The Cotton Crop 203 



little of improved machinery that would replace the costly 

 human labor with that of the horse or mule. 



As an example of the present method, we recently saw 

 in a cotton field six men, each with a single mule and a 

 plow, going through the rows cultivating the crop. Each 

 man had to go twice in a row. Three men each with two 

 mules on a riding cultivator would complete the cultiva- 

 tion of a row with one passing through, and hence three 

 men would have done, and done better, twice as much 

 work as the six were doing. 



The cotton crop needs to-day to be brought into the 



modern methods of cultivation, and it could thus be 



grown at less than half the cost that its cultivation demands 



in the present method. 



The improving farmer in the cotton belt 



Rotation mM'=>t be, like the improving farmer in the 



Suited to the . ^ \ , <• i xi. ^ ^i. 



Cotton Crop g^am belt, a legume farmer, only that the 



legumes he uses will differ to some extent 

 from those used in the North. All over the cotton belt 

 the great forage legume and soil improver is the cow pea. 

 In the best cotton-growing sections, the coastal plain of 

 the South Atlantic and Gulf States, red clover, the great 

 legume of the Middle and Northern States does not flour- 

 ish, and the cow pea becomes the clover of the South. 

 With it the Southern cotton grower can do all for his soil 

 that the farmer of the North can do with clover, and can 

 do it in one-fourth or less time. 



The great lack of Southern soils is humus or organic 

 decay. The long and clean cultivation of cotton has 

 almost cleaned the older soils of this important part of a 

 fertile soil, and its restoration is the most important 



