62 



HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE 



TABLE I 



COMPARATIVE SIZE AND VALUE OF NORTHERN 

 AND SOUTHERN FARMS 1850-1910 



The movement from landlords to home ownership was 

 checked before completion. In 1881 Henry W. Grady 

 could write : 



After sixteen years of trial everything is as yet indeter- 

 minate. And whether this staple is cultivated in the South to 

 independence or beggary, are matters yet to be settled. 

 Whether its culture shall result in a host of croppers without 

 money or credit, appealing to the granaries of the West 

 against famine, paying toll to usurers at home and mortgaging 

 their crops to speculators abroad even before it is planted 

 a planting oligarchy of money-lenders, who have usurped the 

 land through foreclosure, and hold it by the ever growing 

 margin between a grasping lender and an enforced borrower 

 or a prosperous self-respecting race of small farmers culti- 

 vating their own lands, living upon their own resources, 

 controlling their crops until they are sold, and independent 

 alike of usurers and provision brokers which of these shall 



