HUMAN ELEMENTS IN COTTON 289 



to teach school. He had never gone beyond the fourth grade, 

 but he got the county school because he could work arith- 

 metic, and nobody better prepared applied for the $20 a 

 month job. From school-teaching he went to the little town 

 of Jonesville to keep books for Josh Henry, General Mer- 

 chant and Cotton Buyer, who owned a lot of farms and did 

 a furnishing business. 



Willey Dickson wanted to be a lawyer, but instead he went 

 to a Memphis, Tennessee, business college for three months 

 and got to be head bookkeeper at Henry's General Merchan- 

 dise. When he got a chance he set up in business for himself 

 and because he "knew niggers" he got a lot of furnishing 

 trade. He didn't want to buy cotton, but he did want land. 

 His first farm was a hill farm, his second was a river bottom 

 farm bought from a Swede who had immigrated after the 

 Civil War and, not liking cotton farming, had sold out to 

 go West. On this last farm he put a mortgage and three 

 Negro tenant families. The tenants later moved but the mort- 

 gage remained. In 1921 his General Merchandise failed be- 

 cause of bad cotton debts, but Dickson kept the farms. Since 

 that year the farm has several times failed to pay interest 

 and taxes. He has sold the tenants mules on credit, which 

 they have not yet been able to pay for, and each spring he 

 goes to the bank and borrows $500 at 10 per cent to furnish 

 them through the year. In 1926 he bought another farm, 

 mortgaged it, and is now furnishing three families. The 1927 

 flood would have ruined him had not the Red Cross taken 

 over the burden of looking after the tenants. As it was, they 

 made only a third of a crop. Dickson is a business man by 

 necessity and a landowner by choice. To walk over his rent- 

 ers' cotton fields on Sunday afternoon is his form of nature 

 worship. If a pretty farm were offered on the block tomorrow 

 he would buy it if he could. 



How one cotton planter was tempted to expand and 

 how his speculations failed because of poor seasons is told 



