318 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE 



country who wish to establish a system of commercial 

 farming." Among those economic historians who favor 

 large scale plantation agriculture because its system of 

 supervision increases efficiency of production are R. P. 

 Brooks and E. M. Banks. 25 Their economic fallacy, in the 

 writer's view, is that the plantation is fitted only to the 

 production of cotton, and that efficient cotton production, 

 by increasing the supply breaks the market and ruins the 

 plantation. The sociological objection is that for farming 

 to survive in America it must be a satisfying way of life 

 as well as an economic adjustment. Thus it is highly pos- 

 sible that a somewhat inefficient diversified farmer, living 

 under his own vine and fig tree, might make a better 

 member of agricultural society than a highly efficient cog 

 in a corporation plantation. The efficiency of the planta- 

 tion offers but little protection against the cycles of cot- 

 ton prices. 



The future of the small cotton farmer is precarious at 

 best. It may be said to hang by two threads : extension of 

 cotton culture in the Western Belt and the possible inven- 

 tion of a mechanical picker. Professor R. H. Montgomery 

 of the University of Texas predicts the virtual break- 

 down of cotton cultivation in the old Cotton Belt. 



West Texas and Oklahoma with their millions of acres of 

 virgin soil and their large scale methods of cultivation can 

 produce cotton so cheaply that the older states cannot com- 

 pete with them. All that is needed to put an end to "ten acres, 

 a nigger, and a mule" in the Old South is a mechanical cot- 

 ton picker. When it is perfected and it will be within two 

 or three years unless all information about present experi- 

 ments by the International Harvester Company and other 



25 See Banks, Economics of Land Tenure in Georgia. 



