266 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE 



Added to these, of course, must be some small allowance 

 for vegetable gardens, corn and potatoes, and an occasional 

 hog and chicken that has been raised on the place. Such 

 things are generally discouraged by landlords, since they are 

 not directly productive of returns to him. Ordinarily the 

 tenant lives out of a store for ten months in the year. He 

 pays in the fall. 



There are seven children living and three have died. They 

 all work in the field and none of them have ever been to 

 school a day. Although underweight and undernourished they 

 appear intelligent and reasonably healthy. 



A case from the Texas cotton area shows large acreage 

 planted, greater production, a smaller amount of the 

 family living secured from the farm, and equal difficulty 

 in buying land: 



L. T. Steward, 9 a tenant farmer of Savoy, Texas, described 

 before the Federal Commission of Inquiry into Industrial 

 Relations, at Dallas, Texas, his efforts for twenty years to 

 buy a farm. He began in Faulkner County, Arkansas, and 

 finally came to Texas. After his first year's farming he sold 

 his mule to "get square of debt." Next year he borrowed 

 a mule and "came out $15 to the good." Then he bought a 

 small farm on six years' tune, but was forced to give it up 

 for lack of $40 to meet payments at the end of the first year. 

 After several years he got $200 ahead and bought an 85 

 acre farm in Arkansas. He did well but two children died 

 and their doctor's bill cut into his savings so that he gave 

 up the farm unable to meet the interest. He did not live 

 more than two years on the same farm after he married. 

 Some of the years he worked land controlled by relatives. 



9 Summarized from his testimony, in The Land Question in the 

 Southwest, Report of Commission on Industrial Relations, IX, 

 9006-44. 



