36 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE 



was probably predestined to be what he has since very largely 

 become a peasant farmer. 2 



Professor Ulrich B. Phillips has advanced this doctrine 

 in its most authentic form: 



It [the plantation system], indeed, was less dependent 

 upon slavery than slavery was upon it; and the plantation 

 regime has persisted on a considerable scale to the present 

 day in spite of the destruction of slavery a half century 

 since. The plantation system formed, so to speak, the in- 

 dustrial and social frame of government in the black belt 

 communities, while slavery was a code of written laws en- 

 acted for that purpose. 3 



The early settlements at Plymouth and Jamestown may 

 be regarded as ventures in capitalistic agriculture on the 

 part of the stockholders. H. U. Faulkner says of the Vir- 

 ginia Plantation: 



From the first arrival until the king had the charter re- 

 voked in 1624, the colony was a true plantation. The col- 

 onists were servants and employees of the stockholders who 

 resided in England, and the fruits of their labor belonged 

 to the company. For the products of the labor of the settlers 

 the company sent supplies from England of medicines, cloth- 

 ing, furniture, tools, arms, and ammunition, all of which were 

 kept in the common storehouses and allotted by the company's 

 agent to the colonists. But the shiploads of lumber and other 

 forest products gathered and sent to England paid only a 

 small fraction of the expenses incurred by the London Com- 

 pany in its attempt to found the Virginia Plantation. 4 



2 "The Anti-Slavery Movement in England," American Journal of 

 Sociology, XXXIII (1927), 290-91. 



3 "Decadence of the Plantation System," Annals of the American 

 Academy, XXXV, 37. 



4 American Economic History, p. 47. 



