THE COTTON CULTURE COMPLEX 299 



posed by culture. Exclusive reliance on this diet impairs 

 health and economic efficiency and thus may serve to ce- 

 ment the cotton farmer closer to his basic diet. 



The southern rural attitudes toward the field labor 

 of women and children to a great extent grow out of the 

 seasonal demands of cotton. The unmechanized processes 

 of chopping and picking call for a large amount of un- 

 skilled manual labor. The time element also enters. "The 

 limiting factor is the amount of cotton the average farm 

 family can pick before the cotton begins to deteriorate." 

 One small mule can easily till more cotton than the aver- 

 age farmer can chop and pick. It is true, then, that the 

 most successful cotton farmer is the one who can com- 

 mand a large amount of human labor within his own 

 household. "It has been said with some degree of truth," 

 writes Alexander E. Cance, "that successful farming 

 rests on the unpaid labor of women and children." 8 Large 

 families are an economic asset. A young cotton tenant 

 wrote : 



A young married man single-handed can hardly rent land 

 to farm on, as the landowner wants a man with a large fam- 

 ily, children large enough to work so he can realize on their 

 labor. . . . What must the young people among the renters 

 do? They are practically denied the land to farm on until 

 they rear enough children to gather a good-sized cotton 

 crop; that is what the landowners want. 9 



Children thus may be said to cost the cotton farmer less 

 and pay him more. Forced by the demands of the plant 



7 Spillman, in Sanderson, op. cit., p. 194. 



8 In Sanderson, op. cit., p. 77. 



9 See The Land Question in the Southwest, Report of Commis- 

 sion on Industrial Relations, X, 9262. 



