THE PRESENT COTTON SYSTEM 187 



South was without cotton prices. The business stagna- 

 tion and dismay of the section during those weeks can 

 hardly be described. 



And because cotton has its equivalent in cash, any 

 time, any place, it is the mortgage crop. The larger the 

 percentage of the farm planted to cotton, the more se- 

 curity has the lender of credit. Food furnished by the 

 farm is of interest only to the actual farmer; the land- 

 lord and supply merchant receive their payments not in 

 kind but in cash. Where diversified farming is acceptable 

 to the landlord it may encroach upon the vested interests 

 of the merchant and the furnisher. Why should the 

 supply merchant encourage the growing of an abundance 

 of food and feedstuffs at home when he has them for sale 

 at the "General Merchandise" at a profit plus an inter- 

 est charge? It is this factor which gives content to the 

 term, "the cotton system." 



There is an accumulated body of evidence to support 

 the charge that the undiversified growing of cotton is 

 determined by financial interests rather than by agricul- 

 tural interests. The tenant farmer's wife of Alabama who 

 wrote the Atlanta Constitution, pathetically inquiring 

 how she and her husband or neighbors were to follow the 

 universal advice to diversify when their landlord wanted 

 only cotton grown, represents a type. A Georgia business 

 man 23 wrote in 1914 : 



If you want to get at the situation you must call a meeting 

 of the owners of these rented farms and . . . the men who 

 buy and sell what goes on and what goes away from the 

 farm. These bankers, merchants, warehousers, fertilizer men, 



23 J. T. Holleman, Is the South in the Grip of a Cotton Oli- 

 garchy? pp. 9-10. Pamphlet. 



