HUMAN ELEMENTS IN COTTON 285 



raised and ginned approximately 1500 bales of cotton. Inci- 

 dentally, he owns approximately 2,000 acres of land in an 

 adjoining county, and our information is that on this 2,000 

 acres he only owes approximately $3,000. 28 



7. Near my old home a farm was purchased some ten or 

 twelve years ago by R. C. Small, who was at that time super- 

 intendent of the McCormick plant of the International Har- 

 vester Company. It was about as poor a farm as could be 

 found in the county. It was lacerated from erosion. The first 

 year he plowed the land and sowed it to oats, he hardly ob- 

 tained more than five bushels per acre. He followed that with 

 peas, which were turned under. Last year he gathered some- 

 thing like 80 bushels of oats per acre. The land planted to 

 corn must have yielded 75 bushels per acre. It was not neces- 

 sary for him to buy any commercial fertilizer. It was all 

 grown right there on the ground. No more fertile farm can 

 now be found anywhere in the county. He put on some dairy 

 cattle, and is selling about $200 worth of dairy products per 

 month. His farm is handled largely with a Farm-All Tractor. 

 The Farm-All Tractor now will afford opportunities for the 

 cultivation of considerably more land than has ever been 

 cultivated heretofore with the same amount of labor, and the 

 farms above mentioned could be easily doubled by the use of 

 a Farm-All Tractor, though the Farm-All Tractor would be 

 justified if only 20 acres were under intensive cultivation, and 

 the other 60 put to other crops, oats and cover crops. 29 



An unusual cotton farmer was Sam McCall, age 75, an 

 ex-slave of Alabama. He afforded a significant contrast 

 to John Blake (see page 258). His method of diver- 

 sification and rotation was made the subject of a bul- 

 letin 30 by the United States Department of Agriculture : 



28 Letter from an Alabama banker. 



29 Letter from executive of a lumber company, Miss. 



80 M. A. Crosby, An Example of Intensive Farming in the Cot- 

 ton Belt, Farmers' Bulletin 519, 1913; Smith, North America, p. 260. 



