AROUND THE YEAR WITH COTTON 167 



mingled announcement and apology to make "cash 

 money." It is a saying in the South that it takes a 

 country Negro seven years to forget the call of the cot- 

 ton fields. Loud is the grumbling, and many are the 

 aspersions cast on the loyalty and honesty of the family 

 cook, but she is likely to continue to accept her chance 

 to make the highest wage offered the southern agricul- 

 tural laborer. The demands of the cotton system are 

 inexorable, and the townspeople continue to bow to them. 

 Payment is likely to range from 75^ to $1.50 a hundred 

 pounds, and a good picker may make as high as $4.00 

 a day. Lower wages are paid for picking cotton earlier 

 in the season, and the price may advance from a dollar 

 to $1.25 a hundred. There is a reason. The first cotton 

 to open is heavier, since it is still moist from the boll, 

 and the leaves prevent drying. Later the fibres, being 

 exposed longer, dry out, and a higher price rate compen- 

 sates for their decreased weight. 



Whatever it may be to the worker, the cotton fields 

 at picking time have become to the world a symbol of 

 Dixie. The benevolent blackness of an old mammy's face, 

 the brightness of her dress, and the perspective of white 

 cotton rows blend in colors dear to the hearts of souvenir 

 buyers. It has become the sentimental postal card picture 

 of the South. It is a symbol in the sense that the planta- 

 tion was a symbol. In far-away lands men's hearts have 

 been known to lift with joy at the sight, as they do at 

 the sound of Dixie. It is noteworthy that these postal 

 cards do not picture white women and children as pick- 

 ing the cotton. Cotton picking is not all festival. The 

 sun is warm, and the Negroes laugh and sing, but 

 Negroes have been given the tradition of laughing and 

 singing at notably hard lives. Henry W. Grady pointed 





