100 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE 



Dr. Moton, President of Tuskegee, told the members 

 of his race, "there is too much scientific knowledge, too 

 much resourcefulness, and too much determination in 

 the South for us to be swept off our feet by a little 

 bug." l3 But someone, somewhere had started a song and 

 Negroes all over the Cotton Belt were singing: 



Oh, have you heard de lates', 

 De lates' all your own? 

 All about de Boll Weevil 

 What cosed me to leave my home? 



Fust time I saw de Boll Weevil 



He was sittin' on de square 



Nex' time I saw dat Weevil 



He was sittin' everywhar 



Jes a looking for a home, looking for a home ! 44 



Following the shock of the first insect ravages, cotton 

 acreage was cut down, and many regions turned through 

 necessity to the diversified farming so earnestly preached 

 in and out of season. The greatest immediate disadvantage 

 to the Negroes, in fact to all tenant farmers, "was the 

 lack of money to sustain them while corn and velvet 

 beans were being grown." 5 The increment on live stock 

 is not as assured as the cash returns on cotton. The 

 means with which to begin raising live stock cannot be 

 secured as easily as credit on cotton. But under the 

 stimulation of war prices the South produced more "hog 

 and hominy" in spite of its depleted man power than 



43 Cited in A. L. Halsey, "The Tuskegee Conference," Social 

 Forces, I, 287. 



44 Dorothy Scarborough, In the Land of Cotton, p. 136. See also 

 Carl Sandburg, The American Songbag, pp. 8-9, 252-53. 



45 Scott, op. cit., p. 16. 



