216 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE 



gage Company, a Director of the American National 

 Bank of Atlanta, and a "son of the old South." His 

 communication was first published as an open letter to 

 the Atlanta Constitution of September 27, 1914, and 

 later republished as a pamphlet: 



Pathetic indeed has been the life of the small landowner 

 and tenant farmer in Georgia and the South for fifty years. 

 Courageous, honest, patient, and long-suffering, when shall 

 they see light? When shall their burdens be lifted? In the 

 springtime they go forth with our brothers in black, set their 

 hands to the plow. They bend their backs to the burdens and 

 when the frost falls they have added $1,000,000,000 to the 

 wealth of the world. But small indeed is their share, and 

 meagre is the recompense to them. Every two years, accord- 

 ing to the government census, they move from one place to 

 another. They build no homes, they live in rude huts, no 

 flowers about their dwellings, no trees to shade them from 

 the sun, consumed by the summer's heat and chilled by the 

 winter's cold, no lawns about their houses, no garden fences, 

 and with the accursed cotton plant crowding the very thresh- 

 old of their rude dwellings. . . . Their sons and daughters 

 come to manhood and womanhood, depart from the farm and 

 are lost to them in some distant community. Finally, when 

 their fight is over they are laid to rest in the rude church- 

 yards of the country, others take their place and continue 

 the fight. They have established no permanent home, their 

 kith and kin are scattered far and wide, and the places that 

 knew them once, know them no more, forever. I have no word 

 of criticism for men like these. I know them, I have lived 

 among them. I sprang from them. Who shall undertake to 

 lead these men out of the wilderness of their troubles? Men 

 whom they elevate to high offices in the state and national 

 government are ever ready to teach them politics but they 

 are not prepared to help them solve their problems. 



