SOUTHERN HORIZONS 



the average annual income of the farm family in the 

 Cotton Belt only a third of what it is in the Corn Belt? 

 The answer is disarmingly simple. Cotton acres support 

 four times as many people as corn acres. This ignored 

 fact should also be remembered. 



It makes quite clear that low farm-family income is 

 not the cause, but the result, of the cotton problem. 

 Confusion of this cause and result led the Government 

 to assume control of the price of cotton for the benefit 

 of the planter, a policy that has transformed what was 

 originally a fairly simple, straightforward relief prob- 

 lem into an international diplomatic issue. 



In the good old days when American cotton domi- 

 nated world markets, we produced some fifteen million 

 bales, half of which were sold abroad. In the late 

 twenties when the world went into an economic tail- 

 spin, the cotton market collapsed; demand dwindled; 

 our exports all but vanished; the price fell. Since 1929 

 our exports have been dropping, dropping in 1941 to 

 a low point of 1,100,000 bales, which was but a tenth 

 of that year's very small crop. In the South this shrink- 

 ing cotton market precipitated a human crisis. 



Paying no rent and growing most of its food, a 

 family on a farm lives in clover on much less hard 

 money than a city family. But in 1930 when family 

 cash incomes in the South shrank to a pitiful $95 a year, 

 thousands who grew only cotton for a cash crop faced 

 dire distress. So following patterns designed for corn 



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