296 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE 



Many of the efforts of cotton growers can, from the na- 

 ture of affairs, reach no higher than rhetoric. 



In a very true sense the adjustment that exists to cot- 

 ton cultivation will be found in the attitudes of the human 

 factors. Accordingly, this chapter deals with traits and 

 attitudes in southern agricultural life growing out of 

 cotton farming. The place of the one-horse cotton farm- 

 ers in southern life and the effect of cotton culture on 

 survival are considered as elements of the cotton culture 

 complex. The substance of this chapter is to be regarded 

 as conclusions and inferences drawn from the whole study. 

 Cases are offered as examples of how these attitudes 

 operate in cotton growing. It has been suggested that 

 the Cotton Belt may be regarded as a cultural area, 2 and 

 the cultivation of the cotton plant regarded as a trait 

 of material culture growing out of what Sumner and 

 Keller call the man-land ratio, society's adjustment to 

 its environment. There are many processes which bear a 

 functional relation to any one element of material culture, 

 and these processes are to be regarded as organized into 

 sets of attitudes and modes of social behavior. In this 

 sense we may say that attitudes surrounding cotton grow- 

 ing, rising from geographic and economic factors form 

 a cotton culture complex. Although it will be seen that 

 in the last analysis the attitudes in the cotton culture 

 complex are to be regarded as adjustments to geographic 

 and economic factors, it cannot be successfully main- 

 tained that they are all rational adjustments. Received 



2 This attitude may be met with commonly enough in popular 

 writing. "In the Belt Black, Cotton, or Bible, as you prefer," 

 writes a flippant journalist, "cotton is Religion, Politics, Law, Eco- 

 nomics, and Art." See Clark Wissler, "The Culture Area Concept as 

 a Research Lead," American Journal of Sociology, XXXII (May, 

 1927), 881-91. 



