230 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE 



.4 of a quart ; for Negro renters 36 from .07 to .6. The 

 production of pork ranged from 600 to 200 pounds per 

 family. 37 The data on housing is also significant. The 

 average landless farmer had 3.74 rooms in his house as 

 compared with 4.61 for owners. The average white farmer 

 had 4.38 rooms in his house as compared to 3.72 for 

 the Negro farmer. Landowners had 1.07 persons per 

 room as compared with 1.38 persons per room for land- 

 less farmers. White homes had 1.11 persons per bed as 

 compared to 1.52 for Negro homes. Lastly, 17.6 per cent 

 of landless farmers lived in one or two-room houses, and 

 14.4 of all whites and 13.9 per cent of all Negroes lived 

 in homes of two rooms or less. 38 Not a Negro family nor 

 any white tenant or cropper family in the area surveyed 

 had running water, an indoor toilet, or a bathtub in 

 his home. In the landless families over 31 per cent of the 

 fathers and mothers could not read. The average cropper 

 had attained only to the third grade in school, while 

 the average Negro farmer of all ranks had received less 

 than a first grade education. This exhaustive survey 

 of the owners, tenants, and croppers in cotton and to- 

 bacco-growing areas shows with the realism of statistics 

 the low living standards in the old Cotton Belt. It is 

 true that 1921 was a bad year for cotton, but all of 

 the conditions presented in the survey must be regarded 

 as the cumulative result of years of marginal incomes. 

 A study made by J. T. Sanders 39 for 1919 and pub- 

 lished by the Department of Agriculture in 1922 de- 

 voted itself to the analysis of living conditions of 368 

 cotton farmers in six counties of the Black Prairie of 



36 Ibid., p. 19. s* iM^ p. 20. 38 Ibid., p. 41. 



39 Farm Ownership and Tenancy in the Black Prairie of Texas, 

 Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin 1068. 



