HOW THE COTTON FARMER LIVES 217 



The system of all cotton and no foodstuffs entails more 

 suffering upon the Negroes than upon anyone else. Theirs, 

 indeed, is a struggle for existence. It goes without saying 

 that if anybody shall go hungry and naked, it will be the 

 Negroes. 18 



The Western Cotton Belt has not gone unrepresented 

 in opinions on the living conditions in the cotton in- 

 dustry. In an indignant open letter to the Dallas News, 

 T. N. Jones, an attorney of Tyler, Texas, wrote: 



... in the South, there is more abject poverty and illit- 

 eracy than in any other country on earth in which a high 

 state of civilization is supposed to exist. 



The squalid condition of the cotton raisers of the South 

 is a disgrace to the southern people. They stay in shacks, 

 thousands of which are unfit to house animals, much less 

 human beings. Their children are born under such conditions 

 of medical treatment, food, and clothing as would make an 

 Eskimo rejoice that he did not live in a cotton growing 

 country. Without exception around these shacks there are 

 no decent sanitary accommodations. There are no places for 

 the production and care of live stock or poultry. In hun- 

 dreds of instances there are no arrangements for garden or 

 places where vegetables can be raised. 



There is not one landowner in forty who raises cotton and 

 cultivates his own farm who now has his own money in the 

 bank with which to finance entirely the production of his 

 crops for 1928. 



There is not one tenant farmer in one hundred throughout 

 the whole South who has his own money on hand with which 

 to finance the production of his crop for 1928. 19 



One must heed the warning that opinions as to how 



18 Is the South in the Grip of a Cotton Oligarchy? pp. 17, 18. 



19 Dallas News, Feb. 17, 1928. 



