298 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE 



lacks gluten, it does not form a dough. A dietary survey 

 conducted during the war found that the maize kernel 

 constituted 23 per cent of the total food intake of Ten- 

 nessee and Georgia mountaineers, 32.5 per cent of that 

 of southern Negroes, but only 1.6 per cent of the diet of 

 72 northern families in comfortable circumstances. 5 Hogs 

 thrive on corn and, since they complete their growth in 

 one season, may be regarded as comparatively efficient 

 producers of strong meat. In fact H. P. Armsby has esti- 

 mated that about 24 per cent of the energy of grain is 

 recovered for human consumption in pork as compared 

 with about 18 per cent in milk and 3.5 per cent in beef 

 and mutton. 6 First are eaten the glandular organs, re- 

 garded by McCollum as protective foods because of their 

 vitamins and animo acids. The pork of higher protein 

 content, the muscle meats such as hams and shoulders, is 

 eaten next. The cheaper cuts of fat pork, salt cured, be- 

 come the year-round staple of diet. Sorghum and sugar 

 cane are eminently suited to the southern climate and 

 produce, without demanding too much labor, a food of 

 high sugar content. 



Thus it comes about that the Negro cropper, the white 

 tenant, and the small cotton farmer live upon a basic diet 

 of salt fat pork, corn bread, and molasses. This forms 

 the "three M diet," meat, meal, and molasses, noted by 

 Dr. Joseph Goldberger of the United States Health 

 Service as pellagra producing. When cotton farmers pur- 

 chase food, these are the articles of diet they purchase; 

 first, because all three are cheap, and second, because 

 food likes and dislikes come to be matters of habit im- 



5 Food and the War, U. S. Food Administration, cited in E. V. 

 McCollum, The Newer Knowledge of Nutrition, p. 128. 

 8 "Roast Pig," Science, XLVI (1917), 160. 



