310 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE 



both biological and cultural factors are involved in the 

 plight of the lower strata of cotton farmers. Except for 

 those of a physical nature the biological traits of social 

 import are difficult of appraisal. Until adequate meas- 

 urements have been worked out for distinguishing and 

 estimating inherent characteristics and until more exten- 

 sive investigations are conducted, it is difficult to give 

 factors of heredity their due. For instance, many of the 

 traits making up the cotton culture complex may be re- 

 garded in the individual as either inherent deficiencies in 

 character, energy, or intelligence, or as socially condi- 

 tioned habits. In general the view of inherent individual 

 differences in intelligence has come to be accepted in 

 psychology. It is thus possible to hold that all present 

 inefficient cotton farmers were born with inadequate 

 hereditary equipment. 



An acceptance of both the factors of inherent indi- 

 vidual differences and their modification by culture is 

 possible and desirable. One may rightly speak of the bio- 

 logical effect of the cotton farmer's environment. Nowhere 

 in the literature is one likely to find a more eloquent pres- 

 entation of the inefficient cotton grower of the South as a 

 product of the interaction of heredity and environment 

 than Dr. W. S. Rankin's 17 comment on the tenant, John 

 Smith: 



Heredity started him out in life; bequeathed him his one 

 talent; equipped him with the sort of brain and brawn that 

 he was to use in endeavoring to ... exercise dominion over 

 his natural environment. 



But circumstance, environment, reaches back to where 



17 Formerly Secretary of the North Carolina State Board of 

 Health, present head of the Duke Hospitalization Endowment. See 

 Uplift, Oct. 22, 1921. 



