60 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE 



the cotton system. The elevation of the unprivileged 

 natives of the uplands to the rank of landowners pro- 

 vided a "remarkable increase in the proportion of whites 

 employed in the cultivation of cotton." 41 Says Henry W. 

 Grady, "the earth hunger of the poorer classes of whites 

 who had been unable under the slaveholding oligarchy 

 to own land was striking. . . . Never perhaps was there a 

 rural movement which was accomplished without revolu- 

 tion or exodus that equalled in extent or swiftness the 

 partition of the plantation of the ex-slaveholder into 

 small farms." 2 The eastern upland areas, inhabited by 

 white farmers, were reclaimed for cotton culture by the 

 use of fertilizers. White farmers moved to comparatively 

 undeveloped areas such as the wire grass in Georgia. 43 

 Cotton culture was carried to Texas and later to Okla- 

 homa by migrations of white farmers. By 1876 the United 

 States Commissioner of Agriculture stated that nearly 

 40 per cent of the cotton was grown by white farmers. 44 

 By 1910, although Negro farmers cultivated 52 per cent 

 of the total cotton acreage in the South, the white farm- 

 ers produced 67 per cent of the total crop. 45 



The southern small farmers' opportunity to buy land 

 came as a result of falling cotton prices after 1871. En- 

 couraged by thirty-cent cotton, planters had "refitted 

 their quarters, repaired their fences, summoned hundreds 

 of Negro croppers at high prices, and invested lavishly 



41 Hammond, The Cotton Industry, p. 129. 



42 "Cotton and Its Kingdom," Harper's Magazine, LXVIII (May, 

 1881), 721-22. 



43 Robert Preston Brooks, The Agrarian Revolution in Georgia, 

 1865-191%, chap. VII. 



44 Report 1876, p. 136, cited by Hammond, op. cit., p. 130. 



45 Negro Population in the United States, 1790-1918, pp. 594-9G. 

 U. S. Census Monograph. 



