138 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE 



Negro migration. Now that the way out has been found 

 for many people who never knew it before, migrations 

 may be expected as the result of all periods of low prices. 

 Dr. Andrew M. Soule, President of Georgia State Agri- 

 cultural College, estimated that 100,000 of the farm 

 population left Georgia during the first six months of 

 the cotton depression of 1922. A survey carried on by 

 county agents showed that 11,000 farms had been aban- 

 doned during that time. 49 



The reaction of war prices was in proportion. A greater 

 amount of prosperity was distributed over the Cotton 

 Belt down to the lowest levels of tenancy than ever be- 

 fore. A sympathetic observer from Georgia thus describes 

 its interaction on the Black Belt: 



The Negro tenants are rolling in wealth. It is a curious 

 sight, those in the country districts of Georgia report, to see 

 them come to town with their pockets stuffed with paper 

 money. They pay their bills and buy more goods with money 

 peeled from great rolls of green and yellow backs. Theirs, 

 indeed, is almost an embarrassment of riches. They seem 

 hardly to know how to handle such masses of currency. 



One country storekeeper in Georgia states that since the 

 last harvest he has taken in over twenty thousand dollars in 

 cash that he had charged off the books. All this was for goods 

 that had been sold in the past to Negro farm tenants. With 

 prosperity suddenly come upon them, the Negroes made no 

 attempt to avoid their just obligations. 50 



The war migration northward and the good prices for 

 cotton combined to bring about more equitable conditions 

 on the plantations and in landlord-tenant relations. Agri- 



49 News item, Raleigh News and Observer, May 22, 1922. 



50 Charles Lewis, "Thirty Cent Cotton and the Negro," Illus- 

 trated World, May, 1918, p. 470. 



