300 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE 



and his economic needs, the one-horse cotton farmer ac- 

 cepts the field work of his women-folks and children as 

 a matter of course. This attitude on the part of rural 

 families is carried into cotton mill villages. It is every- 

 where met in attempts to enforce compulsory school at- 

 tendance. 



That exclusive devotion to cotton is an attitude to be 

 reckoned with is recognized by all agricultural extension 

 agencies operating in the South. As a section the South 

 has vacillated between sober realization of the plight of 

 her cotton farmers and pride in the magnitude of her out- 

 put of the fleecy staple. Cotton cultivation has become a 

 social habit that can hardly be broken. An observer 

 writes of the immigrant farmers in southern Oklahoma, 

 "They have never cultivated anything but cotton, and do 

 not want to raise anything else." 10 When forced by price 

 failures to the cultivation of other crops, the cotton 

 farmer is prone to return at his first opportunity to cot- 

 ton. Bradford Knapp has recounted an interview with an 

 East Texas farmer: 



"I see you have a splendid field of oats," said Mr. Knapp. 

 "Ever plant any before?" 



"No. Wouldn't have planted an acre of them this time if 

 it wasn't for this European War," replied the farmer. 



"You'll get a good price for them and you won't have to 

 buy any winter feed, will you?" 



"No. But say, have you seen what cotton's doing? Nearly 

 nine cents this morning. And I tell you if she holds at that 

 figure very long I'm going to plow up every foot of that oat 

 field and plant it to cotton." n 



10 Gibbons, op. cit., p. 39. 



11 George McCutcheon, The Case for Cotton, University of South 

 Carolina Bulletin, 1915, pp. 1 ff. 



