168 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE 



out long ago that the Negro spent his life with cotton 

 and yet he had developed no folklore and no songs around 

 the plant. Since then the Negro has sung of Mr. Boll 

 Weevil a-sittin' everywhere. One wonders after all if the 

 postal card picture is not a symbol, the symbol of a 

 feudal order and of the domination of a section and a 

 race by a plant. 



On the rented farms the tenants and croppers must 

 pick their own crop or pay the labor bill. Consequently, 

 they and the small owners draft their wives and children. 

 All go to the fields early and work late, always ten hours, 

 and often twelve a day. Each picker wears a long sack 

 which fastens over the shoulder by a cord and drags be- 

 hind him on the ground. With bending back and both 

 hands flying from boll to boll, the picker takes one row or 

 two at a time. As his hand becomes filled with cotton he 

 thrusts it into the mouth of the sack behind him. When 

 he is working for wages, the picker carries the filled sack 

 to the weigher, who hoists it on a steelyard and notes 

 the result in his book. The cotton is poured into an un- 

 hitched wagon with high sideboards and tramped down. 

 If damp with the morning dew it is emptied on a wagon 

 sheet on the ground to dry before weighing. On the large 

 plantation the fibre is stored after each day's work in 

 the little cotton houses which dot the landscape. The 

 white tenants and small owners are likely to dump the 

 cotton on their small front porches until they are ready 

 to haul it to the gin. A wagon load of seed cotton, 

 "tramped down" between the high sideboards, makes a 

 bale of lint. 



The haul to the gin is not likely to be long. It is esti- 

 mated that the time required to haul the crop to gin and 

 to market is four hours for the farmer and eight hours 



