HOW THE COTTON FARMER LIVES 209 



der the protection of the Association produced 261,900 

 bales of cotton. 6 



One gathers, also, from the writings of such an Eng- 

 lish authority as Mr. John A. Todd that the world's 

 cotton supply must come from agricultural labor with 

 low standards of living: 



Cotton has always been regarded as a cheap-laborer crop, 

 that is to say, a crop that can only be profitably cultivated 

 where there is an ample supply of cheap laborers. Such a 

 supply of laborers was obtained in the United States by the 

 introduction of slaves, who, though neither very industrious 

 nor efficient, could be trained to the necessary processes of 

 cultivation and picking. Indeed it is admitted that a good 

 Negro is the best cotton cultivator, if he can be persuaded to 

 do his best. But since the liberation of the slaves, good 

 Negroes have become almost the exception; the average 

 "Nigger" has an incurable aversion to steady and especially 

 to prolonged labor. . . . The scarcity of labor has only 

 resulted in raising the general level of wages, and enabling 

 the Negro to adopt a higher standard of living, and copy 

 the luxuries and vices of the white man. . . . The contrast 

 between all this and the position of the Egyptian fellah, with 

 his unlimited capacity for patient plodding work from morn- 

 ing till night, for almost seven days a week, and from one 

 year's end to another, on a wage of less than a quarter of 

 that of the American Negro, which yet enables him to main- 

 tain a standard of living that makes him the healthiest and 

 strongest agricultural laborer in the world, is painful in the 

 extreme. 7 



This view regards the human factors as merely a means 

 to the production of cotton. 



Mr. Todd 8 reaches the conclusion "that in many cases 



6 Ibid., p. xi. 7 The World's Cotton Crops, pp. 107-8. 



s Ibid., p. 113. 



