44 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE 



It is difficult to overestimate the influence of the plan- 

 tation regime. The plantation was the basic feature in 

 the economic life, the planters were the capstone of the 

 social system. It has been maintained by a leading his- 

 torian of the South, that "nine-tenths of the South's 

 landowners at any period in her history were small pro- 

 prietors." l9 The same authority estimates that "three or 

 four thousand families . . . lived on the best lands and 

 received three-fourths of the returns from the yearly ex- 

 ports. Two-thirds of the white people of the South had 

 no connection with slavery and received only a very small 

 part of the returns of the community output. A thousand 

 families received over $50,000,000 a year, while all the 

 remaining 660,000 families received only about $60,- 

 000,000." 20 



We know, however, that the small farmers outside the 

 plantation system lived in the valleys of Virginia and the 

 uplands and highlands of middle and western North Caro- 

 lina, north Georgia and Alabama, east Tennessee and 

 Kentucky, and western Virginia. Under an economy more 

 or less domestic and self-supporting they raised cereals, 

 tobacco, cotton, and live stock. In the Eastern Belt their 

 natural markets were Baltimore and Philadelphia. Their 

 products were transported over the rough back-country 

 highways, along which they brought their purchases. In 

 the Western Belt the Mississippi River and its tribu- 

 taries were used as highways to market. The planters, 

 although outnumbered, admittedly retained control in 

 politics. Socially the two classes had much in common; 

 their ideals were often southern to provincialism. Eco- 



19 W. E. Dodd, "Plantation and Farm System in Southern Agri- 

 culture," South in the Building of the Nation, V, 74. 



20 The Cotton Kingdom, p. 24. 



