26 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE 



of Belgium." Regional factors combine with the tenancy 

 system to allow the fields to wash away. Southern soils 

 are peculiarly liable to leaching. Iowa, for instance, has 

 thirty inches of rainfall a year, and her soils are frozen 

 impervious to water all winter; the cotton states have 

 fifty to sixty inches of rainfall and winters that are 

 nearly frostless. Grass serves to retain the soil, but cot- 

 ton and corn are two crops which require that vegetation 

 be weeded out. Thus agriculture without grass and with- 

 out humus has been combined with a tenant-landlord sys- 

 tem to ruin thousands of acres. Gullies best described in 

 the term "red washes" have reduced many of the best 

 upland farms to sandy wastes. 46 



MULES 



Corn, mules, cotton is a logical sequence, and no 

 ecology of the Cotton Belt is complete without a study 

 of the distribution of mules. Spot maps prepared from 

 the Census show that "there are more mules and fewer 

 horses per square mile in the Cotton Belt than in any 

 eastern agricultural region." 7 The ten ranking states in 

 mules are all southern. The horses are localized in the 

 Corn Belt and with the exception of Missouri and the 

 cotton frontier of Texas and Oklahoma, comparatively 

 few mule colts are found in the cotton states. Mis- 

 souri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Tennessee, Kentucky, 

 Iowa, and Nebraska rank highest in mule colts. More 

 pasture, cheaper feed, better methods of stock-raising 

 have arranged it so that mules are grown in the Corn 

 Belt and shipped South when ready for work. 



48 See Smith, North America, p. 255. 47 Baker, op. cit., p. 80. 



