PREFACE 



THE SETTLEMENT of America, viewed by the social geog- 

 rapher, involved an adjustment of previously existent 

 cultures to such factors of natural environment as topog- 

 raphy, climate, and societies of plants and animals. The 

 South early in its development was conditioned by the de- 

 mands of the cotton plant. "Whenever man depends upon 

 agriculture and has found a permanent abode," writes 

 R. Mukerjee, "the growing of different staple crops such 

 as rice, wheat, or Indian corn, and the rearing of dif- 

 ferent domestic animals, selected from among the native 

 stock of a region, govern not merely man's interests and 

 habits, but also his social organization." 



"In the Belt Black, Cotton, or Bible, as you prefer," 

 a flippant journalist has put it, "cotton is Religion, 

 Politics, Law, Economics, and Art." Without accepting 

 geographic determinism, one must admit that much that 

 is distinctive of southern culture, its plantation system, 

 its sectionalism, its agricultural life, its rural practices, 

 has developed as a kind of complex around the cotton 

 plant. Without pushing this thesis to any unreasonable 

 limits, the present study has grown out of an attempt 

 to estimate the status of the human factors in cotton 

 culture. The warmth of an emotional interest in the 

 South has as far as possible been restrained by an appeal 

 to the cold and impartial fact. It must be admitted, how- 

 ever, that the great human nexus surrounding cotton 

 culture is too intricate to be set forth adequately by sta- 

 tistics and cases. The primeval, unconquered data of 



