COTTON 39 



A DIFFERENT TYPE OF NEGRO FARMER 



Such is our typical negro "light-hearted, good- 

 natured and aisily lynched," as Mr. Dooley says 

 typical, but not the only type. A by no means in- 

 considerable number of negroes are acquiring 

 property, building better houses, and adopting im- 

 proved methods of farming. Many negroes once 

 tenants have bought portions of the farms where 

 they formerly worked. For example, take Deal 

 Jackson, a Georgia negro cotton grower, who every 

 year for seven years past has beaten every one of the 

 110,906 white farmers of his State in getting the 

 first bale to market. Less than twenty years ago 

 Deal was a tenant. He borrowed $1,000 to buy a 

 run-down farm, mortgaging the place as security. 

 Then like that proverbially modest man who 

 wanted each year to buy just the land "j'inin' his," 

 so Deal continued to buy adjoining tracts until he 

 has 2,000 acres of fertile land, operating, with his 

 tenants, forty-five plows. 



WHEN LOW PRICES CRUSHED BOTH WHITES AND 



BLACKS 



Nor should we forget that it is not the negro 

 alone who has struggled year after year, Sisyphus- 

 like, with the burden of debt. Thousands of white 

 tenants, and of white farm owners as well, have 

 had the same experience. In fact, unless the farmer 

 carried some surplus savings into that long period 

 of low prices from 1891 to 1901, such an experience 

 was almost unavoidable. With any reasonably 

 high standard of living, cotton was then below the 

 cost of production. No wonder farm owners moved 



