its Negroes it possesses the largest and most clearly defined racial group in the United States. This group is historically associated with cotton culture, and the association continues. The South is relatively among the least urban and industrial of the regions of the United States. This, of course, is another way of saying 15 See also Turner, "Sections and Nations," The Tale Review (Oct., 1922), pp. 11-12. 8 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE that its habits of rural life make up a comparatively large part of its culture. Its leading agricultural product, cotton, may also be expected to play a larger part in the economic life of the section than in other more indus- trialized areas. Add to this the popular view that the South is at once the most crude and the most courtly, the most promising, the most provincial, and the most backward of the regions of the United States. The scientific interest in the culture of the South has resulted in many interesting and valuable interpretations of the region. To a social geographer like Ellsworth Huntington, the South is explicable in terms of climate; to publicists like Lothrop Stoddard and Madison Grant the explanation is wholly in terms of race ; to an economic historian like Ulrich B. Phillips, in terms of race and the plantation system; and to a social historian like Walter L. Fleming, partly in terms of the results of Civil War and Reconstruction. Dr. David Starr Jordan stresses the biological depletion wrought by the Civil War. Professor Howard W. Odum has suggested a treat- ment of the contemporary southern situation in terms of leadership, and Dr. Edwin Minis has given an intellec- tualistic interpretation. Professors Holland Thompson and Broadus Mitchell have furnished historical com- mentaries on the South's industrialization of its cotton. Dr. Francis Butler Simkins and Dr. A. M. Arnett have traced attempts of southern rural folk in South Carolina and Georgia to better their conditions of life by political action. Frank Tannenbaum has published a brilliant though journalistic critique of the South in terms of cotton and racial attitudes. Possibly the most promising attempt at regional interpretation is the series of studies planned and under way in the Institute for Research in COTTON AND REGIONALISM 9 Social Science at the University of North Carolina.16 Without assuming the position that the culture of the plant has done more than condition the development of the region, it is the purpose of the following chapters to trace the relation of cotton to its growers and the sec- tion. The presence of cotton is assumed in every study of social conditions in the South, and its culture is usually fitted into the predetermined categories of the investiga- tion. The buyers and spinners speak of cotton in terms of supply. To them the question of cotton is a matter of increased production and decreased cost. To the county agent and the specialist of the experiment stations cotton offers a technical problem of increased production of better grades. To the experts of the Crop Reporting Bureau cotton is a matter of tabulation of acreages, plantings, weather damages, weevil damages, and gin- nings, conditions of crops that are and that are to be. To the southern educator it is a matter of education. Given a school term of six months, eight months, nine months, all other things shall be added unto the children of cotton growers. To the racial propagandist cotton is simply another aspect of race, the exploitation of black men by white. To the inarticulate cotton farmer, cotton is often simply "hard luck." One year drought, another year weevil, a next year good crops and a market with the bottom knocked out of prices. Our concern is with the producers. R. Clyde White in attempting to trace the relation of cotton to certain factors in southern culture used the method of correlation.17 In eleven cotton states the 151 16 See Bibliography for writings to which reference is made. 17 "Cotton and Some Aspects of Southern Civilization," Social Forces (Sept., 1924), pp. 651-54. 10 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE counties having the highest acreage of cotton were taken. These counties represented 40.4 per cent of all the cot- ton acreage in those states for the census year 1919. The correlation of acreage planted to cotton with the ex- tent of tenancy was found to be +.51, that of cotton and illiteracy was +.099, cotton and Negroes +.123, and tenancy and illiteracy +.537. In an area of high ten- ancy, illiteracy, and Negro population ratios the only significant relations found are those of cotton and ten- ancy and of tenancy and illiteracy. Mr. White concludes that the South cannot be regarded as a cultural unit nor can cotton, on the basis of mere correlation, be con- sidered a causal factor. In seeking to trace the reaction of cotton on its human factors in the South, one is confronted with the necessity of a unity of the social sciences. Descriptive and factual materials of human geography, economics, history, agri- cultural economics, and sociology accordingly are used wherever found valuable. In addition to the statistics the method of presentation by case studies has also been found valuable. Expressions of attitudes as found in in- terviews and letters, which would be regarded by his- torians as primary sources after a sufficient lapse of time, are also used. From the methods and materials of geographers the facts of soil, climate, and topography may be employed to account in some measure for the concentration of cot- ton culture and the distribution of races, tenancy, and the plantation in the different areas of the Cotton Belt. CHAPTER H THE COTTON BELT: ITS REGIONS AND ITS HUMAN ECOLOGY SPECIALIZED REGION IN LESS than 3 per cent of the world's land area 60 per cent of the world's cotton supply is grown.1 The Cotton Belt of the American South is thus one of the most highly specialized agricultural regions in the world. It contains about 295,000,000 acres, nearly one-sixth of the land area of the continental United States, extends 1600 miles in length, and averages 300 miles in breadth. In this area are 2,100,000 farms, one-third of the number in the United States,2 which produced in 1919 crops valued at $3,800,000,000, one-fourth of the total farm income of the United States.3 In this belt 42 per cent of the crop land was in cotton in 1919, and the value of the cotton crop was equal to the value of all other crops in the Belt combined.4 As a matter of course cotton occupies the best land in the Belt, and the time devoted to other crops is determined by the demands of the cash crop. The value 1 Oliver E. Baker, "Agricultural Regions of North America," Part II, "The South," Economic Geography (Jan., 1927), p. 65. 2 These are, of course, census figures, but the census counts as a separate farm each tenant's holding in the South. This gives the South twice as many farms per unit of area as the remainder of the states. If each plantation were counted as one holding the South would fall behind in number of farms. 3 Baker, op. cit., p. 63. 4 Ibid., pp. 77, 79. 12 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE of cotton lint is exceeded by the value of corn, hay, and wheat crops for the whole United States, but when the value of cotton seed is included cotton ranks second only to corn.5 In our export trade the value of cotton far ex- ceeds that of any other commodity.6 "It is the chief and often almost the only source of income to a large propor- tion of the farmers in the Southern States." 7 The Cotton Belt is not one but many. Within this area differences in climate, rainfall, altitude, character of the soil, and history have given rise to subregions of cotton culture. These regions differ rather widely in the spatial distribution of what may be called human factors — black men, white men, share croppers, share tenants, small own- ers, and planters. Any adequate analysis of these regions would include the distribution in terms of regions, of population, races, types of tenure, domestic animals, cities, buildings, and machines devoted to cotton culture. This description of spatial distribution of man and the artifacts of his civilization in relation to cotton lands is, I take it, the human ecology of the Cotton Belt. THE PLANT "Cotton is the lint or fine fiber which grows on the seeds of plants belonging to the genus of gossypium,. Wild species of gossypium are found in tropical regions of both hemispheres, and there are hundreds of cultivated varieties, differing in plant characters as well as in the length, strength, and fineness of fiber. Thirty-eight prin- 6 A. M. Agelasto, et. al., "The Cotton Situation," Separate No. 879; also in Dept. of Agriculture Yearbook, 1921, p. 323. 6 Ibid., p. 324. See also J. Russell Smith, North America, p. 237. T "The Cotton Situation" p. 324. REGIONS AND HUMAN ECOLOGY 13 cipal commercial types are recognized at Liverpool."1 In the United States are grown three principal types: 1. Sea Island, staple 1% to 2 inches in length, produced on the average about 100,000 bales annually, principally on the coast of South Carolina, Florida, and Georgia. This crop has been ruined by the boll weevil and in 1920 amounted to less than two thousand bales.9 In 1926 Shep- person's Cotton Facts noted: "The only mention of Sea Island Cotton is to the effect that its cultivation has practically disappeared," since the area fitted for it has been completely overrun by weevil. 2. Upland long staple with a length of 1% to 1%, ranges about 1,500,000 bales per year, and sells up to 60 per cent higher than mid- dling. 3. Upland short stapling is the standard "Ameri- can Middling," % to 1 inch, which furnishes 92 per cent of the cotton crop.10 CLIMATOLOGY OF COTTON PRODUCTION Although a native of the tropics, the cotton plant has become best adapted to the mildly tropic South. In the tropics it was a perennial; in the temperate climates it has become an annual. The limiting factors are climate, rainfall, and topography, with soil as a factor of lesser importance.11 Cotton demands first of all a two-hundred day growing season, free of frost. This line is rather definite and follows the average summer temperature of 77 degrees closely.12 The Cotton Belt has a rainfall al- most twice as great as that of Illinois or New York. The 8 "Cotton," Atlas of American Agriculture, Part V, Sec. A, p. 5. (This will hereafter be referred to as Cotton Atlas.) 9 "The Cotton Situation," p. 329. 10 Cotton Atlas, p. 3. 11 Baker, op. cit., p. 65. 12 Cotton Atlas, p. 9. 14 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE limits thus set outline the traditional Dixie with remark- able fidelity. The line begins at the northern border of Virginia, slopes to the southern border of Tennessee, rises to the northern border of Arkansas and Oklahoma, and turns sharply to the south when it meets the arid regions of west Texas. The limiting factor in the area thus out- lined is the amount of autumn rainfall. While it is true that heavy spring rains cause shallow rooting of the cotton plant and excessive summer rains restrict the yield, an autumn rainfall exceeding ten inches is practi- cally prohibitive of cotton culture. This is because "fre- quent rain at this season of the year not only interferes with picking and damages the lint, but also favors de- struction of the bolls by the weevil." 13 This has led geog- raphers like O. E. Baker and J. Russell Smith to set off Florida and the subtropic gulf coast as a region separate from the Cotton Belt.14 THE COTTON BELTS: SOIL REGIONS Within the limits set by frost line and rainfall the density of cotton production is determined by the soils and altitude. A dot map of cotton acreage 15 discloses four generalized areas of cotton production* the Eastern Coastal Plain, the Gulf Coastal Plain, .the Central Al- luvial Valleys, and the Western Prairie Lands. These areas are divided into subregions which correspond with definite soil areas.16 13 Baker, op. cit., p. 67. 14 Smith, North America, chap. XIV. 15 See opposite page. Reprinted from Cotton Atlas, Plate 14, p. 9. 16 This analysis of the cotton belts follows the contribution of Hugh H. Bennett in his map prepared in 1917 for the Bureau of Soils, published in Cotton Atlas, Fig. 12, p. 8, and reproduced as REGIONS AND HUMAN ECOLOGY 15 THE EASTERN COTTON BELT The Eastern Cotton Belt is divided into five subregions differing in soil, characteristic, vegetation, and extent of cotton culture. In this region the cotton acreage begins at the southern border of Virginia and swings southwest- ward through North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia in two unequal strips, separated by the Sand Hills. This region is the oldest of the Cotton Belt, cot- ton culture in parts of the Carolinas dating back to colonial times. Many rivers fed by rains from the coast frontispiece in the present volume. Many of the names given the regions are applied locally, and the changes from one to another • can be noted by the casual traveler by automobile or train. The figures of average yield per cotton acre were compiled for the Cotton Atlas from the census years 1879, 1889, 1899, 1909, while the figures of production of the acre are averages of the five years 1911-15. These averages are taken as being more nearly normal than any to be secured after the advent of the boll weevil. The statistics of size of farm and type of tenure are taken from the atlas analysis of cotton production, studies of counties in the different regions. The number of typical counties selected for study in each is regarded as being enough to give an adequate sampling. Each of the regions has the following number of counties studied: COUNTIES REGIONS STUDIED Atlantic Coast Flatwoods 7 Upper Coastal Plain 16 Sand Hills 9 Piedmont Plateau 20 Black Prairies of Alabama and Miss 7 Yazoo Mississippi Delta 10 Black Prairie of Texas 10 Interior Coastal Plain 9 ~~88 When the plantation system is mentioned the definition is that of the census — one continuous proprietorship divided into holdings among five or more tenants. 16 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE and melting snows from the Appalachians make this re- gion less liable to dry spells. On the other hand, the Piedmont nearer the mountains is more liable to suffer from early frost.17 The soils range from grayish sand along the coast to red clay in the Piedmont Plateau. The Atlantic Coast Flatwoods with its gray and mottled sand, poorly drained land, and characteristic vegetation of long-leaf pine and grassy undergrowth has only 3.5 per cent of its land area in cotton.18 The farms are the smallest in the belt, and 52 per cent of them are operated by white and black owners. On the coast of the mainland and on the islands out- side the sounds, in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida was grown the Sea Island crop before its destruction by the boll weevil. The Middle Coastal Plain is much more devoted to cot- ton culture, over 13 per cent of the land being in cotton.19 The soil is a grayish sandy loam with yellow clay sub- soils, characterized by pine and wire grass vegetation. With the aid of fertilizers the twenty million acres pro- duce on the average an annual yield of over a million bales, with about 205 pounds of lint to the acre of cotton. Twenty-eight per cent of the land area is in plantations with 44.8 of the farms operated by Negro tenants and 16.79 by white renters. The Sand Hills, a long narrow strip slanting to the southwest, separate the Middle and Upper Coastal Plains from the Piedmont Plateau. The soil is deep loam sand, the vegetation pine and black jack oak. The crop in the sand areas is most successful during wet years when the 17 W. H. Hubbard, Cotton and the Cotton Market, p. 2. 18 Cotton Atlas, pp. 8, 12. 