CHAPTER X 



THE COTTON CULTURE COMPLEX 



THERE EXISTS a kind of natural harmony about the cot- 

 ton system. Its parts fit together so perfectly as to sug- 

 gest the fatalism of design. Nature's harmony of the 

 soil, the rainfall, the frostless season, the beaming sun, 

 and a transplanted tropic plant fit well with a trans- 

 planted tropic race, landless white farmers, and the slow 

 but all surviving mule to supply the world's steady de- 

 mand for a cheap fabric. The spinner, the cotton buyer, 

 the landlord, the supply merchant, and the cotton farmer 

 form an economic harmony that often benefits all except 

 the producer, a complex whole that is so closely intercon- 

 nected that no one can suggest any place at which it may 

 be attacked except the grower; and the grower is to 

 change the system himself, cold comfort for advice. The 

 most heroic measures suggested to the man most bound 

 to the system. A resolution of a recent cotton conference, 

 for instance, reads: 



That the delegates attending this Southwide Cotton Con- 

 ference held at New Orleans, Jan. 11-12, 1928, after due 

 and careful deliberation, hereby declare their determination 

 to no longer submit to an unfair yoke of bondage, and voice 

 an emphatic appeal for freedom from oppression of those 

 interests which have so long controlled the marketing and 

 pricing of the South's great staple crop, burdening the grow- 

 ers with financial depression and unbearable suffering. 1 



1 Report of Proceedings, pp. 41-42. 



