THE PRESENT COTTON SYSTEM 189 



It is in years of cotton prosperity that the system 

 flourishes most. When overproduction or crop failures 

 leave notes, rent, and store bills unpaid, a cry for diversifi- 

 cation goes up from southern business. But in the pro- 

 gram for diversification there exists a fundamental conflict 

 between the public needs of the region and the vested in- 

 terests of those engaged in supplying the various forms 

 of cotton credit. This has been caustically pointed out 

 by a Texas lawyer: 



There are those in every village, town and city in the 

 South who constantly demand that cotton shall be planted 

 in large acreage and have never at any time heretofore urged 

 and are not now urging any decrease in acreage. They con- 

 stitute that large and influential class engaged in local com- 

 mercial pursuits. Their business is the farm supplying trade 

 of the Southern States. They furnish the rations, either di- 

 rectly or indirectly, used by the farmers in producing crops, 

 and they insist that those who eat the bread .and meat and 

 wear the clothes they sell on credit, produce a crop which 

 can on any day, at some price, be sold for cash. 



They may meet, yes, they do meet, in the Chambers of 

 Commerce and proclaim that there must be a reduction of 

 cotton acreage, and from those places they proceed directly 

 to the cuddyholes in their places of business and write chat- 

 tel mortgages for the poor devils to sign covering the cotton 

 crops from one to five years and in addition, everything from 

 the pig to products raised by the children. Listen to the 

 speeches in the Chambers of Commerce, and in the banquet 

 halls where a few most carefully selected farmers are enter- 

 tained, and go directly from there to the mortgage records 

 and see the work that is really being done. Always, every- 

 where, in the private counting houses, the demand is made 

 that cotton must be produced so that the debts can be paid. 



