AROUND THE YEAR WITH COTTON 165 



In lowlands and uplands, strange sects, the Holiness, the 

 Nazarenes, the Holy Rollers, draw the croppers and their 

 families to the bush arbors, or maybe the family packs 

 up and goes to the camp grounds for several weeks. There 

 the shining lights of the sect are gathered and rotate in 

 preaching their best sermons. The summer revivals par- 

 take of the nature of a southern culture trait. None is 

 more religious than the Negro, and late into the summer 

 nights in many a countryside can be heard the sweet 

 strains of an old spiritual and the rhythmic rise and fall 

 of the preacher's voice announcing judgment to come. 

 The landlords and town dwellers are likely to belong to 

 the more orthodox sects, but they, too, have their revivals 

 during the lull in the cotton season. 



There is much dissatisfaction among landlords with 

 the habit among cotton renters of easing up during 

 August, "but it seems sensible to me," writes one. 14 "Cot- 

 ton anyway must be grown by a series of spurts rather 

 than by a steady daily grind." During the hot season 

 "about the best thing for croppers to do is to quit work, 

 visit around, and attend the protracted meeting. Then if 

 they haven't killed each other ad interim, they are physi- 

 cally fit when the rush of cotton picking begins." 



H. C. Brearley found in a study of 1601 homicides in 

 South Carolina from 1920 to 1924 that "months of high 

 homicide rates concur rather closely with the seasons of 

 little farming activity, with one peak during the winter 

 vacation and the other during the midsummer lay-by 

 and camp meeting time. Two of the three months of least 



14 Alfred G. Smith, "The Cropper System," Country Gentle- 

 man, Sept. 4, 1920. 