19 Loc. cit. REGIONS AND HUMAN ECOLOGY 17 clay does not do so well. Potash is needed to hold the bolls on the plant in the heat of midsummer. High winds are likely to blow sand into the open cotton, pro- ducing the "sandies" much disliked by spinners.20 The holdings are small, about 9 per cent of the land is in cot- ton and 24 per cent in plantations.21 The Piedmont Plateau is a clay belt whose character- istic red tinge can be traced, as Hubbard suggests, by a railway traveler all the way from New Jersey to the red clay hills of Georgia.22 The vegetation is short leaf pine, oak, and hickory. The average yield of cotton is 180 pounds, and the area produces about 1,800,000 bales a year.28 The hills and rolling surface prevent the long straight furrows of the coastal plain, making necessary curving rows that help in terracing. The cotton is the upland short staple, although better varieties are being introduced by experimental farms such as that of the Coker Company at Hartsville, South Carolina. The lower red lands need much less potash than the sand hills and coast land. In the upper Piedmont the cotton plants grow so short as to be called "Bumblebee" from the rustic quip that a bumblebee can stand on his hind legs and drink from the bloom. The farms average a little over thirty- five acres, about 20 per cent of the land area is in cotton, and almost 70 per cent of the farms are operated by tenants. The arrival of the weevil has pushed cotton cul- ture north, and North Carolina has had the largest cotton yield per acre for several years. Her best producing cot- ton county lies in the Piedmont. In the southern tip of the red clay belt, southwest Georgia often produces the earliest cotton outside southwest Texas. 20 Hubbard, op. cit., pp. 4, 6. 21 Cotton Atlas, p. 12. 22 Hubbard, op. cit., pp. 4, 6. 23 Cotton Atlas, p. 12. 18 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE Much of this Eastern Belt has been planted to cotton for over a hundred years. This fact is responsible both for the lack of soil fertility and for the prevalence of the plantation which has been accepted as a heritage from slavery. A study of the expenditures for fertilizer in the United States shows the extent to which soil exhaustion has gone in this division. "The Eastern Cotton Belt, no- tably the Middle and Upper Coastal Plains and the Piedmont subregions, use more fertilizer than any other portions of the United States." 24 According to the 1920 Census, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia spent approximately one and a half billion dollars on commercial fertilizer, almost as much as all the other states combined. Much of this expenditure is, of course, to be charged against tobacco culture. THE GULF STATES BELT From South Carolina in the Eastern Belt the Upper Coastal Plain swings through southern Alabama into central Mississippi. These two states comprise the Gulf section, the second oldest division of the Cotton Belt. It contains several varieties of soils that give rise to sub- regions. The Upper Coastal Plains reach almost to the coast where the sandy soil and excessive autumn rains prevent cotton culture. The rows often run straight across the field since the land is usually flat. The area consists of about twenty-eight million acres with rolling contour and soils of grayish to reddish sandy loam. The characteristic vegetation is pine, oak, and hickory. The farms average over forty acres, over 13 per cent of all the land is cultivated in cotton, and 28 per cent of the 24 Baker, op. cit., p. 71. REGIONS AND HUMAN ECOLOGY 19 farms are run by the plantation system. The average cotton acre has produced 190 pounds, and the whole area produces on the average over a million bales.25 Just above is the bow-shaped region of clay hills, a continuation of the red hills of western Georgia through Alabama and Mississippi. The area is rather small, has hilly clay land with some "white rock" land, and produces about 320,000 bales on 8,000 acres of upland cotton. A well-known subregion is the "Alabama Black Belt," so called from both its Negro workers and the crescent- shaped Black Prairies which curve upward from south- eastern Alabama into northern Mississippi. The "black lands," moisty brown silt loams with post oak vegeta- tion, grow a strong staple, 1 inch to 1% inches in length. The humid climate and heavy soil have produced a type of cotton much sought after. Over one-half of the im- proved land area is in cotton, and 78 per cent of the farms are operated by Negro tenants, 64 per cent of the cultivated land being in plantations. The average hold- ing is above thirty-five acres. The average "yield per acre is less than 150 pounds owing to continuous cropping and shallow plowing" mainly by unskilled Negro labor.28 A fairly productive small cotton area is the fertile Tennessee River Valley regions of northern Alabama with its brown and red hill soils. The Mississippi Bluffs extend from Louisiana into Kentucky. The Silt Loam Uplands are level and undulating and have suffered erosion, with the vegetation principally oak, sweet gum, and poplar. The cotton acre produces about two hundred pounds and the area produces about a half-million bales. The Gulf 25 Cotton Atlas, pp. 8, 12. 28 Ibid., p. 8. 20 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE states have been hard hit by the weevil, and cotton acre- age has not increased since 1912. The problem of weevil control is complicated by the wooded tracts which ex- tend along the cotton fields and furnish places of hiberna- tion for the insects.27 THE CENTRAL "RIVER BOTTOMS" "Alluvial soils occupy a larger area in the Cotton Belt and subtropic Crop Belt than in any other region in the United States," '* and they are the most highly special- ized in cotton. America drains itself into the Cotton Belt, sloping from the Appalachian table-land to the Atlantic in the East and through the vast interconnected Missis- sippi River system to the Gulf. An analysis of lands in need of drainage shows Florida, Louisiana, Texas, Georgia, Minnesota, Michigan, North Carolina, Missis- sippi, Arkansas, and South Carolina leading in acreage of wet, swamp, and overflowed lands. J. Russell Smith calls a chart of these areas "a map of the mosquito in- dustry." 9 The course of the Mississippi, the Arkansas, and the Red rivers can be traced by the cotton produc- tion in these bottoms.30 The shift to the Central Valley had begun by 1821, and in 1833 less than half of the cotton production was in the Atlantic Coast. The first areas developed in the Alluvial Bottoms of the Mississippi were around Memphis and in the delta formed by the Yazoo where it flows into the Mississippi. The brown and mottled clay soil char- acterized by cypress, red gum, and oak growth produces a smooth silky staple as long as 1% inches and of ex- 27 Hubbard, op. cit., p. 8. 28 Baker, op. cit., p 73. » North America, p. 168. 30 Cotton Atlas, Fig. 14, p. 9. REGIONS AND HUMAN ECOLOGY 21 ceptional strength.31 The occasional overflows to which the land on the three rivers mentioned is subject serve to enrich the soil. Old buyers have given special names to the best cotton grades. "Benders" are grown in the bends of the Mississippi; "rivers," on the banks of tributaries to the Father of Waters, and "creeks," along the smaller streams.32 "The size of the yield and the height and vigor of the plants are exceptional." Hubbard speaks of old- time photographs displayed in many cotton offices show- ing a planter on horseback in his field with the animal almost hidden in the foliage.33 The Yazoo Delta has the highest average yield of cotton in the Cotton Belt, 265 pounds to the acre. In the Delta 70 per cent of the im- proved land is in cotton, 85 per cent of the farm land is operated according to the plantation system, and 86 per cent of the farms are operated by Negro tenants. The average holding is about thirty-three acres with around twenty acres in cotton. The sixteen million acres average about a million bales.34 The so-called second bottoms, which lie above over- flow, produce good yields in southeastern Missouri and northeastern Arkansas. Very little fertilizer is found nec- essary on any of the alluvial farms.35 The weevil has also spread devastation in the alluvial valleys, playing espe- cial havoc with fine delta cotton. The plantations in Arkansas and Mississippi are much larger than those found elsewhere. The largest planta- tion in the world at Scott, Mississippi, in the Delta con- tains 37,000 acres. The land is flat, and the rows stretch far away. One viewing the region for the first time is 31 Hubbard, op. cit., p. 8. 82 Ibid, pp. 10-11. 83 Loc. cit. 84 Cotton Atlas, pp. 8-12. 35 "The Cotton Situation," p. 348. 22 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE likely to be oppressed by the lowness of the country and the innumerable Negro tenant shacks, each with its cotton house, that stretch away into the distance. THE WESTERN BELT The movement to the Western Belt came compara- tively late. Texas was added to the list of cotton states in 1845 and in the statistics of 1859 and 1869 ranked fifth in production. By the census of 1890 the state had assumed the leading place in the Cotton Kingdom and cultivation was well under way in the Indian Territory. Texas and Oklahoma are regarded as the frontier of the Cotton Belt, having been but recently reclaimed from the long and short grasses of prairie and plains. Together they comprise one-sixth of the area of the Cotton Belt. "The general characteristics of Texas and Oklahoma are a rich and alluvial soil belt with stretches of poorer land on the outskirts, but everywhere a rolling country like the western prairies." 8 The cotton produced in this area is likely to have a staple longer and stronger than that of the East but not equal to that of the valley.37 The leading subregions are the Interior Coastal Plain, Eastern Oklahoma and Red Prairies, the Black Waxy, the Grand Prairie of Texas, and the Great Plains. The Interior Coastal Plain extends through Northwest Louisiana, Southwest Arkansas and Northeast Texas. The topography is rolling, the soil, grayish and reddish sandy loam, the vegetation, pines and oak giving way to prairie area in Texas. One-third of the improved land is in cotton, and almost half of the farms are operated by owners. An acre of cotton produces about 165 pounds 36 Hubbard, op. tit., p. 12. & Ibid., p. 13. REGIONS AND HUMAN ECOLOGY 23 and the whole area averages almost a million bales. The Eastern Prairies of Oklahoma comprise almost half the eastern part of the state. The soil is black to reddish, topography rolling, and vegetation prairie grasses. The area is mostly given to corn, hay, and pas- ture land. In 1909 it produced over a third of a million bales averaging 182 pounds to the cotton acre. The Red Prairies in Western Oklahoma and North Central Texas are rough in contour and given mostly to grazing, produce about 105 pounds of cotton to the acre, but bid fair to become important because of large area. They produced 825,000 bales in the 1909 figures. The outstanding cotton section of the West is the Black Waxy of Texas, so called from its dark calcareous clays. It has the highest per cent of its area in farms, 86, the highest per cent improved, 62, and the highest in cotton, 31.6. It is also unique in that it is an area of white tenancy, for although only 14.5 per cent of the farm land is in plantations, 55.7 per cent of all farms are run by white tenants. In the per cent of white ownership the region comes second only to the Interior Coastal Plains. The size of farms is over sixty-five acres, second to the Red Prairies with their hundred-acre farms — much of which is in pasture. The land is rich and fresh and practically no fertilizer is needed. West Texas has a po- tentially fertile soil but the desert is too close and the "droughts are frequently devastating." J The story of the spread of cotton culture to the Great Plains must be left to a later chapter. The black land, however, does not suffer so much from drought, for "it holds water like a sponge." 3fl 38 Hubbard, op. cit., p. 79. 39 j^id., p. 15. 24 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE "COTTON AND 'CAWN' " A spot map of the distribution of corn shows that it is cultivated in all portions of the Cotton Belt although there is no such concentration as found in the Corn Belt reaching through Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana. Baker esti- mates that 48 to 52 per cent of the crop land in the Cotton Belt is given over to the production of feed for live stock.40 This includes cotton seed, however, which is estimated to occupy about 6 per cent of the crop area. In areas of less intensive specialization corn often occu- pies an area equal to that of cotton. The farming system is based upon the two crops which are "planted in suc- cession or alternation until the productiveness of the soil is reduced." * The Belt does not produce enough corn to supply its own needs. As a result the price of corn in the Cotton Belt is often twice as high as in the Corn Belt. On the other hand, the production per acre is about half that of the Corn Belt. Dr. Baker suggests that "the pro- duction of corn, hay, cattle, and hogs in the Cotton Belt appears likely to be profitable only up to that point at which the supply of these products does not exceed the local demand." 2 H. C. Taylor also suggests that corn may pay when grown for home use and yet fail to achieve a place as a commercial crop.43 The northern and western fringes of this Belt are devoted to combination crops of wheat, rye, and oats. These are exceeded in acreage fur- ther south by cow peas, velvet beans, and peanuts. Sweet potatoes are evenly distributed throughout the humid portions of the whole Cotton Belt. The facility and abundance with which these "by-products" crops can be « Baker, op. cit., p. 79. 41 Ibid., p. 80. & Ibid., p. 82. 43 Outlines of Agricultural Economics, p. 60. REGIONS AND HUMAN ECOLOGY 25 grown in the South is responsible for the fact which W. E. Dodd notes when he says that "the problem of subsistence during the Civil War was much simpler than in any of the European countries fighting in the Great War." 44 Rainfall, however, limits southern agriculture in the production of hay. The higher rainfall for all except the Western area of the Cotton Belt results in autumn show- ers that make the growing of hay extremely hazardous. "In all the states from North Carolina to Louisiana many farmers attempt to produce hay," but a large part of the crop is lost each year in the curing and much of the rest is damaged by untimely rains. More dependable autumn weather is found in states further from the At- lantic and the Gulf, particularly Arkansas, Oklahoma, and parts of Texas, all of which have larger acreages of hay. As a result, the relative proportion of crop land devoted to hay in the cotton states is the smallest in the United States. Not enough hay is produced for home use, and much has to be imported from the Middle West. Since the freight charges often equal the original cost, southern planters pay a high price for their hay. If methods of curing suitable to the climate were worked out, hay would be more generally grown. It would, how- ever, be valuable as a cash crop if only a few farmers in each community grew it for market.45 Excessive rainfall is the main regional factor re- sponsible for ruining a great deal of southern farm land. It is estimated that in the Cotton Belt in the decades since 1860 "erosion has destroyed an area equal to that 44 The Cotton Kingdom, p. 63. 48 W. J. Spillman, Distribution of Types of Farming in the United States, Farmers' Bulletin 1289, p. 12. 26 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE of Belgium." Regional factors combine with the tenancy system to allow the fields to wash away. Southern soils are peculiarly liable to leaching. Iowa, for instance, has thirty inches of rainfall a year, and her soils are frozen impervious to water all winter; the cotton states have fifty to sixty inches of rainfall and winters that are nearly frostless. Grass serves to retain the soil, but cot- ton and corn are two crops which require that vegetation be weeded out. Thus agriculture without grass and with- out humus has been combined with a tenant-landlord sys- tem to ruin thousands of acres. Gullies best described in the term "red washes" have reduced many of the best upland farms to sandy wastes.46 MULES Corn, mules, cotton is a logical sequence, and no ecology of the Cotton Belt is complete without a study of the distribution of mules. Spot maps prepared from the Census show that "there are more mules and fewer horses per square mile in the Cotton Belt than in any eastern agricultural region." 