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. 



