HUMAN ELEMENTS IN COTTON 287 



612 plants. Sam McCall, a naive Negro farmer, had become 

 something of a creative artist working with the soil. 



For the last 15 years of his farming he received an annual 

 money income of from $200 to $350 from two acres, more 

 than his tenant neighbors who cultivated 20 acres. With his 

 living from the farm, he had, J. Russell Smith suggests, a 

 better income than the average farm hand or city worker of 

 the same territory and time, and his work left him in better 

 condition and with more leisure time than the average fac- 

 tory worker. 



The effect of the boll weevil invasion on the effort of 

 a southern farmer to pay for his land is recounted in a 

 case from South Carolina: 



Herbert Rawlings, my father, bought a forty-two acre 

 farm in southern South Carolina for $5,000, paying $2,000 

 in cash with the balance in yearly payments. Of the six chil- 

 dren the four eldest boys were able to work on the farm. 

 The family improved the place the first year, raised some 

 hogs, kept a cow, and grew food and feedstuff. But we de- 

 pended on cotton to pay for the farm. That year we made 

 a big cotton crop, but a storm came and blew bales of cotton 

 out of the bolls on the ground. Cotton brought a low price 

 that year, and we did not make very much more than living 

 expenses. 



The next year we planted about twelve acres of cotton. 

 That year the boll weevil hit South Carolina. We found the 

 cotton squares turning yellow and falling to the ground in 

 great numbers. We picked up squares and burned them, we 

 poisoned the cotton; but our cotton squares continued to fall. 

 That year we made almost no cotton and had no other money 

 crop. It was impossible to make a payment on the farm. 



The next year we again planted cotton. What else could 

 we plant? We also planted some truck but there was no aid 

 in marketing it, and so we lost on the produce. We put kero- 