7 The ten ranking states in mules are all southern. The horses are localized in the Corn Belt and with the exception of Missouri and the cotton frontier of Texas and Oklahoma, comparatively few mule colts are found in the cotton states. Mis- souri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Iowa, and Nebraska rank highest in mule colts. More pasture, cheaper feed, better methods of stock-raising have arranged it so that mules are grown in the Corn Belt and shipped South when ready for work. 48 See Smith, North America, p. 255. 47 Baker, op. cit., p. 80. REGIONS AND HUMAN ECOLOGY 27 CITIES BUILT ON COTTON The location and growth of southern cities have been determined largely by their relation to cotton culture. The human ecology of the Cotton Belt would include an account of the agricultural capitals, the distribution of cities built on cotton. Cities in relation to cotton are di- vided into future markets, spot markets, and points of export. A spot market may be either bona fide or used for determining difference for delivery on future con- tracts. These do not include the primary markets, the name given to the interior towns and villages where the cotton first leaves the hands of the producer.48 For the Eastern Belt, Savannah, Norfolk, Augusta, Charles- ton, Atlanta, Columbia, Brunswick, Wilmington, Macon, Greenville, lead as spot markets in the order named. Savannah, Brunswick, Wilmington, and Norfolk are also export points. For the Gulf states, New Orleans, Mobile, Montgomery, and Pensacola, Florida, serve as outlets. The alluvial regions form the hinterland for the great cotton metropolises of New Orleans and Memphis, with Little Rock, Pine Bluff, and Helena as smaller Arkansas spot markets. New Orleans is remarkable as the cotton outlet of the Mississippi. Third as a spot market in re- ceipt of cotton bales, second after New York as a future market, and second as a port of export, New Orleans is a really great cotton metropolis. The great Western Belt is dominated by Galveston and Houston, which lead the world as spot markets. Texas City, Fort Worth, Paris, Dallas, and Chickasha, Oklahoma, are also cotton centers. Galveston leads as point of export. The leading cotton points outside the 48 "The Cotton Situation," pp. 383-85. 28 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE Belt are St. Louis, Norfolk, and Baltimore on the fringe, Boston as a center for the textile industry, Washington, San Francisco, and Philadelphia as points of export, and New York and Chicago as future markets. The remark- able expansion of the acreage in the Western Belt is shown by the growth of Dallas. From 1915 to 1920 Dallas received on the average 117,179 bales of cotton. In 1923- 24 with the aid of eight steam railways and six electric lines Dallas handled a half-million bales. Three hundred million dollars were required to finance the transactions.49 The distribution of cotton warehouses in 1921 shows a distinct concentration in the Eastern and Western Belts, especially northern Georgia, South Carolina, and eastern Alabama. The Black Prairie of Texas also is well supplied with places of storage. The Warehouses are found "at many local markets as well as at the larger concentration points throughout the South." } The no- ticeable lack of warehouse facilities for cotton is found in the great Mississippi River Bottoms where cotton is customarily marketed, due to the tenant system, as soon as gathered. In 1921 there were 2,735 warehouses in the South, Georgia with 775, Texas with 756, Alabama with 282, South Carolina with 269. The distribution of cotton compresses affords an interesting contrast. In the West, where most of the cotton is exported or shipped to New England, compresses are numerous ; while in the East, where much cotton is consumed in the local mills, they are few.51 Cotton compresses are of necessity located in the great urban centers, the spot markets and points of ex- port. In the Western Belt, Houston, Galveston, Waco, 49 "Dallas as Cotton Market," Commerce and Finance (Sept. 17, 1924), pp. 1801-5. B<>"The Cotton Situation," p. 377. B1 Cotton Atlas, p. 25. REGIONS AND HUMAN ECOLOGY 29 Dallas, and Fort Worth; in the Valley, New Orleans, Memphis, Little Rock, and Greenwood; in the East, Wilmington and Charleston are points at which bales are compressed for long distance shipment. The cotton gin is the typical s'tage property of the southern small town scene. The whole Cotton Belt is cov- ered with active ginneries. The area of greatest concen- tration of cotton gins is a comparatively uninterrupted stretch from North Carolina through the Alabama Black Belt. The Mississippi fringe comes next. In the western area gins are a good deal less numerous in comparison with the volume of production.52 This is owing to the fact that the gins are of a later type, larger, and of greater capacity. In 1914 gins in Texas averaged slightly over 1,000 bales each, while those in South Carolina averaged only 490 bales. In 1915 the total number of active gins was 24,547, which decreased to 15,459 in 1925. The average number of bales ginned per active establishment, on the other hand, increased from 526 to 1,042. Texas, as would be expected from its size, leads with 3,459 gins. South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Arkansas lead in the order named. If the gin dates back to Eli Whitney, the cotton oil mill is a much more recent factor. Cotton oil mills have been erected only since the utilization of the seed, begin- ning in 1833. In 1915 only about 84 per cent of the cotton seed produced was crushed. The center of the industry is Memphis. The distribution of the cotton oil mills follows the outline of the Belt generally with the tendency to localization in larger cities. The distribution of rural and urban population re^ 62 ibid., p. 24. 30 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE mains to be considered. The place map of urban popula- tion shows, of course, a concentration in the upper northeastern segment of the United States. But the simi- lar map for country population shows almost as great a density in the South, east of the Mississippi River, as in the East and North. The densest country population in the South clearly follows the outline of the mountain sec- tion of eastern Tennessee, Kentucky, and western North Carolina. "There, although only a small part of the land is cultivated, the population is denser than in Illinois and Iowa where practically all the land is farmed." Country population, however, is much more concentrated in the Cotton Belt than in the Corn Belt. In the West the Texas Black Lands stand out because of dense rural population. The mapping of villages shows concentration in the East, and near the areas of large cities. There is very little discernable relation to the configurations of the various cotton belts except that the Black Prairie again stands out in Texas. The Alabama Black Land Belt and the Mississippi Bottoms show a sparsity rather than a density of villages.54 The distribution maps of Negro and white rural population55 indicate that the Negro follows the contour of the areas of cotton produc- tion to a remarkable extent. The Eastern Belt, the Ala- bama Black Lands, and the Mississippi River Bottoms again stand out. The Negro population extends outside the Belt northward along the eastern fringe, farther into the rural districts of Virginia, Maryland, and Kentucky. The Texas and Oklahoma cotton areas are notably given over to native whites. The density of the white popula- 53 "Rural Population and Organization," Atlas of American Agri- culture, Part IX, Sec. I, p. 4. 54 Ibid., Fig. 4, p. 5. 55 Ibid., Figs. 10, 13, pp. 7, 8. REGIONS AND HUMAN ECOLOGY 31 tion is noticeably sparser in the warm and humid areas of the Cotton Belt, but appears concentrated in the moun- tainous areas of the Appalachians, Ouachita, and Ozark Mountains where cotton is not cultivated. In 1910 the Census of the United States made a survey of plantations in the South for selected areas using a special schedule. For purposes of the survey the Census Bureau adopted the following definition of the "tenant plantation" : A tenant plantation is a continuous tract of land of con- siderable area under the general control or supervision of a single individual or firm, all or a part of such tract being divided into at least five smaller tracts which are leased to tenants.56 Plantations were found to occupy an important part of the farming area of nine cotton states. A dot map of the plantations 5T in the counties selected for the survey shows in clear outline the Eastern Belt, the Mississippi- Alabama Black Prairie, the Mississippi River Bottoms and the Black Waxy of Texas. More plantations are found in the eastern areas where slavery was well devel- oped before the War and where the soil is fitted for inten- sive cotton culture.58 In the migration to the Alabama and Mississippi regions planters carried their slaves, but the slavery regime was not fully transplanted to Texas before the outbreak of the Civil War. Consequently, although the Black Waxy has a high percentage of ten- ancy, it differs from all the other areas in being over- whelmingly white tenancy. White tenants operate 55.7 per cent and Negro 9.5 per cent of farm lands in the 56 "Plantations in the South," 1910 Census, V, 878. 57 Cotton Atlas, Fig. 32, p. 11. B8 Baker, op. cit., p. 84. 32 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE Texas Black Lands. With this exception the dot map of cotton farms operated by Negro tenants follows the plantation map accurately. The map of distribution of Negro owners shows them sparsely scattered all over the South. "They are relatively most numerous on the At- lantic Coastal Plain and the Interior Coastal Plain in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas. They are least numer- ous where the plantation system prevails." ' While cotton plantations are found in all the cotton states, sugar cane, rice, and tobacco plantations are found confined to special limited areas. Tobacco and cotton are cultivated together on plantations in the Coastal Plains of North and South Carolina. Rice planters with a de- veloped tenant system occur in east central Arkansas, Louisiana, and southeast Texas. The sugar cane planta- tions are found in southern Louisiana. 60 A mapping of the white tenants 61 shows them most numerous outside the regions of the plantation regime. They are concentrated mainly in the upland regions such as Piedmont, northern Alabama and Mississippi, the Ozark and Ouachita Highlands except in the prairies of Oklahoma and Texas, where they are fairly numerous. The white owners are thickly scattered over all the South, being possibly more concentrated in the upper Piedmont due to the small size of farms. It is not to be rashly disputed that the cotton plant is something of a map maker. As cotton has thrived in various soils and areas it has brought about the distribu- tion of races through the movement of slaves with the 59 Cotton Atlas, p. 12. 00 C. O. Brannen, Relation of Land Tenure to Plantation Organi- zation, Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin 1269, p. 3. 61 Cotton Atlas, p. 13. REGIONS AND HUMAN ECOLOGY 33 masters. Systems of land tenure have followed the migra- tion of cotton culture to the Western Belt. Gins, com- presses, oil mills, and warehouses have been built to facilitate the handling of the fiber and its seed. As cotton culture has increased cities have grown up to serve as primary markets and points of export. Over and above all is the warm sun that makes cotton the product of the South. Under all is the soil which seems by its texture and topography to sift out races and systems of land tenure to fit with cotton culture. CHAPTER III THE EVOLUTION OF THE COTTON SYSTEM THE NATURE AND SPREAD OF THE PLANTATION SYSTEM THE COTTON system may be defined as the complex organization of financing, growing, and marketing cot- ton. It includes croppers, tenants, small farmers, and planters who comprise the growers, plus the banks, sup- ply merchants, factors, and fertilizer dealers who finance the crop and the cooperatives, local buyers, general buy- ers, shippers, and exporters who assemble and classify cotton for sale to the mills or for export. The cotton system as it exists today is complex and far-reaching. Men who have dealt in cotton for years frankly admit that phases of the business exist which they have not fully explored. The history of the cotton system is di- vided distinctly into two parts by the abolition of slavery. The present cotton system is an adjustment, man to land and race to race, that has been received as a social heri- tage from the past. No one can presume to understand the practices in the production of cotton or its tremen- dous hold on the South without viewing them as an evolu- tion from the days of the Cotton Kingdom and slavery. Until the Civil War the history of cotton production was practically one with the history of the plantation. One characteristic feature of the material culture of the South throughout its long course of development has been the plantation system. The economic and social ad- EVOLUTION OF THE COTTON SYSTEM 35 justments of the peculiar civilization of the South have been neglected in tracing the history of the abolition of slavery and the legal intricacies of the political and con- stitutional aspects of that struggle. For a realistic yet sympathetic presentation of the human factors involved in the historic development of cotton culture the world of scholarship is peculiarly indebted to the researches of Ulrich B. Phillips, William E. Dodd, and Walter L. Fleming.1 Cotton culture found slavery and the plantation or- ganization already existent, but established and extended them. Although cotton cultivation was responsible for the popularization of slavery it was less dependent upon slavery than upon the plantation. For an examination of the development of the present southern social order the viewpoint of Robert E. Park is well taken : The history of slavery in America is an incident in the history of the plantation system. . . . Slavery has disap- peared, to be sure, but the plantation system in one form or another, remains, not merely in the South but in many parts of the world. The abolition movement when seen in its proper perspective is merely an episode in the history of a particular type of industrial organization. The slave 1 The indebtedness of the writer to Phillips' analysis of the eco- nomic and social organization of the plantation, to Dodd's inter- pretation of the alignment of human factors in the Cotton Kingdom, to Fleming's reconstruction studies, and to M. B. Hammond's mono- graph will be noted throughout the chapter. It can easily be seen that in the course of one chapter no thor- ough or original historical treatment has been attempted either of cotton as a history maker or of the production of cotton. The attempt has rather been to present the accepted generalizations as to the development and procedure of the plantation as a his- torical background of the cotton system today. 