180 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE 



the money last through the year, even when the same 

 amount of money coming at convenient intervals might 

 provide very well." 5 The dependence on the one crop also 

 increases the chance of crop and market failures, and 

 when the farmer is once thrown a year behind in his 

 financing it is difficult for him to escape from a credit 

 economy. Dairying or live stock farming provides an in- 

 come at regular intervals, while a diversified system of 

 farming also provides against total failure from any one 

 crop. 



Sufficient evidence exists to show that a large part of 

 the credit used in financing cotton is borrowed for con- 

 sumption rather than productive purposes. In a survey 

 of 1,014 North Carolina farmers it was found that they 

 used an average of $182.40 credit a year. Of this 50.9 per 

 cent went for food, clothing, and home supplies, leaving 

 slightly less than half for productive uses in the purchase 

 of fertilizers, tools, and stock feed. For the landowners 

 only 43.8 per cent of the credit secured was consumptive, 

 while for the renters 62.4 per cent went for living ex- 

 penses during the growing season. The effect of cotton 

 culture is most significant to our discussion. It was found 

 in a mountain county in which no cotton was grown that 

 the average amount borrowed per family was $10 a year; 

 in the cotton producing county each farm family bor- 

 rowed on the average $436 a year. 16 "We feel rich after 

 the crop is sold," one cotton tenant said, "rich, till we 

 meet the people we owe." 



The answer is, of course, the familiar one of lack of 



15 G. F. Warren, Farm Management, p. 108. 



16 Carl C. Taylor, and C. C. Zimmerman, Economic and Social 

 Conditions of North Carolina Farmers, State Tenancy Commission, 

 1922, p. 31. 



