206 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE 



to the view accepted by some that it is dangerous to 

 the health of white people to work in the cotton field, 

 and cited Olmsted's A Journey in the Back Country to 

 the effect that: 



The necessary labor and causes of vital fatigue and vital 

 exhaustion attending any part or all of the processes of 

 cotton culture does not compare with that of our July har- 

 vesting; it is not greater than attends the cultivation of In- 

 dian corn in the usual New England method. I have seen a 

 weakly white woman the worse for her labor in the cotton 

 field but never a white man; and I have seen hundreds of 

 them at work in cotton fields under the most unfavorable 

 circumstances, miserable, dispirited wretches and of weak 

 muscles, subsisting mainly, as they do, upon corn bread. Mr. 

 De Bow estimates one hundred thousand white men now en- 

 gaged in the cultivation of cotton, being one-ninth of the 

 whole cotton force of the country. 2 



The opposing attitudes and opinions as to the stand- 

 ard of living of the cotton farmer are plainly motivated 

 by the conflict of interest between the spinner, desiring 

 cheap cotton to manufacture, and the producer, con- 

 vinced of inadequate returns. A clash 3 that occurred in 

 a hearing on cotton crop estimates in 1905 between Rep- 

 resentative Lovering of Massachusetts, a cotton spin- 

 ner, and Representatives Clayton and Burleson, both 

 southern planters, is significant: 



Lovering: . . . "Here is a crop [cotton] paying the planter 

 100 to 150 per cent . . ." 



2 Ibid., cited p. 10. 



3 Hearings of the House of Representatives, No. 5, Session 1905-6, 

 Dec. 19, 1905, p. 15. 



