20 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE 



states have been hard hit by the weevil, and cotton acre- 

 age has not increased since 1912. The problem of weevil 

 control is complicated by the wooded tracts which ex- 

 tend along the cotton fields and furnish places of hiberna- 

 tion for the insects. 27 



THE CENTRAL "RIVER BOTTOMS" 



"Alluvial soils occupy a larger area in the Cotton Belt 

 and subtropic Crop Belt than in any other region in the 

 United States," '* and they are the most highly special- 

 ized in cotton. America drains itself into the Cotton Belt, 

 sloping from the Appalachian table-land to the Atlantic 

 in the East and through the vast interconnected Missis- 

 sippi River system to the Gulf. An analysis of lands in 

 need of drainage shows Florida, Louisiana, Texas, 

 Georgia, Minnesota, Michigan, North Carolina, Missis- 

 sippi, Arkansas, and South Carolina leading in acreage 

 of wet, swamp, and overflowed lands. J. Russell Smith 

 calls a chart of these areas "a map of the mosquito in- 

 dustry." 9 The course of the Mississippi, the Arkansas, 

 and the Red rivers can be traced by the cotton produc- 

 tion in these bottoms. 30 



The shift to the Central Valley had begun by 1821, 

 and in 1833 less than half of the cotton production was 

 in the Atlantic Coast. The first areas developed in the 

 Alluvial Bottoms of the Mississippi were around Memphis 

 and in the delta formed by the Yazoo where it flows into 

 the Mississippi. The brown and mottled clay soil char- 

 acterized by cypress, red gum, and oak growth produces 

 a smooth silky staple as long as 1% inches and of ex- 



27 Hubbard, op. cit., p. 8. 28 Baker, op. cit., p 73. 



North America, p. 168. 30 Cotton Atlas, Fig. 14, p. 9. 



