NEW DEAL: LATER STAGES 5 J 5 



will be needed to safeguard the progress already made and to make con- 

 tinued progress possible." 2 



More attention was focused on the New Deal from another direction. 

 Early in January, 1939, about one thousand sharecroppers from the seven 

 "boot heel" counties of southeastern Missouri, economically and tradi- 

 tionally a part of the cotton South but geographically a part of the western 

 Middle West, staged a protest against their lowly economic status. These 

 "ragged, shivering sharecroppers, encamped along the rights-of-way of 

 Highways 60 and 61," many of whom were women and children, most of 

 them Negroes, were "ill-prepared" to face the winter months. 



Sewing machines, dressers, tables and beds were stacked along the roads in 

 disarray. Groups took turns sleeping in dilapidated automobiles. Others slept 

 on corn-shuck mattresses or blankets. 



A few had oil-barrel stoves and the familiar rural pot-bellied iron stoves 

 to provide warmth and heat for preparing meals. Some of the more provident 

 brought cooking chickens with them, but fat pork, bread and cofTee was the 

 fare for the majority of the refugees. 



Medical authorities, fearful of the danger of disease, expressed concern for 

 the health of the farm families. Milk for infants was a pressing problem. 28 



More specifically this demonstration was in protest against mechanized 

 farming and the growing practice in the South of abandoning share- 

 cropping in favor of day labor. Leaders of the protesting group contended 

 that some of the landowners had evicted the renters to avoid sharing 

 crop benefits with them. Landowners, however, blamed the situation on 

 the rapid growth of farm population in Missouri, the curtailment of the 

 cotton acreage, the shift from manual labor and mule power to modern 

 motorized farming, and losses suffered by some operators under the share- 

 cropper system. 



When Secretary Wallace was pressed for a comment on the remarks of 

 tenants who charged that they had been evicted from their lands in order 

 that the landlord might avoid sharing benefit payments with them, he 

 stated categorically that such actions were contrary to the stipulations of 



27. National Resources Planning Board, Regional Planning, Part IX, The North- 

 ern Great Plains, A Progress Report, September, 1939 (Washington, 1940), pp. 3-4. 



28. New Yorl( Times, January 12, 1939. 



