THE COTTON CULTUEE COMPLEX 309 



When traits such as we have described are confronted 

 in the behavior and attitudes of individuals, these traits 

 are described in terms of personality and character de- 

 fects. Two investigators close a survey of a Texas cotton 

 growing county with the comment: 



In the editor's judgment there is one important shortcom- 

 ing in the work, ... an omission to touch with due balance 

 upon the character of Texas tenant farmers as a cause of 

 their own troubles. The troubles are shown, and they are 

 shown as the troubles of the tenants. . . . Always shifting, 

 often shiftless, sometimes unruly, the average tenant is to 

 be regarded with pity mixed with sympathy for the one who 

 as a business man has to deal with him. 16 



President Andrew M. Soule of Georgia State Agricul- 

 tural College and L. E. Rast, agriculturist of the 

 Arkansas Bankers' Association, have said that the inef- 

 ficient, lazy farmer is one of the greatest evils with which 

 the real farmers of the South have to contend. In a state- 

 ment issued to the press, Dean D. T. Gray, University 

 of Arkansas, College of Agriculture, said: "We want the 

 inefficient farmers to leave and the sooner the better. 

 What we are worried about is what will become of this 

 type when he moves to the city." 



Heretofore we have proceeded more or less on the as- 

 sumption that the problem of the growers of cotton is a 

 matter of geographic and economic factors. A view com- 

 monly held is that as regards the cotton renter: "in its 

 chief essence the problem is sociological rather than 

 economic." The statement may be taken to mean that 



15 L. H. Haney and G. S. Wehrwein, Social and Economic Survey 

 of South Travis County, pp. 1 ff. 

 ! Dallas News, Feb. 17, 1928. 



