THE COTTON CULTURE COMPLEX 301 



The fluctuations in price which render the cotton farm- 

 er's life uncertain have not served to check this devotion 

 to cotton. Periods of rising prices have led to plowing 

 up of food crops and chopping down of peach orchards 

 to make way for cotton. On the other hand, falling prices 

 may throw the growers deeper in debt to landlords and 

 supply merchants, and thus force them to renewed culti- 

 vation of the cash crop. This attitude, intangible like all 

 attitudes, is a very real thing, growing out of basic 

 economic and geographic factors, and limiting efforts to- 

 ward diversification and restriction of acreage. 



Closely connected with devotion to cotton, indeed a 

 part of it, is the speculative attitude engendered by the 

 fluctuations in the price of cotton. A prominent cotton 

 factor in the Eastern Belt writes : 



This attitude a matter of degree, a degree beyond the 

 legitimate risks of normal business spreads itself in a thor- 

 oughgoing way and permeates the economic life of the 

 South. Our most successful and so-called conservative busi- 

 ness men grow up with it and are often not aware of its 

 dangers until a crash comes. Meantime, in general, the cotton 

 producer, lien merchant, or dealer has no other outlook, and 

 has learned to live from year to year on the fortunes of 

 risks over which he has absolutely no control, and upon the 

 hazards of which he will stake his all. And when he happens 

 to combine some other line of business with cotton, the risks 

 he exposes himself to are in proportion. 



Two cases, typical of many unwritten southern tragedies, 

 will serve to show how the speculative element in culture 

 goes over into individual attitudes. In the first instance 

 the cycle of cotton prices over a generation left an atti- 

 tude of speculation and expectancy that the reverses of 

 a lifetime could not dim: 



