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. 