36 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE was probably predestined to be what he has since very largely become — a peasant farmer.2 Professor Ulrich B. Phillips has advanced this doctrine in its most authentic form: It [the plantation system], indeed, was less dependent upon slavery than slavery was upon it; and the plantation regime has persisted on a considerable scale to the present day in spite of the destruction of slavery a half century since. The plantation system formed, so to speak, the in- dustrial and social frame of government in the black belt communities, while slavery was a code of written laws en- acted for that purpose.3 The early settlements at Plymouth and Jamestown may be regarded as ventures in capitalistic agriculture on the part of the stockholders. H. U. Faulkner says of the Vir- ginia Plantation: From the first arrival until the king had the charter re- voked in 1624, the colony was a true plantation. The col- onists were servants and employees of the stockholders who resided in England, and the fruits of their labor belonged to the company. For the products of the labor of the settlers the company sent supplies from England of medicines, cloth- ing, furniture, tools, arms, and ammunition, all of which were kept in the common storehouses and allotted by the company's agent to the colonists. But the shiploads of lumber and other forest products gathered and sent to England paid only a small fraction of the expenses incurred by the London Com- pany in its attempt to found the Virginia Plantation.4 2 "The Anti-Slavery Movement in England," American Journal of Sociology, XXXIII (1927), 290-91. 3 "Decadence of the Plantation System," Annals of the American Academy, XXXV, 37. 4 American Economic History, p. 47. EVOLUTION OF THE COTTON SYSTEM 37 As Phillips has said: This usage of the word in the sense of a colony ended only upon the rise of a new institution to which the original name was applied. The colonies at large came then to be known as provinces or dominions, while the sub-colonies, the pri- vately owned village estates which prevailed in the South were alone called plantations.5 The system of land grants made the plantation in- evitable. Holdings of land were offered to colonizers in proportion to the number of settlers they could bring over. This was the method of arranging for the transpor- tation of settlers. It also fitted in with a feudal society's conception of landed estates. One proprietor, Lord Balti- more, offered a thousand acres for every five settlers brought over. It was understood that the land was to be rented to the men who were brought over, and the rent was to consist of a part of the produce, usually tobacco. Thus we see that as early as 1636 6 a system of share renting on large holdings had been introduced, and only awaited the advent of slaves to become the plantation system. The industrial history of America, like that of all new countries, is to be understood in terms of rich natural resources, scanty capital, and a labor supply totally in- adequate for exploitation. It can easily be seen that the developing of tobacco, rice, indigo, sugar, and cotton culture would impress more and more upon the South the demand for labor. The Virginia Colony around Chesa- peake Bay had dragged out a most precarious existence 6 American Negro Slavery, p. 309. 6 W. B. Bizzell, Farm Tenantry in the United States, pp. 162-63. 38 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE until John Rolfe introduced the cultivation of tobacco in 1612. "About the last of August," he wrote in 1619, "came in a dutch man of warre that sold us twenty negroes." Tobacco soon came to be the staple export crop of the new world. Natives of Guinea, "very loyal and obedient servants, without malice," who "never more tried to fly, but rather in time forgot about their own country" had been inducted into the plantation system. These plantations were located on all the fertile river banks so that the tiny ships of colonial days could sail up and take a cargo from each farmer's wharf.7 The small grain and fishing culture of New England, as has often been recounted, discouraged slave labor. Later the rise of the urban-industrial culture in the north- eastern states, having accumulated capital goods, found its labor supply in "thousands of immigrants who came at their own expense, who worked zealously for wages payable from current earnings, and who possessed all the inventive and progressive potentialities of European peoples." 8 In the meantime, the South had capitalized her labor supply in slaves so that she owned both her laborer and his labor. This gave to the free artisan and agricultural laborer such a low social as well as economic status that the new immigrant failed to seek out the South and even the native farmer became restless and in many instances removed to the mountains, pine forests, or further to the west. The system under which the labor force was appor- tioned to production of southern agricultural staples came to be known as the plantation system. The planta- tion is an application of the capitalistic system to agri- 7 Faulkner, op. cit., p. 67. 8 Phillips, op. cit., p. 395. EVOLUTION OF THE COTTON SYSTEM 39 cultural production and possesses the characteristics of American extensive farming. Where lands exceed labor supply large scale capitalistic agricultural production may be found in the frontier cattle ranch with its hired cow-hands. Later in the stage of development wheat farm- ing emerges with its use of machinery and casual labor- ers. Slavery and the plantation system differ from serfdom and the manor system in that the slave labor supply is more mobile. Not being attached by law and custom to the land the slave was present with his master in the march of the Cotton Kingdom westward. The elements of the plantation system are four: First in order comes a land supply of large acreage of fertile soil, cheap, level or rolling, and to some extent homo- geneous in texture and topography. Prairie lands and river bottoms are suitable for the plantation; there are no records of its being applied to mountainous regions. For such land a labor supply of low social status, docile, and comparatively cheap is desired. In the third place the management required is social as well as economic supervision. And last, the products must be staples, routine crops easily cultivated by set rules; cash crops for which no problem of marketing exists. The South has furnished five such crops, routine in production and staple in demand. "It would be hard to over-estimate the predominance of the special crops in the interest and industry of the southern community. For good or for ill they have shaped its development from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. Each character- istic area had its own staple, and those districts which had none were scorned by all typical southern men. The several areas expanded and contracted in response to 40 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE fluctuations in the relative price of their products." D To- bacco, indigo, sugar, and cotton are all adapted to gang labor working on time basis under an overseer. Rice, how- ever, has been cultivated on a task-work basis with so much assigned to each slave. All these staples fought a losing battle with cotton. The scarcity and cost of white labor led by degrees to the introduction of slaves. Convicts and indentured serv- ants became more and more things of the past. Land was easily acquired ; great plantations "often had a thousand acres under actual tobacco cultivation," many were over five thousand acres in size. "Fifty acres of arable land per Negro were considered necessary for profitable culti- vation, and an overseer was too expensive unless he had twenty Negroes under him." ' Tobacco exhausted the land in three years and forced the use of other crops. In the coastal Carolinas and the lower South the plan- tation system grew up about rice and indigo culture. Rice culture, introduced from Madagascar into the Carolina swamp lands, did not prove profitable until Negroes were introduced to work in the hot wet fields. Charleston be- came the export point of a great rice area. Indigo was introduced by Eliza Lucas, daughter of an English army officer, on her father's plantation. A bounty aided in its production, and in 1775 the value of indigo exported was over one million pounds. In the decade beginning 1783 a widespread depression in the plantation system prevailed. The production of indigo was in its decadence, rice cultivation was changing to the new tide-flow system, prices were low, and each new tract opened to the plantation system meant an old one 9 Ibid., p. 205. 10 Faulkner, op. cit., p. 67. EVOLUTION OF THE COTTON SYSTEM 41 abandoned.11 Only sugar had succeeded both with the plantation and the market. Successful sugar culture first began in the Mississippi Delta below New Orleans when "Etiene de Bore, a promi- nent Creole whose estate lay just above the town, bought a supply of seed cane from Silis (who was making sugar with indifferent success as early as 1791), planted a large field with it, engaged a professional sugar maker" —and sold his 1796 crop for some $12,000.12 The tri- angular district created by the confluence of the Red and Mississippi rivers became, in time, the scene of great sugar plantations stretching out along behind the levees. At the greatest height of the sugar industry in 1849 the plantations numbered 1,536, their slaves over a hundred thousand, and in 1853 they produced 450,000 hogsheads e 13 of sugar. A backward glance over southern industrial history serves to convince the student that the South awaited only the advent of cotton to extend the plantation sys- tem far and wide. Cotton found the beginnings of the plantation regime established but waning. Tobacco was proving too exhausting to unfertilized soils. Jefferson wrote in 1781 that the culture of tobacco "was fast de- clining at the commencement of this war" and "it must continue to decline on the return of peace." * The cul- ture of indigo and rice were both on the decline. The South itself was lukewarm on the subject of slavery; all the states except one had abolished the slavery trade; and except for the sugar interest the plantation system was stagnant. It has been suggested by many historians 11 Phillips, op. cit., p. 150. 12 Ibid., pp. 163-68. 13 Loc. tit. 14 Cited by J. A. B. Scherer, in Cotton at a World Power, p. 147 42 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE that the abolition of slavery by these states would have been in course of time a natural and an easy process. Cotton found the plantation system on the decline; it revived and pushed this system across the southern map. In 1793, the year Whitney invented the gin, the South produced 10,410 bales of cotton and exported 3,565; in 1810 production had risen to 177,824 bales and exports were 124,116. The Reverend William Winterbotham wrote in 1795: "Cotton has been lately adopted as an article of culture in the southern states; and as the prices of rice, tobacco, and indigo decline, it must be very bene- ficial." 15 "This economic transformation," says Frederick J. Turner, "resuscitated slavery from a moribund condi- tion to a vigorous and aggressive life." The production of cotton awaited a method of separat- ing the lint from the seed. In the Carolina tidewater the problem was already solved as early as 1791 to 1794 by growing the two-inch lint of sea island cotton which could easily be separated from its smooth, black seeds by roll- ers. Such cotton commanded fancy prices, increased the number of coastal plantations, and made their owners rich. But sea island cotton was limited to a definite area. By 1797 the cotton gin, invented in 1793 by young Mr. Eli Whitney, Yale graduate, was in operation in as many as thirty points in Georgia alone. The culture of short staple cotton soon spread over the Carolina-Georgia up- lands. Lacking any staple crop, the uplands eagerly adopted the production of cotton and with it, to a fair extent, the plantation system. Phillips measures the ex- tent of the planters' regime by the gain of the upland counties of South Carolina in Negro population from 15 A. B. Hart, American History Told by Contemporaries, III, 67. 16 Rise of the New West, p. 49. EVOLUTION OF THE COTTON SYSTEM 43 less than one-fifth of the white population in 1790 to almost fifty per cent in 1830. The farmers with a slave or two greatly outnumbered the planters and one "shrewd contemporary observer 17 found special reason to rejoice that the new staple re- quired no large capital and involved no exposure to dis- ease. Rice and indigo, he said, had offered the poorer whites except few employed as overseers, no livelihood without the degradation of working with slaves, but cot- ton stimulating and elevating these people into the rank of substantial farmers tended to fill the country with an independent, industrious yeomanry." Such is the irony of historian turned prophet. The westward movement of cotton and the plantation followed as a matter of course. "The Alabama-Mississippi population rose from 40,000 in round numbers in 1810 ... to 1,660,000 in 1860, while the proportion of slaves increased from forty to forty-seven per cent." L8 During the same period the Delta lands of Arkansas and Louisi- ana were filled with cotton planters. From 1815 to 1860 was the heyday of the plantation system. Indigo had seen its day, hemp was negligible, sugar culture was growing, tobacco while losing in the East was gaining in the West, but over and above all, in uplands and river bottom, from the Carolinas to Texas, Cotton was King! From 1791 to 1860 the average annual production had risen from in round numbers five million to 1,750,000,000 pounds; the exports from 1,740,000 to 1,390,000,000 pounds; and the per cent of the crop exported from 33.0 to 79.5. The plantation system was truly a Cotton Kingdom. 17 David Ramsey, whose History of South Carolina, II, 448-49, is cited by Phillips in American Negro Slavery, p. 160. 18 Phillips, op. cit.t p. 171. 44 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE It is difficult to overestimate the influence of the plan- tation regime. The plantation was the basic feature in the economic life, the planters were the capstone of the social system. It has been maintained by a leading his- torian of the South, that "nine-tenths of the South's landowners at any period in her history were small pro- prietors." l9 The same authority estimates that "three or four thousand families . . . lived on the best lands and received three-fourths of the returns from the yearly ex- ports. Two-thirds of the white people of the South had no connection with slavery and received only a very small part of the returns of the community output. A thousand families received over $50,000,000 a year, while all the remaining 660,000 families received only about $60,- 000,000." 20 We know, however, that the small farmers outside the plantation system lived in the valleys of Virginia and the uplands and highlands of middle and western North Caro- lina, north Georgia and Alabama, east Tennessee and Kentucky, and western Virginia. Under an economy more or less domestic and self-supporting they raised cereals, tobacco, cotton, and live stock. In the Eastern Belt their natural markets were Baltimore and Philadelphia. Their products were transported over the rough back-country highways, along which they brought their purchases. In the Western Belt the Mississippi River and its tribu- taries were used as highways to market. The planters, although outnumbered, admittedly retained control in politics. Socially the two classes had much in common; their ideals were often southern to provincialism. Eco- 19 W. E. Dodd, "Plantation and Farm System in Southern Agri- culture," South in the Building of the Nation, V, 74. 