250 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE 



many different reports. In the old Cotton Belt the land- 

 lord, in many cases according to an observer, lives in "a 

 big comfortable farmhouse with a generous brick fire- 

 place at each end the traditional southern home with 

 its large cool rooms, deep verandahs, fine trees, sturdy 

 old scuppernong vines, and in the distance well-kept cot- 

 ton fields." 78 



The tenant usually lives in an "unpainted, clap-boarded 

 cottage of four small rooms" or less, "ceiled inside" pa- 

 pered with old newspapers, "often with no shade around 

 the house." The yard is "a hot, sandy, little plot of 

 ground" with a dug well, usually open and unprotected. 

 Often the house is unscreened and open to the flies, gnats, 

 and mosquitoes, 



A Negro renter lives in "one, two, or three rooms." 

 The cabin is "hot in the summer" and in the winter "al- 

 most impossible to heat." Daylight shows between the 

 cracks ; the cabin "leaks in stormy weather, and leaves 

 the floor damp for a day or two afterward." 



The demands of the Renters' Union of McClain 

 County, Oklahoma, 79 may be regarded as a kind of mini- 

 mum standard of health and decency set up by tenants in 

 the Western Cotton Belt. The specifications called upon 

 landlords to furnish tenants houses with not less than two 

 rooms and a lean-to. "The said two rooms shall not be 

 less than 14 feet square with a ceiling not less than 8% 

 feet high. The said room shall be plastered and have a 

 lumber floor." The building shall have at least six win- 



78 F. S. Bradley and M. A. Williamson, Rural Children in Se- 

 lected Counties of North Carolina, Children's Bureau Publication 

 33, p. 23. 



79 The Land Question in the Southwest, Report of Commission on 

 Industrial Relations, X, 9067. 



