HUMAN ELEMENTS IN COTTON 293 



was a very old man, probably around seventy. He told me 

 he never made any change in his farming methods after the 

 boll weevil came except that he had so much difficulty get- 

 ting labor that he had to let some of his farms "lay out." 

 He actually reduced the amount of fertilizer he used because 

 he could not get credit. He raised some corn and hay but 

 usually had to buy a little feed each year. His yields ran 

 down as low as one-tenth bale per acre and never higher 

 than one-fifth bale, although he had better cotton land than 

 any of the others. At the time I knew him he had gotten his 

 farms badly infested with Johnson grass from using com- 

 mercial hay, and he had the most shiftless Negro tenants in 

 the country. 



James Thomas is a most unusual man. He is generally 

 considered very lucky. Everything he touches turns to gold, 

 and many of his friends attribute it to James Thomas' luck. 

 As a matter of fact he is an excellent business man, with a 

 most pronounced talent to handle labor. He was operating in 

 1919 ten mules. In 1926 he was operating sixty. He does not 

 use riding cultivators for the simple reason that he never has 

 any trouble not only in getting all the tenants he wants but 

 in getting the most industrious Negroes in the country. He 

 studies his tenants. Some of them he allows to plant as much 

 as twenty-two acres of cotton to the plow and some only 

 ten acres. The Negreos have learned that if they can man- 

 age to get on one of Mr. Thomas' farms they will have plenty 

 of money in the fall; and in a section where there is not 

 sufficient farm labor to tend more than three-fourths of the 

 land which has been cultivated, he often has five or six ap- 

 plications from tenants for each farm. Mr. Thomas has a 

 most perfect control over his labor and they work under his 

 close supervision. He is using heavy applications of high 

 grade fertilizer; is spacing the cotton thick and never plants 

 any but his best cotton lands to cotton. He is able to get his 

 tenants to pick up and destroy the squares which fall after 

 the weevil has punctured them. He is also able to get surplus 