20 The Cotton Kingdom, p. 24. EVOLUTION OF THE COTTON SYSTEM 45 nomically the isolation of the two great classes was com- plete. Sectional contests developed; the small farmers were more than willing to vote taxes upon the great planter to build roads and canals in and out of the up- lands. The interior often received population renewals from the planter section of unpropertied southerners who had given up the unequal struggle with slave labor and struck out westward. Even these people were to find themselves crowded by the plantation system for "the rapid growth of the short staple cotton industry was responsible for the spread of the planter regime over most of the fertile hill country of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Mid- dle Tennessee, North Louisiana, and Lower Texas." The new steam railways built before the Civil War gave cotton an outlet to the market and made its conquest of the regions permanent. No less important than the spread of cotton culture is the structure and internal economy of the plantation. The technique of cotton production, the disposition of the hu- man factors in production, their living standards, the management and relation of the plantation economy to the outside world are all of significance. They may best be treated by giving as far as possible cases and types that strike near the mode of plantation activity. William J. Barbee of De Soto County, Mississippi, writing immediately after the Civil War has described the organization of a small plantation. "The best bottom plantations," he writes, "are those im- mediately on rivers above overflow. Such location is decidedly healthier than any in interior of the bottoms." Such a plan- 21 Dodd, in South in the Building of the Nation, V, 77. 46 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE tation must have good soil that will not wash away, good timber and plenty of it, good water in abundance, and must be close to a good steamboat landing or depot. Such bottom land may be counted on to grow one to two bales per acre to only one to a half bale for upland. Nevertheless, "for a family residence and plantation we think the best table and creek-bottom land of the hill country is more desirable — more especially when we take in view the social and moral ad- vantages. A good small plantation he regards as consisting of 200 acres. To stock such a farm will require the following supplies : 4 horses or mules at $150 $600.00 4 turning ploughs 25.00 4 broad shovels 25.00 plough harness 25.00 1 wagon 80.00 1 yoke oxen 100.00 axes, hoes, shovels, spades 20.00 saws, augers, chisels, hammers, tools 25.00 cross cut saw. . 10.00 $910.00 Corn from Jan. to Sept 300.00 $1210.00 To run this plantation will require "six good hands in the field" and two in the house. Under favorable circumstances the plantation will produce about 35 bales of cotton and 800 bushels of corn. With cotton at a good price one can meet the expenses of the hands, keep up his family, have enough corn for the stock for next year, and possibly a large enough surplus to pay for the stock and implements.22 **The Cotton Question, pp. 81-83. EVOLUTION OF THE COTTON SYSTEM 47 Mr. Barbee's estimate may be taken as average for the type of soil and locality presented. Many of the planta- tions were much larger in size, but an estimate may be arrived at by multiplying the stock and number of hands, leaving the number of domestic servants more or less constant. The regime on the plantation was well ordered. The slaves had their quarters, small log cabins or shacks of one thickness of board, built together near the big house. The movements were regulated by the plantation bell. The schedule on the Hammond plantation of South Caro- lina is cited as a type: The first horn was blown an hour before daylight as a summons for work hands to rise and do their cooking and other preparations for the day. Then at the summons of the plow driver at the first break of day, the plowmen went to the stables whose doors the overseers opened. At the second horn, just at good daylight, the hoe gang set off for the field. At half past eleven the plowmen carried their mules to a shelter house in the fields, and at noon the hoe hands laid off for dinner, to resume work at one o'clock, except that in hot weather the intermission was extended to a maximum of three and a half hours. The plowmen led the way home by a quarter of an hour in the evening, and the hoe hands fol- lowed at sunset.23 The food and clothing for the slaves were simple, sub- stantial, and monotonous. De Bow estimated that slaves could be supported for $15 a year. Hoecakes, fried pork, and molasses formed the staples of diet. On the Telfair plantation in Georgia each worker was allowed a peck of corn, a pint of salt and not over three 23 Phillips, op. cit., p. 268. 48 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE and a half pounds of meat a week. Hammond also gave order to allow a heaping peck of meal and three pounds of bacon with the substitution in the winter if desired of a bushel of sweet potatoes for a peck of meal. Molasses was furnished in proportion. "Feed everything plentifully but waste noth- ing," was the admonition of one planter. On the Hammond plantation each man was allowed two cotton shirts, a pair of woolen pants and a jacket in the fall; in the spring he drew two cotton shirts and two pairs of cotton pants. For the women there were six yards each of cotton and woolen cloth in the fall and twelve yards of cotton cloth in the spring with needed buttons, needles and thread. Each worker was to have a pair of stout shoes* in the fall and a heavy blanket every third year. Negroes must appear once a week in clean clothes, "and every negro habit- ually uncleanly in person must be washed and scrubbed by order of the overseer — the driver and two other negroes officiating." 2* The most difficult task in the cotton regime fell to the lot of the plantation overseer.25 On him was the burden of the direction and integration of the plantation's ac- tivities. If he has been painted as an unlovely character it is largely because he was placed in a most unlovely position. General manager of the plantation, inter- mediary between master and slaves, he possessed the re- spect of neither. In the absence of the planter he was the only white man among a horde of blacks. But whether the planter was present or absent, the overseer was per- mitted intimacy with neither the planter nor his slaves. Up in the morning before anyone else to ring the planta- s* Ibid., pp. 265-66. 25 In The Plantation Overseer as Revealed in His Letters, John Spencer Bassett has amply documented his career. EVOLUTION OF THE COTTON SYSTEM 49 tion bell, he went to bed only after he had seen that the horses were in the stables, the corn in the cribs, and the Negroes in the cabins. Otherwise, there was danger that supplies might disappear, mules might be ridden, and Negroes might go visiting. If punishment and reprimands were to be distributed, it fell to the lot of the overseer to inflict them. When presents, pardons, and favors were to be granted, the planter and his family gave them to the slaves. The overseer often wanted to attend the rustic dances and merrymakings of his compatriots but his duties kept him on the plantation. No doubt he often slipped away. James K. Folk's overseer writes complain- ing that the planter does not want him to keep a decent horse or a supply of liquor for himself. Undoubtedly, the overseer was crude, illiterate, and of low social status. At the same time he was often a man of good practical sense and keen business management. His salary usually varied from $250 to $600. He had to remain fairly con- tent in his social and economic status. As a rule he ex- pected to marry his daughter to a man in the like class. But an exceptional overseer who had won the confidence of the factor with whom he dealt might borrow from him, move West, and set up as a planter himself. Not many of them did, it is to be feared. If successful, his descendants by the third generation, having learned the manners of gentility, might be admitted to the society of their peers. Relations on the plantation have been sentimentalized and moralized over until it is difficult to find an objective presentation. The house servants were the closest to their owner. Their contacts were primary, and their often cordial relations are responsible for the many tra- ditions of the plantation. "The lives of the white and 50 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE blacks were partly segregate, partly intertwined. If any special link was needed the children supplied it." 2(J The field hands lived farther removed, their lives were harder, and the overseer interposed between them and their own- ers. But unless the master was away most of the time there was likely to be no estrangement. Phillips has phrased it happily ". . . the slaves themselves would not permit indifference even if the master were so in- clined. The generality of the Negroes insisted upon pos- sessing and being possessed in a cordial but respectful intimacy." 27 The connection of the plantation with the economic world outside was usually through the factor. The cotton factor28 was likely to be a man of money and brains. Since the prevailing prejudice against trade did not op- erate against him, he was always from a good family. His relations with the planter were personal and inti- mate as well as economic. Since factorage reflected the hazards of cotton planting, a large profit was allowed him without complaint on the part of the planters. The confidential nature of their relationship attached a high value to the moral hazards. If the planter consigned his cotton to the factor and accepted his accounting usually without quibble, the factor lent the planter money with nothing more definite than a personal pledge. In south- ern cities such as Charleston, South Carolina, the factors either paid the proceeds of the sea island cotton over to the growers or acted in the capacity of a bank for them, honoring their checks when presented. As a matter of fact, the factor was wholesale merchant, banker, and 26 Phillips, op. cit., p. 313. 27 Ibid., p. 307. 28 A. H. Stone, "The Cotton Factorage System for Southern States," American Historical Review, XX (April, 1915), 559-66. EVOLUTION OF THE COTTON SYSTEM 51 cotton agent. He supplied the necessities for the slaves and the comforts and conveniences for the home in job- bers' lots. He handled the planter's money and thus con- centrated it in the larger cities. If in some instances he built up a system of rebates on weighing, storing, and drayage, no one blamed him particularly. He was a busy and hard-working man but cotton was the only agri- cultural commodity that could have stood the delays and exposure at export ports without serious deterioration. If the factors sometimes retired rich men, the hazards of their business were just as likely to wipe out their for- tunes over one or two bad seasons. The factors retarded the growth of fair-sized cities in the inland, because they kept out small merchants and country banks. They de- veloped a high standard of business honor, occupied a high social position, and if often angered at seeing their loans for cotton production spent at northern watering places or on European tours, they remained on intimate terms with the planter, directing and advising his under- takings. The cotton system developed a rationale surprisingly fitted for its self-maintenance. With brilliant, incisive strokes Dodd 29 has analyzed the social philosophy by which the planter aristocracy rationalized their system. It developed the familiar doctrine of inherent inferiority. It taught the degradation of manual labor, the necessity for "mudsills of civilization," and an aristocratic organ- ization of society. "It is the order of nature," wrote President Dew of William and Mary College, "that the being of superior faculties and knowledge, and therefore of superior power, should control and dispose of those 29 The Cotton Kingdom, pp. 53, 64-65. 52 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE who are inferior. . . . The exclusive owners of property ever have been, ever will and perhaps ever ought to be the virtual rulers of mankind." Admitted that the slaves were inferior by nature there could be no injustice in keeping them so by training. "Odium has been cast upon our legislation," wrote Chancellor Harper of the Uni- versity of South Carolina, "on account of its forbidding the elements of education to be communicated to slaves. But, in truth, what injury is done them by this? He who works during the day with his hands does not read in the intervals of his leisure for his amusement or the im- provement of his mind. If there were any chance of their elevating their rank and condition in society, it might be a matter of hardship that they should be denied those rudiments of knowledge which open the way to further attainments." Finally, Fitzhugh in his Sociology "for the South propounded that the state must take care that every man, woman, and child shall have a vocation and useful employment with due support. But for the igno- rant and poor this demands slavery. "In England the duty of the state is to subordinate the owners of the cotton mills to the government, and the workers should be made slaves of the owners who must give them sup- port and kindly treatment. The American government should grant plantations in the West to responsible men and the landless and idle of the eastern states should be attached to these plantations and become the tenants of their masters for life. Slavery will everywhere be abol- ished or everywhere be reinstated." Such was the status of the plantation regime and the human factors in cotton culture in 1860. The cotton system had arrived after a long period of development and change. The plantation in America had begun as a EVOLUTION OF THE COTTON SYSTEM 53 lineal descendent of the feudal organization of agri- culture in Europe. It was exported by royal charter, confirmed by proprietary land grants, and accepted by the English gentry as a matter of right and privilege. It was standardized and perfected under tobacco cul- ture. The great excess of land over labor encouraged all attempts to secure labor, and the plantation or- ganized this cheap labor as efficiently as possible around a staple crop. Almost by chance the innovation of hu- man slavery and the invention of the cotton gin in an area of peculiar climatic possibilities for cotton made possible its large scale production. Cotton culture ex- tended the plantation far and wide and settled the Negro in the fertile river bottoms and flood lands where he re- mains today. It remains to be seen how the plantation survived the shock of the abolition of slavery and, re- organizing itself, fitted into the cotton system of today. FROM THE COTTON PLANTATION TO COTTON TENANCY From all accounts the plantation withstood the shock of war and the loss of its great staple remarkably well.30 Where unaffected by the actual struggle, its organiza- tion not only remained intact, but the cultivation of corn, cowpeas, Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes, beans, and fruits in the place of much of the cotton was efficiently car- ried on. The plantation came to diversify through neces- sity. More and more the able-bodied white men were drawn away from the great plantation areas, but the system, except where touched by war, went on under 80 Especially valuable for this period are W. L. Fleming's Docu- mentary History of Reconstruction, and Civil War and Recon- struction in Alabama. 54 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE feminine direction. Fleming says that one could ride for days through the Alabama Black Belt without seeing an able-bodied white man, but the production of the plantation was never higher.31 The managerial ability of the women of the plantation, the resourcefulness of the Negro artisans, and the faithfulness of slaves in the fields have been deemed equally worthy of comment. The difficulty in feeding the Confederate Army was not one of production but one of commerce and transporta- tion. Sherman's march through the hinterland was well advised as a military measure in that he found an abun- dance of stores and supplies, products of the plantation, to destroy. It is useless to ask what would have been the social and economic readjustments in the plantation forced by the abolition of slavery without war and reconstruc- tion. Economic disorganization and social demoralization were bound to occur, but they were doubly accentuated by the shock of war and the deadly conflict of recon- struction. In the combatant areas slavery was destroyed by the friction of the struggle itself, and in the presence of the Union armies the plantation system went down like a house of cards. Its bonds were dissolved; its la- borers deserted "when freedom cried out," and became hangers-on around army posts and camp followers of Union armies.32 A period of readjustment, a brief hiatus in the cotton system, followed emancipation. The cotton laborer had been given a free status but no higher economic or social standing. He had acquired mobility but no more security. 