202 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE 



while the next largest group was composed of wage 

 hands. 49 That the number of women farm workers is seri- 

 ously underestimated is suggested by the nature of the 

 questions asked as to occupation. With a smaller farm 

 population in 1910 there were found 1,807,506 females 

 over ten years of age engaged in "agriculture, forestry 

 and animal husbandry," 83 per cent of which were in the 

 ten chief cotton states. 50 According to the 1920 figures, 

 however, 19.8 per cent of all females on the farm over 

 ten years of age in the ten cotton states served as field 

 laborers. Of every hundred women field laborers 68 were 

 Negroes and 32 white in 1920. In 1910, 60 were Negroes 

 and 40 whites. 



In a report of family labor employed per farm October 

 1, 1927, the South Atlantic states averaged 3.85 and 

 the South Central 3.62 persons as compared with 1.79 

 for the Western states, 1.82 for the North Atlantic and 

 North Central states, and 2.51 for the United States as 

 a whole. 50a 



The distribution of the field labor of women according 

 to states is shown in the following table. It will be seen 

 that the percentage of women working in fields tends to 

 vary with the percentage of farm lands devoted to cotton. 

 Texas and Oklahoma, because of the large scale farming 

 and comparative scarcity of Negro farmers, offer the 

 two exceptions. 



49 "Occupations," Census 1920, Vol. IV, chap. VI I. 



BO "Owing to changes in the date of enumeration from April to 

 January and to changes in the wording of the instructions, the num- 

 ber of persons, especially women and children, reported as farm 

 laborers was much less in 1920 than would have been the case had 

 the 1910 method been followed." Note: Statistical Abstract of the 

 United States, 1925, p. 46. 



6o a Crops and Markets, V (No. 10, Oct., 1928), 362. This refers 

 to farms of crop reporters. 



