126 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE 

 TABLE VI (Continued) 



The table reveals some interesting facts as to the 

 income of cotton farmers. Within the last fifty years the 

 income per cotton acre has ranged from $10.78 in 1898 

 to $60.62 in 1919. In the decade of 1890 the returns per 

 acre reached as high as $15.00 but once. Owing to war 

 conditions, boll weevil, and new uses for cotton, the 

 decade 1916 to 1926 has offered the highest returns per 

 acre since the Civil War decade, the lowest $20.02 being 

 in 1920, year of depression and the mean being around 

 $32.28. During this period the cost of production has 

 also been at its highest. Accepting the estimate com- 

 monly made that the average cropper, share tenant, or 

 small owner, cultivating virtually no other crop and 

 working only himself and family, can tend approximately 

 twenty acres of cotton, we can see that within a generation 

 his money income may have varied from $215.60 to 

 $1,212.40 a year. To know the effects on the average pro- 

 ducer we should study the varying costs of production 

 and his standards of living. In this chapter, however, 

 we are concerned with the cyclical fluctuations, move- 