81 Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama, p. 209. 32 For description of this period see Walter L. Fleming, The Freedmen's Savings Bank, chap. I. EVOLUTION OF THE COTTON SYSTEM 55 Many Negroes expected the illusionary forty acres and a mule; some met with swindlers who took their money in return for fraudulent deeds. Much has been made of the Negro's refusal to work after emancipation. Some of them no doubt spent their days hanging about the towns to return to their cabins at night. The plantation had inculcated habits of industry and hard work but had linked these responses to the stimulus of personal compulsion rather than economic competition. Such in- dustry was a matter of obedience, not a matter of fore- thought. Thrift had not been taught because the worker had nothing that he might save. But, as has been sug- gested, the plantation itself had broken down, and no doubt many laborers did not stay on the plantations simply because their master could not give them work.33 The plantations had been returned to the planters, and the high prices for cotton encouraged them to rees- tablish its culture. There was a gradual return of labor- ers to the plantations under the wage contract system. This system met with varying success in different local- ities, but as a general thing it was abandoned. There were no banks left solvent after the war; the planters were land-poor, and it was almost impossible for them to pay a weekly or monthly wage. Attempts to bind Negroes by contract failed, because they did not under- stand contracts and refused to wait for yearly wages.3* In cases of crop or price failure the whole loss thrown on the planter might result in his inability to meet the wages. The superior profitableness of cotton production and the scarcity of labor created higher wages notably 33 See Charles H. Wesley, Negro Labor in the United States, chap. V. 34 M. B. Hammond, The Cotton Industry, pp. 123-27. 56 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE in the western cotton states. This caused some Negro migration with consequent breaking of contracts.35 The loss thrown on the planter by crop failures, and the mobility of workers resulted first in a reduction of yearly wages which ranged from $100 to $150 for men in 1867 to a scale of from $90 to $110 in 1868.36 The result was the share system, adopted after a period of trial and error, to govern the division of the prod- uct between landlord and tenant. The share given the landlord came to range from a half to a "third and fourth." If the worker owns no stock or implements, he lives in the landlord's house, works his farm, pays half of the crop expenses as fertilizer and ginning, and re- ceives half the crop for the labor of himself and family. The term usually applied to such a farmer is cropper rather than tenant, and his status is that of "a servant whose wages depend upon the amount of profit." 7 A tenant has possession in his own right, but the landlord may direct and control the operations of a cropper. The Georgia Supreme Court has declared, "The case of the cropper is rather a mode of paying wages than a ten- ancy." t8 The share tenant owns his mules and implements of cultivation and pays, for the rent of the land, a third of the corn and a fourth of the cotton. Another system of payment which grew up was called cash or "standing rent." The rental was standing in that a fixed amount was to be paid from the fruits of the soil regardless of how much was produced. This usually means the delivery 35 T. J. Woofter, Jr., Negro Migration, pp. 92-122. 30 Report of Department of Agriculture 1868, cited by Hammond, op. cit., p. 124. 37 12 Iredell 3 ; 123 North Carolina, p. 749. 38 Appling v. Odum, 1872, Georgia Reports, p. 584-85. EVOLUTION OF THE COTTON SYSTEM 57 of cotton amounting to a specified cash value at harvest time. Laborers who had worked up to the dignity of standing renters owned their animals and work tools. Since the renters possessed no capital the landlord often found it necessary either to stand for his supplies at the merchant's or to furnish them himself. Thus grew up the crop lien system as will be shown later. That the system was a successful adjustment for the times was shown by the ease with which it displaced wage labor on the cotton farm. That it deserved to become a permanent arrangement is doubtful. With a measure of truth share renting has been called "a sys- tem whereby labor is secured without wages and loans are made without security." The lack of any security except the crop leads in many cases to close supervision over the activities of the renter. How this may fail is told by a Georgia planter : The plan of dividing crops under the share system is an equitable one, and if it were properly carried out there could be no cause for complaint; but the owner in nine cases out of ten, has not only to furnish his farm, but to supply all the needs of the tenant, without having any control over the time or acts of the tenant, who is often seen idling and loi- tering when his crop requires his immediate attention. Ten- ants owe the owners for provisions, clothing, tobacco, etc., and in many cases they are indifferent as to whether they produce enough to pay the owners these advances made dur- ing the season. Thus the landlords annually lose largely by the system of shares, simply because they have all the risks and no corresponding control.39 39 "Report on Cotton Production, Georgia," Census 1880, VI, 172. 58 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE The changes involved in the transition from slavery to free labor are well shown in the history of a planta- tion in Middle Georgia: The plantation underwent all of the changes of the tran- sition period except that in mobility of labor, for none of the Negroes left. In 1860 the Barrow's plantation of a thousand acres at Oglethorpe, Georgia, contained about 25 Negro families living in the quarters centered around the big house. "For several years following emancipation the force of la- borers was divided into two squads, the arrangement and method of cultivation being very much the same" as in the ante bellum days. "Each squad was under the control of a foreman who was in the nature of a general of volunteers." . . . "The laborers were paid a portion of the crop as their wages which made them feel interested in it." After a while, however, even the liberal control of the foremen grew irksome. . . . The two squads split up into smaller and smaller squads, still working for a part of the crop with the owners' teams, until this method of farming came to involve great trouble and loss. The mules were ill- treated, the crop was frequently badly worked, and in many cases not honestly divided. It became necessary to reorganize the plantation. The owner sold his mules to the Negroes on credit, thus placing the risk from careless handling upon the tenants. The gang system was abandoned, and the land was divided so as to give each family its individual tract. When some of them had to walk a mile it became impracticable to keep the cabins grouped. One by one the workers moved their house on to their farms, settling in convenient places near springs. The plantation now contained 999 acres as one acre had been given for a schoolhouse and a church. The system of sharing was abandoned for cash rent in kind, especially cotton. The Negroes planted what they pleased and worked when they liked, except that the land- lord required that enough cotton be planted to pay the rent. EVOLUTION OF THE COTTON SYSTEM 59 "The usual quantity of land planted is between twenty-five and thirty acres, about half of which is in cotton and the rest in corn and patches. An industrious man will raise three times the amount of his rent cotton, besides making a full supply of corn, sirup, and other provisions." The poorer farmers work "sufficiently well to pay their rent, buy their clothes, spend at Christmas, and let the rainy days of the future take care of themselves." The following is the yearly budget of one Ben Thomas, his wife, a son and a daughter, one of the best farmers on the Barrow place. He made: 5 Bales of Cotton 2,500 pounds @ .11 $275.00 Corn 160 bushels @ .75 per bushel 120.00 Fodder 3,000 pounds @ 1.00 per hun. 30.00 Wheat 30 bushels @ 1.00 30.00 His renting contract included the following: Cotton 500 pounds @ $0.11 Corn 25 bushels @ 1.00 Fodder 500 pounds @ 1.00 per hun. Cotton seeds 40 bushels @ .50 $455.00 $ 55.00 25.00 5.00 20.00 $105.00 Valuing cotton seed at 50 cents a bushel it will be seen that the tenant paid less than one-fourth of his crop as rent. Other tenants not so industrious paid a larger proportion.40 The plantation was not undergoing internal change in the midst of a static society. The plantation was re- organizing but it was also breaking up. The neglected and overlooked small farmers of the South were entering 40 D. C. Barrow, "A Georgia Plantation," Scribner's Monthly (April, 1881), pp. 830-36. 60 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE the cotton system. The elevation of the unprivileged natives of the uplands to the rank of landowners pro- vided a "remarkable increase in the proportion of whites employed in the cultivation of cotton." 41 Says Henry W. Grady, "the earth hunger of the poorer classes of whites who had been unable under the slaveholding oligarchy to own land was striking. . . . Never perhaps was there a rural movement which was accomplished without revolu- tion or exodus that equalled in extent or swiftness the partition of the plantation of the ex-slaveholder into small farms." 2 The eastern upland areas, inhabited by white farmers, were reclaimed for cotton culture by the use of fertilizers. White farmers moved to comparatively undeveloped areas such as the wire grass in Georgia.43 Cotton culture was carried to Texas and later to Okla- homa by migrations of white farmers. By 1876 the United States Commissioner of Agriculture stated that nearly 40 per cent of the cotton was grown by white farmers.44 By 1910, although Negro farmers cultivated 52 per cent of the total cotton acreage in the South, the white farm- ers produced 67 per cent of the total crop.45 The southern small farmers' opportunity to buy land came as a result of falling cotton prices after 1871. En- couraged by thirty-cent cotton, planters had "refitted their quarters, repaired their fences, summoned hundreds of Negro croppers at high prices, and invested lavishly 41 Hammond, The Cotton Industry, p. 129. 42 "Cotton and Its Kingdom," Harper's Magazine, LXVIII (May, 1881), 721-22. 43 Robert Preston Brooks, The Agrarian Revolution in Georgia, 1865-191%, chap. VII. 44 Report 1876, p. 136, cited by Hammond, op. cit., p. 130. 45 Negro Population in the United States, 1790-1918, pp. 594-9G. U. S. Census Monograph. EVOLUTION OF THE COTTON SYSTEM 61 their borrowed capital in what they felt sure was a veritable bonanza." 8 When the cotton market fell, crops produced at high prices on borrowed capital brought ruin in their wake. Lands were thrown on the markets at forced sales, and the market sagged under their weight. "Plantations," writes Grady, "that had brought from $100,000 to $150,000 before the war were sold at $6,000 to $10,000 or hung on the hands of the planter and his factor at any price whatever." r Many farmers, both black and white, bought small farms and set up as inde- pendent operators. For the first time since the beginning of the plantation regime, land owning bid fair to become generally diffused among the southern people. In the dec- ade from 1860 to 1870 the total value of farms in ten cotton states had declined from almost $1,479,000,000 to $764,000,000, a fall of 48 per cent.48 While a great part of the loss was due to the ravages of war, part of the loss shows that in times of crop or price failure there are likely to be more sellers than buyers. It was this fall in value that gave an opportunity to the small owners. The following table *9 is arranged to show the break-up of the old regime in the decreasing size of southern farms and farm values as compared with northern farms. In eleven southern states the average size of the farm de- creased from 335.4 to 111.4 acres. The greatest single decrease, that from 1860 to 1870, represents the divi- sion of plantation into tenant holdings, listed as separate farms by the census. 48 Henry W. Grady, op. cit., p. 722. *7 Loc. cit. « Computed from the Census of 1860 and 1870 by Hammond, op. cit., p. 127. « Census, V (1910), 878. 62 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE TABLE I COMPARATIVE SIZE AND VALUE OF NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN FARMS 1850-1910 CENSUS YEAR AVERAGE ACRES OP LAND PER FARM AVERAGE IMPROVED ACRES PER FARM AVERAGE VALUE OP LAND AND BUILDINGS PER FARM The South The North The South The North The South The North 1910 114.4 138.2 139.7 153.4 214.2 335.4 332.1 143.0 133.2 123.7 114.9 117.0 126.4 127.1 48.6 48.1 58.8 56.2 69.2 101.3 101.1 100.3 90.9 87.8 76.6 69.2 68.3 65.4 $2,374 1,251 1,402 1,224 1,456 3,455 2,051 $8,182 4,190 3,721 3,314 3,463 3,180 2,380 1900 .... 1890 1880 1870 1860 1850 The movement from landlords to home ownership was checked before completion. In 1881 Henry W. Grady could write : After sixteen years of trial everything is as yet indeter- minate. And whether this staple is cultivated in the South to independence or beggary, are matters yet to be settled. Whether its culture shall result in a host of croppers without money or credit, appealing to the granaries of the West against famine, paying toll to usurers at home and mortgaging their crops to speculators abroad even before it is planted — a planting oligarchy of money-lenders, who have usurped the land through foreclosure, and hold it by the ever growing margin between a grasping lender and an enforced borrower — or a prosperous self-respecting race of small farmers culti- vating their own lands, living upon their own resources, controlling their crops until they are sold, and independent alike of usurers and provision brokers — which of these shall EVOLUTION OF THE COTTON SYSTEM 63 be the outcome of cotton cultivation the future must de- termine.50 The future has decided. Cotton has definitely become a tenant crop. More than half of the share tenants in the United States are found in the eight following south- ern states listed in order: Texas, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, Arkansas, Alabama, South Carolina, and Tennessee. It was shown in the Census of 1900 51 that of all the farmers to. whom cotton was the chief source of income 67.7 per cent were tenants. A change that had been taking place in the southern landscape brought to the fore new social types, created new economic interests, and made the cotton farm a specu- lation for urban investors. Towns were springing up all over the Cotton Belt, and in these towns had grown up a hustling, urban type — the rising merchants, lawyers, and doctors. The growth of towns had been hindered be- fore the War by the factors located in the larger cities who had supplied the wholesale needs of the planters and marketed their cotton. With the passing of the factors there grew up the supply merchant who furnished cotton growers on time and bought their cotton. It was this group which secured the passage of the crop lien laws en- abling farmers to mortgage in January their as yet unplanted crops for supplies on which to live. The de- preciating value of land and the homestead exemptions usual in southern states made merchants unwilling to ac- cept mortgages on land. A conflict of interest ensued between landlord and supply merchant as to whether the 50 Op. cit., p. 719. 