210 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE 



at least, the profits of cotton growing are by no means 

 so large as we were apt to imagine. The position is 

 practically this, that under such conditions cotton cannot 

 be grown at a profit if all the labor it requires has to 

 be paid for. 9 Unless the small planter has a large family 

 to do part of the work, cotton at present prices will 

 not pay. Such conditions may be all very well for the 

 Negro, whose standard of living (for his children) has 

 always been low; education, for example, is only now 

 beginning to be thought necessary; but they will not 

 do at all for the small white planters, who, in Texas es- 

 pecially, are very numerous, and who might have proved 

 the hope of the cotton trade under more favorable con- 

 ditions. In other words, it means that cotton is, and 

 must remain a 'black man's crop,' not a white man's." 



The conflict between the views of spinners and pro- 

 ducers of cotton has approached nearest bitterness on 

 this very phase of the field labor of women and children. 

 In an address delivered in Brazil in 1921, Arno S. Pearse 

 of Manchester, England, general secretary of the Inter- 

 national Federation of Master Cotton Spinners and 

 Manufacturers' Associations, said in speaking of the 

 cotton outlook: 



. . . We were told on the authority of the president of 

 the American Cotton Association that the American cotton 

 farmer would no more continue to allow his wife and children 

 to work in the fields. With such fantastic ideas it cannot 

 be expected that there will be an increase in the cotton acre- 

 age of the United States of America. 10 



9 My italics. 



10 Statements cited in Manufacturers' Record for July 31, 1924. 



