270 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE 



ate three meals a day. Breakfast usually was eaten at 4 

 o'clock in the morning. With the aid of a sewing machine, 

 which was taken from her last January, she earned as much 

 as $2 a day some days by sewing for neighbors. She had to 

 work late into the night to do this. She has not worn a ready- 

 made garment nor read many newspapers since marrying. 

 Sometimes she read serial stories in magazines. She has 

 owned three hats during the last 25 years. Sometimes she 

 "got to town" only once in two years. To make the best of 

 her condition and not worry about anything, she said, is her 

 motto. 



The restricted standard of living of the cotton tenant 

 may find expression in times of rising cotton prices in 

 unwise expenditures. Pent up desires, reenforced by a 

 belief that the next cotton crop will bring as much as 

 the last, lead to the purchase of luxuries that are ill- 

 afforded. In the case quoted the farmer suffered the 

 tenant's greatest tragedy the loss of his work stock. 

 It is worthy of note that one of the commonly accepted 

 attitudes in the South is to lay the ills of the cotton 

 farmer to the purchases of automobiles in times of 

 prosperity : 



A very unpleasant duty of an Iredell county deputy 

 sheriff was performed last Friday, when James F. Aldmon 

 received seizure papers from Cabarrus county in which a 

 former citizen of Cabarrus county had mortgaged two mules 

 and two cows on security for a secondhand automobile to 

 a Concord dealer. The tenant was coming in from the field 

 with his mules at the noon hour and when they were divested 

 of their gears, the officer laid claim. One of the mortgaged 

 cows had died since the papers were given in exchange for 

 the machine. The tenant was left stranded as to mules for 

 the working of his crops and the cow which furnished milk 