51 Goldenweiser and Truesdell, Farm Tenancy in the United States, p. 33, U. S. Census Monograph IV. 64 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE crop lien should be used to secure supplies advanced by the merchant or to secure the rent to the landlord. In many cases the landlord settled the problem by taking the crop lien and standing good for the store bill. In other cases the landlord contented himself with taking a second lien on the crop. As they were in a rather risky business the supply merchants tended to sell their sup- plies on time at interest rates of approximately 20 per cent. Many of them lost money, no doubt, but it is very likely that the earliest fortunes to grow up in the South out of the dead level of poverty left by reconstruction were made by men who combined the functions of supply merchant and cotton buyer. Said one observer, "the road to wealth in the South, outside of the cities and apart from manufactures, is merchandising." 52 The supply merchant, forced by the nature of his po- sition to exercise supervision, assumed a paternalistic at- titude toward his tenants. "The merchant who has a lien on the tenant's share of the crop," writes an observer, "pays his taxes, buries his wife or child, buys him a mule if he needs one, and feeds and clothes him and his fam- ily." ! * The crop lien system opened a way to owner- ship for the Negroes who started without land or credit. On the other hand, no doubt many of them were more or less victimized. Says W. E. B. Du Bois : A thrifty Negro in the hands of well-disposed landlords and honest merchants early became an independent land- owner. A shiftless, ignorant Negro, in the hands of un- scrupulous landlords or Shylocks, became something worse 52 G. K. Holmes, "The Peons of the South," Annals of the Amer- ican Academy, IV (Sept., 1893), 266-74. ™Loc. cit. EVOLUTION OF THE COTTON SYSTEM 65 than a slave. The masses of Negroes between the two ex- tremes fared as chance and the weather let them.54 "The Negro," said a southern governor with the waste- ful methods of tenant cultivation in mind, "skins the land and the landlord skins the Negro." As planters failed and plantations went on the block the rising urban groups tended to step into the class of the landed gentry. Merchants, lawyers, and doctors bought plantations as speculative investments. As the urban class began to buy farms for investment, the price of land tended to rise beyond reach of the small cotton grower. "There is," wrote Grady, "a sure though gradual rebunching of the smaller farms into large estates and a tendency toward the establishment of a landholding oligarchy." 5 Many landlords also moved to town. Ab- sentee landlordism, too, brought lower yields, less super- vision and contact with tenants, and a lower standard of living for them. Farming became a financial instead of an agricultural interest. Cotton, the money crop, came to be exacted by landlords living in town, and the tenant's interest in diversification and food supplies was disre- garded. The rise in tenancy in the South is not to be denied. The percentage of tenancy for the United States is 38; in the South there are eight states with over 50 per cent tenancy. No figures on tenancy are compiled for the United States before 1880 but since then the percentage has steadily increased for all the cotton states. The states that had 35 to 45 per cent tenancy when Henry W. Grady wrote now have over 60 per cent: 64 Negro Landholders in Georgia, U. S. Dept. of Labor Bul- letin 35. 65 "Cotton and Its Kingdom," Harper' 8 Magazine, LXIII, 734. HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE TABLE II INCREASE IN PERCENTAGE OF TENANCY IN COTTON STATES— 1880-1925 NORTH CAROLINA SOUTH CAROLINA GEORGIA ALABAMA MISSIS- SIPPI 1925 45.0 65.1 63.8 60.7 68.3 1920 43.5 64.5 66.6 57.9 66.1 1910 42.3 63.0 65.6 60.2 66.1 1900 41.4 61.1 59.9 57.7 62.4 1890 34.1 55.3 53.5 48.6 52.8 1880 33.5 50.3 44.9 46.8 43.8 TENNESSEE ARKANSAS LOUISIANA OKLAHOMA TEXAS 1925 41.0 56.7 60.1 58.6 60.4 1920 41.1 51.3 57.1 51.0 53.3 1910 41.1 50.0 55.3 54.8 52.6 1900 40.6 45.4 58.0 43.8 49.7 1890 30.8 32.1 44.4 0.7 41.9 1880 34.5 30.9 35.2 37.6 In cotton growing areas in ten southern states, accord- ing to 1920 census figures, there were 1,030,321 farm owners and managers to 1,345,805 tenants, a ratio of 45 owners to 55 tenants. Of these renters 284,180 were classified as cash tenants, 487,770 as croppers, and 550,879 as share tenants or third and fourth renters. 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SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 333 "Occupations/* Reports of Fourteenth Census, IV, 1920. Plantation Farming in the United States, Census Bul- letin, 1916. "Plantations in the South/' Reports of Thirteenth Census, 1910, Vol. V, chap. XII. "Southern States, The," Reports of Fourteenth Census, 1920, Vol. VI, Agriculture, Part 2. "Southern States," Census of Agriculture, 1925, Part 2. TRUESDELL, LEON: Farm Population in the United States, U. S. Census Monograph IV. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, BULLETINS: BOEGER, E. A., and GOLDENWEISER, E. A.: Tenant System of Farming in Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, No. 337, 1916. BRANNEN, C. O.: Relation of Land Tenure to Plantation Organisa- tion, No. 1269, 1924. COOK, O. F. : One-Variety Cotton Communities, No. 1111, 1922. Relation of Cotton Buying to Cotton Growing, No. 60, 1914. DIXON, H. M., and HAWTHORNE, H. W.: An Economic Study of Farming in Sumter County, Georgia, No. 492, 1917. Dusting Cotton from Airplanes, No. 1204. FUNK, W. C.: Value to Farm Families of Fuel, Food, and Use of House, No. 410, 1916. GATTIN, GEORGE O. : Cooperative Marketing of Cotton, No. 1392, 1926. HASKELL, E. S.: Farm Management in Brooks County, Georgia, No. 648, 1918. HAWTHORNE, H. W., DIXON, H. M., and MONTGOMERY, FRANK : Farm Organization and Farm Management in Sum- ter County, Georgia, No. 1034, 1922. HAWTHORNE, H. W. : The Family Living from the Farm, No. 1338, 1925. KIRKPATRICK, E. L., and SANDERS, J. T. : Relation between Ability to Pay and the Standard of Living among Farmers, No. 1382, 1926. 334 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE KIRKPATRICK, E. L. : The Farmer's Standard of Living, No. 1466, 1926. McCoNNELL, C. J.I A Study of Cotton Market Conditions in North Carolina, No. 476, 1917. MEADOWS, WILLIAM R.: Sea Island Cotton Industry, No. 146, 1914. SANDERS, J. T.: Farm Ownership and Tenancy in the Black Prairie of Texas, No. 1068, 1922. Studies of Primary Market Conditions in Oklahoma, No. 36. TAYLOR, FRED: Relation between Primary Market Prices and Qualities of Cotton, No. 457, 1916. TURNER, H. A. : Ownership of Tenant Farms in the United States, No. 1432, 1926. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, FARMERS' BULLETINS: BAKER, OLIVER E.: Seedtime and Harvest, Circular 183, 1922. COOK, O. F. : Improvements in Cotton Production, Circular 200, 1921. CROSBY, M. A.: An Example of Intensive Farming in the Cotton Belt, No. 619, 1913. GILBERT, W. W.: Cotton Diseases and Their Control, No. 1187, 1924. GOLDENWEISER, E. A. I The Farmer's Income, No. 746, 1916. GOODRICH, C. L. : Producing Family and Farm Supplies on the Cotton Farm, No. 1015, 1923. Factors that Make for Success in Farming in the South, No. 1121, 1920. HUNTER, W. D., and COAD, B. R. : The Boll Weevil Problem, No. 1329, 1923. SPILLMAN, W. J.: Distribution of Types of Farming in the United States, No. 1289, 1923. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 335 System of Tenant Farming and Its Results, A, No. 437, 1911. Department of Agriculture Yearbooks, 1900-1926. Du Bois, W. E. B.: Negro Landholders in Georgia, U. S. Dept. of Labor Bulletin 35. GOLDBERGER, JOSEPH! Pellagra in the Mississippi Flood Area, Public Health Reprint 1187, 1927. Pellagra: Its Nature and Prevention, Public Health Re- print 1174, 1927. GRAY, L. C., et. al.: "Farm Ownership and Tenancy," Dept. of Agriculture Yearbook, 1923, pp. 507-600. HANEY, L. H., and WEHRWEIN, G. S.: Social and Economic Survey of South Travis County, Texas, University of Texas Bulletin 65, 1916. Hearings before House Committee on Agriculture, December 19, 1905. HILL, W. B.: Rural Survey of Clarke County, Georgia, Phelps-Stokes Studies, 1915, Athens, Georgia. HOBBS, S. H., JR.: Know Your Own State — North Carolina, Extension Bulletin, University of North Carolina, 1925. Land Question in the Southwest, The, Report of Commission on Industrial Relations, Senate Document 415, Vols. IX, X, 1916. LOVALL, R. H., et al. : Negro Migration in 1916-1917, Department of Labor, Division of Negro Economics, 1919. McCuTCHEON, GEORGE: The Case for Cotton, University of South Carolina Bulle- tin, No. 43, Part 5, Columbia, S. C., 1915. North Carolina Land Conditions and Problems, Report State Land Commission, 1923. PAMPHLETS: ATKINSON, EDWARD: Cheap Cotton by Free Labor, New York, 1861. Augusta Survey, Augusta, Ga., 1924. 336 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE BAILEY, J. W. : The Condition of the Farmers of North Carolina, Raleigh, N. C., 1921. BIVENS, F. J.: The Farmer's Political Economy, Moultrie, Georgia, 1912. BODMAN, E. J.: Foodless Farms, Leaflet. Arkansas Bankers' Asso- ciation, Little Rock, Arkansas. GIBBONS, CHARLES E.: See Periodicals. GRANDY, W. C. and SONS, FACTORS: The Cotton Question Presented to the Cotton Trade, 1876. HENRY, WALTER RICHARD: Cotton and the Commission Merchants, Raleigh, N. C., 1883. HOLLEMAN, J. T. : Is the South in the Grip of a Cotton Oligarchy? Atlanta, Georgia, 1914. LORING, F. C., and ATKINSON, C. F. : Cotton Culture and the South Considered, 1869. PRICE, THEODORE, H.: Cotton Estates Incorporated, New York. Proceedings of Cotton Convention Held at Memphis, Tennessee, October 13, 1926. Proceedings of Southwide Cotton Conference, Called by American Cotton Conference, New Orleans, La., January 11-12, 1928. RIVERS, C. D.: The Empire of Cotton, Sandersville, Georgia, 1914. VANDERLIP, FRANK H. : Our Inefficient Acres, New York, 1916. RANSDELL, JOSEPH E.: Remarks in the United States Senate 1927. Short Term Farm Credit in Texas, Texas Agricultural Ex- periment Station Bulletin No. 351, 1927. SMEDES, H. R.: Agricultural Graphics 1866-1922, University of North Carolina, Extension Bulletin. SWIFT, W. H.: Child Welfare in North Carolina, National Child Labor Commission, 1918. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 337 TAYLOR, CARL C., and ZIMMERMAN, C. C. : Economic and Social Conditions of North Carolina Farm- ers f State Tenancy Commission, Raleigh, 1922. WATKINS, D. W. : An Investigation of Cotton Growing in Texas, Showing Influence on Cotton Production in South Carolina, Bulletin 75, Clemson, S. C. Welfare of Children in Cotton Growing Areas of Texas, Children's Bureau Publications, No. 134, 1924. YODER, F. R., BEARDSXEY, H. S., and HONEYCUTT, A. J.: Farm Credit Conditions in North Carolina, North Caro- lina State College Bulletin, 1923. NOTE Much of the material used in the preparation of this study is either unpublished or not available in general libraries. Several unpublished studies to which reference is made will be found in the files of the Institute for Research in Social Science, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Mimeographed reports of the Department of Agriculture, press releases, letters, newspaper clippings, pamphlets, and rare and out of print bulletins will be found in the files of the Rural Social Economics Library, University of North Carolina, classified under the following headings: Agricultural Production: Cotton Farm Tenancy Marketing: Cotton Negro in the Rural South Rural Social Surveys Rural Standards of Living. Many of the case studies cited have been taken from let- ters from bankers, agricultural experts, general merchants, fertilizer dealers, and planters in various regions of the Cotton Belt. These letters have been deposited with the In- stitute for Research in Social Science, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, N. C. INDEX Fictitious names used in case studies of human factors in cotton are not indexed. Different types of cases, classified according to tenure status, may be found in the Index under Case studies. A, Abandonment of cotton farms, 129. Acreage, cotton, restriction of, 120-22; 145-49. See Prices of cotton. See also map oppo- site p. 14. Agrarian unrest and cotton prices, 140-42. Agricultural region, South as an. 7-10. Agricultural regions, list of, 3; economic levels of, 6. Agricultural relief for cotton farmer, 143-49. Agricultural routines, different, 4; of cotton farmers, 150-73, 221-22. Airplanes, used against boll weevil, 104. Alabama, 18-20, 54, 66-67, 95-96, 99, 101, 137, 184, 202, 253, 273, 281. Alabama Black Belt, 285-87. See Black Prairie of Alabama. Alluvial valleys. See Central alluvial valleys. American Cotton Growers' Ex- change, 198. Anthracnose, 88. Arizona, 277-78. Arkansas, 14, 20-22, 66-67, 177, 184, 203, 271, 276-77, 282-84, 288-89, 312. Armsby, H. P., on foods, 298. Army worms, 88. Arnett, A. M., 8; on agrarian unrest, 140-41. Atkinson, Edward, on upkeep of slaves, 205; on white labor in cotton fields, 205-6. Atlantic Coast Flatwoods, 16. Attitudes, prevailing in Cotton Belt, 299-309. Automobiles, and cotton tenants, 270. B laker, Oliver E., on agricul- tural regions, 2-3 ; on corn, 24 ; on cultural unity of U. S., 1. Baker, Ray Stannard, on high cotton prices, 139-40. Banks, and cotton credit, 175- 78. Barbee, William J., on the plan- tation, 45-46. Barrows, O. C., on plantation of 1860-80, 58-59. Black Prairie of Alabama, 19, 54, 137. Black Prairie of Texas, 23. Black Waxy of Texas. See Black Prairie of Texas. Bollies, 132. Boll weevil, airplane against, 104; calcium arsenate on, 101- 3; case study in, 287-88; Coad's researches in, 101-5; control of, 101-7; damage caused by, 93; description of, 92; dusting machines against, 102-3; eco- nomic effect of, 98-101 ; Florida method against, 105; future of, 106-7; in Georgia, 99; in Great Plains area, 132; life history of, 93; menace of, 96-99; in Mexico, 89; molasses method against, 103-4; monument to, 101; spread of, 95-97; survival of, 93-94; in Texas, 89-91. Bollworm, cotton, 88. 