312 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE 



1866. There has never been and is not now in the state of 

 Arkansas a public free school system in which the white 

 children, much less the Negroes, could be given any part of 

 such training as would make them efficient in farming or 

 anything else. . . . All of those inefficient, lazy farmers at 

 whom the fulmination is aimed were either raised in Arkansas 

 or some other southern state. . . . 



The South to its everlasting shame, for more than sixty 

 years has neglected the education and training of her white 

 children except in certain favored localities, and has occupied 

 its time and energies in building and developing urban life. 

 Now, through some of her educators . . . she desires to dis- 

 own and kick out her progeny. 18 



We have spoken of the dominating presence of na- 

 tional urban culture. It is possible that with respect to 

 the lower strata of cotton producers the statement must 

 be qualified. When an economist says that the most 

 pathetic position in modern American economic life is 

 that held by 40 per cent of the South's cotton farmers, 

 the statement has implications both social and economic. 

 There exists a group which is comparatively excluded 

 from culture. Walter Hines Page's phrasing of the "for- 

 gotten man" senses the fact. Booker T. Washington's 

 formula, one as the hand but separate as the fingers, was 

 an attempt to resolve the dilemma for his own racial 

 group. 



It is known there has grown up a strongly marked 

 division between classes in the agricultural South. C. E. 

 Gibbons speaks of "two well defined groups of people 

 the banker-merchant-landlord class and the tenant-small 

 landowner class. The former class has largely made its 

 money from the latter class." 9 "In such areas," writes 



18 Dallas News, Feb. 17, 1928. 19 Op. cit., p. 52. 



