THE MAINTENANCE OF FERTILITY 101 



period, swarms into the districts devoted to specialized crops, as grapes, ber- 

 ries and hops, is marked." Single cropping is destructive to home life 

 wherever it is practiced. 



In the cotton growing sections, the negro tenants, who grow no other 

 crop, are idle during the winter; as it takes about all their share of the crop 

 to pay the merchant who carried them during the summer, they are in a 

 measure forced to live upon the country, and the whole system is an encour- 

 agement to vice. If the tenants were compelled to farm in a systematic man- 

 ner it would tend towards the building up of the land and the increased pros- 

 perity of the tenant. There is no hope for the permanent improvement of 

 the Southern cotton lands so long as the "cropping" system prevails. 