340 INDEX Branson, E. C., on income of cot- ton farmer, 233-36; on mo- bility of cotton tenants, 153. Brearley, H. C., on homicides in Cotton Belt, 165-66. British Cotton Growing Associa- tion, 208. Budgets, farmers', 237. Burgess, George F., Hon., 92. Burleson, Representative, 206-7. Business cycle and cotton, 127- 28. Byrd, Adam M., Hon., on de- mand for cotton, 114. arsenate, for army worm, 88; for boll weevil, 101-3. Cameron, Senator, 143. Cance, Alexander E., on family labor, 299. Case studies, 250-94; of crop- pers, 76-77; 253-57; of farm owners, 272-88; of landlords, 288-93; of plantation owners, 45-46, 47-48, 58-59, 74-76; of share tenants, 257-71. Central alluvial valleys, 20-23, 64, 137. Child labor in cotton, 161-62, 168, 199-204, 209-11, 299-300. Chopping cotton, 160-62. Christmas in the Cotton Belt, 156-57, 172-73. Cities built on cotton, 27-28. Classes, social, in the South, 312- 13. Clayton, Representative, 206-7. Climatology of cotton, 13-14. Clothing, cost of, 220-23; of cot- ton laborers, 212; for slaves, 48; credit for, 241-42. Coad, B. R., researches of on boll weevil, 101-5. Coastal Plains, 16-22. Coker, David R., on improving cotton culture, 316; on living standards of cotton farmers, 214; on molasses method of fighting boll weevil, 103-4. Coker farms, 17, 316. Collings, Gilbert H., 195. Coman, Katherine, on Negro farmers, 136. Commissaries, plantation, 135. Competition, of cotton areas, 128-34; racial, 200-1. Connelly, Tom, 144. Cooperatives. See Cotton coop- eratives. Corn, distribution of in Cotton Belt, 24; as food for cotton growers, 297-98; pulling, 170. Cotton acreage. See Acreage, cotton. Cotton Belt, area of, 11-12; as culture area, 296-319; drought in, 85; frost in, 86; homicides in, 165-66; human ecology of, 12, 15-33; soil regions of, 14- 23. See Eastern Cotton Belt, Western Cotton Belt, and Cot- ton culture complex. Cotton blossom, 165. Cotton boll, 315. Cotton buyers, 302-3. Cotton a cash crop, 236-37. Cotton cooperatives, 198. Cotton Crop. See Crop. Cotton culture, breakdown of in old belt predicted, 318-19 ; de- mands cheap labor, 209-10; description of, 157-73; effect of on plantation system, 42- 43; inefficient methods per- petuated in, 315-17. See Cot- ton Belt. Cotton culture complex, traits of, 295-319. Cotton factor, 50-51. Cotton farmer, agricultural re- lief for, 143-49; credit for, 155- 67; cultural environment of, 310-14; diet of, 171, 243-49, 297-99; fuel for, 212; housing of, 234, 249-51 ; income of, 125- 28, 235-40; inefficient, 314-19; routine of, 150-73, 221-22; standards of living of, 205-51. See Cotton tenants, Farmers, small, and One-horse cotton farmer. See also Attitudes. Cotton futures, 142. Cotton gin, effects of invention of, 42; distribution of, 29. INDEX 341 Cotton ginning, 168-69. Cotton industry, a natural monopoly, 110-12, 146-47. Cotton markets. See Markets, cotton. Cotton oil, 29. Cotton plant, 12, 84. . Cotton planting, 151-60. Cotton production. See Produc- tion of cotton. Cotton prices. See Prices of cotton. Cotton seasons, cycle of, 150-73. Cotton seed, utilization of, 29. Cotton system, definition of, 34; description of, 295; rationale of, 51-52. Cotton tenants, biological effects of poverty on, 310-11; char- acter defects of, 307-10; ex- clusion of from culture, 313; mobility of, 153; recreations of, 157; supervision of, 71-73, 77, 163-64. See Case studies, Cot- ton farmer, Diet, Housing, and Cotton culture complex. Cotton trade, 195-96, 303. Credit, for cotton farmers, 155- 57, 174-79; charges for, 176- 79, 240-41; consumptive, 180. Crop, cash, 186; single, 218; staple, 39-40. See Cotton cul- ture. Crop lien, use of, 57, 63-64; risks in, 178. Cropper, case studies of the, 253- 67; economic status of the, 73; legal status of the, 56; story of a Negro, 76-77. See Tenancy. D. 'airy products, 234. Delta, cotton credit in the, 174- 76. See Central alluvial val- leys. Dew, President, on philosophy of slavery, 51-52. Dickey, J. A., on income of cot- ton farmers, 235-36. Diet, on plantation, 47-48; of cotton farmer, 171, 243-49; and pellagra, 248-49, 298. Diseases of cotton, 87-88. Diversification in cotton farm- ing, 179-92, 181-82, 233-55. Dodd, William E., on economic status of planters, 44; on phi- losophy of cotton kingdom, 61- 52. Du Bois, W. E. B., on Negro farmers, 136. Dusting machines for boll weevil, 102. E I astern Cotton Belt, 15-18. Egypt, restriction of cotton acreage in, 148. Ellis, C. P., and Company, on family labor, 211. Engberg, R. A., on business cycle and cotton, 127; on cot- ton cycle, 117-18; on cotton prices, 112. English spinners, on cotton prices and acreage, 120; attempts of to grow cotton, 208. Enterprize, Alabama, 101. Environment, cultural, of cotton farmers, 310-11; effects of on cotton farmers, £11-14. Eutsler, R. B., on farm credit, 177. JP actor, Cotton, the modern, 174-75; in old South, 50-51. Family-size farms, 201. Family labor on farms, 202-4, 210, 299. Family living from farms, 242- 49. Farmers, small, in old South, 44- 45; enter cotton system, 60- 68; future of, 318-19. See Cotton tenants. See also En- vironment, cultural. Farm owners, Case studies of, 272-88. Farms, comparative size of northern and southern, 1850- 1910, 62. See Family-size farms. Faulkner, H. W., on Virginia Plantation, 36. Fertilizer, in Old Cotton Belt, 18; effect of use of, 82. Field, Scott, Representative, on 342 INDEX economic effect of boll weevil, 98. Fitzhugh, George, on philosophy of slavery, 52. Fleming, Walter L., on planta- tions in war time, 54. Florida, 13, 20. Florida method of boll weevil control, 105. Fluctuations in cotton, effect on South, 134-49. Food, consumption of, 244-48; cost of, 220-23; habits of cot- ton growers, 297-99. Fossick, G. L., on restriction of cotton acreage, 147. Fuel, for cotton farmers, 212. G, reller, Carl, on relation of cotton acreage to price, 120- 22; on paradox of value, 123. Georgia, 13-18, 20, 66-67, 95, 99, 138, 184, 200, 203, 215-16, 224- 25, 253-54, 257-58, 278-80, 291- 94. Gibbons, E. C., on social classes, 312-13. Gin, cotton. See Cotton gin. Gist, F. W., on cotton cycle, 119. Goldberger, Joseph D., re- searches of in pellagra, 248- 49, 298. Goldenweiser, E. A., on labor in- comes, 233-34. Grady, Henry W., on cotton es- tates, 65; on cotton system, 62 ; on landowners, 60 ; on price of plantations, 61; on single crop system, 218. Grass, in cotton, 161; in South, 26. Gray, Dan T., on the inefficient cotton farmer, 309. Great Plains of Texas, cotton culture in, 130-33; crops in, 130-31; drought in, 134; ranch- ing in, 130; soils of, 131; sub- stitute for corn in, 131. Guatemala ant, 94-95. Gulf States, 18-20. Harper, Chancellor, • on philos- ophy of slavery, 52. Harrison, Pat, Senator, 144. Hay, in South, 25-26. Hedging cotton, 149. Heflin, Tom, Senator, 143. Henry, W. R., on cotton farm- ing, 211-12; on speculation in cotton farming, 109. Hog-killing on cotton farm, 170- 71. Holleman, J. T., on cotton farmers' living standard, 216- 17; on cotton system, 187-88. Homicides, in Cotton Belt, 163- 64. Housing, on cotton farms, 234, 249-51. Howard, L. O., on boll weevil, 89-90, 92. Hubbard, W. H., on cotton cycles, 118; on cotton pros- pects, 162; on Texas, 85; on wet falls, 87. Human elements in cotton cul- ture. See Case studies. Huntington, Ellsworth, 8. 1 ncome, of cotton farmers, 126- 28, 235-40; per cotton acre 1878-1927, p. 125-26; unwar- ranted expenditures of, 239- 40. Indigo culture, in old South, 40. Industrial Conference Board, on cotton farmer, 218; on stand- ard of living, 251. Insect hazards in cotton, 88-107. Institute for Research in Social Science, 8-9. J ones, Marvin, Representative, 143. Jones, T. N., on cotton farmers' living standards, 217; on Southern education, 311-12; on commercial farming, 317-18. Jordan, Harvey, 181. K H ammond Plantation, regime on, 47-48. .elep. See Guatemala ant. Kendrick, Benjamin B., on agra- rian unrest, 140. Kentucky, 223, 225-26. INDEX 343 Kirkpatrick, E. L., on cultural factors in standards of living, 313; on farmer's standard of living, 219-22. Knapp, Bradford, on devotion to cotton, 300; on family labor, Labor in cotton, cheap, 209- 10; child, 161-62, 168, 199-204, 209-11, 299-300; man, 160, 166, 171-72, 1!,9; mule, 160, 171-72; women, 161-62, 168, 199-204, 209-11, 299-301. Labor income, farmers', 233-34; wage earners', 233-34. Landlords, Case studies of, 288- 93. Lanier, Sidney, on non-coopera- tion in cotton, 304-5. Lankford, William C., Represen- tative, 144. Lease, Mary Elizabeth, on agra- rian unrest, 140. Little, A. G., on acreage restric- tion, 146. Living, furnished by farm, 221- 51; purchased, 221-41. Living standards. See Stand- ards of living. Long staple cotton, 13. Louisiana, 19-20, 66-67, 95, 184, 203. Lovering, Representative, 206-7. M cCall, Sam, a champion cot- ton grower, 285-87. McCullum, E. V., on nutrition, 298. McLean, A. W. Governor, 149. MacNeill, Ben Dixon, study of John Smith by, 259-66. McNeil, John Charles, 249. Machine, cotton picking, effect of, 318-19. Man labor in cotton, 160, 166, 171-72, 199. Marbury, J. R., on weather con- ditions for cotton, 84-85. Marketing cotton, 169-70, 192- 98; method of, 192-94; sus- picion of system of, 196-97. Markets, cotton, 27-28; future, 27-28, 142; points of export, 27-28; primary, 27; risks of to producers, 108-49; spot, 27-28, 142. Mayfield, Senator, 143. Memphis Cotton Conference, 144-47. Middling cotton, 13; furnishes basic price, 110-11. Migration of plantation system, 43, 45. See Western Cotton Belt. See also Texas. Miller, E. E., on cotton monop- oly, 146-47 ; on South's need of thrift, 240. Mims, Edwin, 8. Mississippi, 18-21, 66-67, 95, 99, 176-77, 184, 203, 284-85. Mitchell, Broadus, 8. Mobility of cotton farmer, 151- 54, 308. Molasses, as food, 298; method against boll weevil, 103-4. Montgomery, R. H., on future of small cotton farmer, 318-19. Moore, H. L., on cotton prices, 114. Moser, C. O., on paradox of value, 123-24. Moton, R. R., Dr., on boll weevil, 100. Mules, distribution of, 26; labor of in cotton, 160, 171-72. N. egro, as cheap, labor, 209- 10; competition in cotton, 199- 200; distribution of popula- tion in South, 30; farmers, 136. See Cropper. New Mexico, 131. New York Cotton Exchange, 141. Non-cooperation of cotton growers, 304-5. North Carolina, 15-18, 20, 66-67, 95, 176, 184, 203, 227-30, 235- 36, 255, 256, 259-66, 270-71, 273-74, 281-82. North Carolina farmers, survey of by Taylor and Zimmerman, 227-30. 344 INDEX O. 'dum, Howard W., 8. Oil mill, cotton, 29. Oklahoma, 14, 22-23, 66-67, 128- 34, 184, 203. Olmsted, F. L., on white labor, 206. One-horse cotton farmer, char- acterized, 319. Overseer, on old plantation, 48-9. L age, Walter Hines, on the "forgotten man" 312. Palmer, Edward, Dr., finds boll weevil in Mexico, 89. Paradox of value, 122-24, 141. Park, Robert E., on plantation system, 35-36. Pearse, Arno S., on family labor, 210. Pellagra, 248-49, 298. Peterkin, Julia, 171. Phillips, Ulrich B., on planta- tion system, 36, 37, 70, 205; on railroads and cotton produc- tion 116; on social relations on plantation, 50; on staple crops, 36-37. Picking cotton, 166-68; effect of machine on, 318-19; wage hands in, 73. Piedmont Plateau, 16, 17; in North Carolina, 227-30. Pink bollworm, 88-89. Plantation, the, case studies of, 74-76 ; characteristics of, 38-39, 79; census of, 69-70; clothing on, 47-48; and Civil War, 53- 54; decadence of, 54-57; defi- nition of, 69-70; diet on, 47- 48; distribution of, 31-32; evolution of system of, 34-53; influence of, 44; internal struc- ture of, 45-46; management of, 71-73, 77, 163-64; migra- tion of, 43, 45; modern 68-79; overseer on, 48-49; routine on, 47; from slave to free labor on, 54-60; social relations on, 49-50, 79; Virginia Colony and, 36. Poe, Clarence H., on cotton credit, 177. Population, distribution of in South, 29-31; Negro, 30-31; rural, 29-30; urban, 29-30; white, 30-31. Pork, as food for cotton farmers, 298. Prices of cotton, and acreage, 120-22; average farm, 1878- 1927, 125-26; average per acre, 125-26; cycle of, 117-18, 126-28; effects of high, 138-40; effects of low, 113-14, 137-38, 141; history of, 115-17; plan for stabilization of, 147-48; world, 112. Production of cotton, cost of in Great Plains, 132-33; diversi- fication in, 179-92; natural monopoly of, 110-12; risks in, 80-107. /acial groups, in agriculture, 4-5; competition of in cotton, 200-1. Rainfall, effects of on southern agriculture, 23-24; effect of on cotton, 86-87. Rankin, W. S., on effect of en- vironment on cotton farmer, 310-11. Rayon, and cotton, 114. Recreation, expenditures for, 232. Recreations, of cotton tenants, 157. Red Prairies, 23. Reduction, of cotton acreage. See Acreage, cotton. Regions, agricultural. See Agri- cultural regions. Religious revivals, 164-65. Rent, share, 56-57; standing, 56- 57, 73. Rice culture, in old South, 40. Risks, of the cotton market, 108- 149; in cotton production, 1, 80-107, 149. River Bottoms, central. See Central alluvial valleys. Roberts, Elizabeth Madox, 154. Ross, E. A., on cultural unity, 1. INDEX 345 Rural attitudes in South. See Attitudes. Rural population in South. See Population. ganders, J. T., study of Texas farmers by, 230-33. Sand Hills, 15. School attendance, in Cotton Belt, 171, 232. Scott Plantation, 103-4. Sea island cotton, 13, 42. Sea Islands, 16, 42. Sectionalism, 5. Share system, 56. Share tenants, case studies of, 257-71. Sheppard, Morris, Senator, on in- come of cotton farmer, 235. Shiftlessness, of cotton tenants, 307-8. Single crop system, evils of, 218. Slavery, philosophy of, 51-52; transition from to free labor, 54-60. See Plantation and Cotton system. Slaves, clothing of, 47-48; diet of, 47-48; inherent inferiority of, 51-52; introduction of, 38; social relations with, 49-50. Sledding, 132. Simkins, Francis Butler, on Tillman Movement, 140. Single Crop. See Crop. Smith, Alfred G., on laying by cotton, 165. Smith, Bradford B., on cotton cycle, 118. Smith, G. D., on method of boll weevil control, 105. Smith, J. Russell, 14; on erosion, 26. Snaps, 132. Social classes in South. See Classes, social. Soil exhaustion, 18. Soil regions of Cotton Belt, 15- 23, 130-31. See Frontispiece. Soule, Andrew M., on cotton prices, 128; on migration, 138. South, as a region, 7-10. South Carolina, 13, 15-18, 20, 95, 176, 184, 203, 221-22, 287- 88. Speculation, 141-42; attitude of, in cotton, 108-9, 301-3; in growing cotton, 206-8, 210. Spillman, W. J., on plant re- gions, 3; on abandonment of cotton farms, 129; on cash crop, 186; on staple crops, 39- 40. Spinners, on cotton prices, 120. Spot cotton, 142. Staked plains, 130-33. Standards of living, of the cot- ton farmer, 205-51; 199; cul- tural factor in, 313; Industrial Conference Board on, 251; low, 29-40, in New England, 220-21; in North Central States, 220-21; opinions on, 205-19 ; southern, 220-51 ; studies of, 219-51. See Case studies. Standing rent, 56-57, 73. Staple crops, 39-40. Sugar culture, in old South, 41. Sully, Daniel J., on cotton farmers' living standards, 213- 14. Supply merchants, 63-64; super- vision of, 164. Swamp lands, 20. JL annenbaum, Frank, 8. "Tar Heel," by John Charles Mc- Neil, 249. ' Taylor, Carl C., on exclusion of cotton farmers from culture, 313; on survey of North Caro- lina farmers, 227-30. Taylor, H. C., on corn as a southern crop, 24. Tenancy, analysis of, 57-58; dis- tribution of by states and types, 67; increase in, 1880- 1925, 65-66; and living stand- ards, 223, 226, 227-33; rise of in South, 53-68; share system and, 56. See Cotton tenant and Tenants. Tenants, credit for, 155 ; distribu- tion of, 31-32; mobility of, 151- 346 INDEX 54; white share, 73. See Cot- ton tenants. Tennessee, 14, 66-67, 176, 184, 203, 223, 225-26, 258-59, 274- 75. Tennessee River Valley, 19-20. Tenure, types of, 34, 56, 59-60. See Case studies. Texas, 14, 22-23, 66-67, 89-91, 95, 128-34, 159, 184, 203, 223, 225-26, 230-33, 254, 266-70. Texas farmers, study of by Sanders, 230-33. Thompson, Holland, 8. Thompson, W. B., on cotton South, 112-13. Three M diet, 298. Thrift, lack of, 305-7. Tillman, Ben R., Senator, as cot- ton farmer, 290. Tobacco culture, in old South, 37-38. Todd, John A., on American cot- ton crop, 111; on cheap labor in cotton, 208-9. Towns, rise in South after Civil War, 63. Townsend, Professor, reports of on boll weevil, 90, 91. Trade. See Cotton Trade. Truck cropping, 234. Turner, F. J., on cultural unity, 1-2; on sectionalism, 5; on cotton, 42. United States, cultural unity of, 1-2, 5-6. Unrest agrarian. See Agrarian unrest. Upland cotton, 13. Urban population in South. See Population. V anderlip, Frank H., on yields per acre, 82-83. Virginia, 14, 15. Virginia Colony, as a plantation, 36. Wage hands on plantation, 73- 74. Wannamaker, J. S., plan of for stabilizing cotton acreage, 147- 48. Warehouses, cotton, distribution of, 28-29. Washington, Booker T., 312. Watson, Tom, on paradox of value, 141. Weather, effect of on cotton, 84- 87. Weevil. See Boll weevil. Western Cotton Belt, as compet- ing area, 128-34; cost of producing cotton in, 132—33; description of, 22-23. See Mi- gration of plantation system. Westward movement of cotton culture, 43, 45. See Western Cotton Belt and Texas. Wheat Belt, 126-27. White population in South. See Population. White, R. Clyde, on relation of cotton to areas of tenancy, illiteracy, and Negroes, 9-10. Whitfield, H. L., Governor, call of for cotton conference, 144- 45. Whitney, Eli, 42. Winterbotham, William, Rev., 42. Women, work of in cotton fields, 161-62, 168, 199-204, 209-11, 299-301. Woofter, T. J., Jr., on weevil and Negro migration, 99. Wu Ting Fang, on demand for cotton, 114. Y azoo Mississippi Delta, 16. Yields of cotton per acre, 81-83, 125-26; definition of normal, 83. Young, T. M., on cotton farmers, 212. W age contract system in cot- ton, 55. z immerman, C. C., survey of North Carolina farmers by, 229-30.