174 Negro Migration 



worked on by the Office of Farm Management are vitally 

 concerned with the Negro, there is nowhere, in the vast or- 

 ganization of the Department of Agriculture, in Washington, 

 a colored specialist who can concentrate on the problems of 

 the 3,000,000 Negro farmers. 



In their chief need — that of so organizing agriculture that 

 better wages can be paid and a profit still realized — com- 

 munities are directly aided by the campaign of the States 

 Relation Service of the Department of Agriculture, and its 

 corps of farm demonstration agents in the field. Any pro- 

 grams for rural improvement can be greatly aided by this 

 force of earnest, technically trained, local agricultural lead- 

 ers and the work they are doing to promote farming effi- 

 ciency is of sterling character. The number of Negro 

 farm demonstrators should be increased. There is, however, 

 another phase of rural life to which as yet comparatively 

 little attention has been paid. This is the field of contacts, 

 other than the mere wage or rental relationship, between 

 landlord and tenant. The need in this field is for demo- 

 cratizing the plantation as some industries have been demo- 

 cratized. Almost all close observers of the movement from 

 rural districts testify to the ability of certain planters to hold 

 their labor supply even in the midst of a much disturbed 

 area. In a majority of instances these planters owe their 

 success not only to satisfactory wages, but also to attention 

 to items of tenant welfare. Housing, stimulation of fruit 

 raising, gardening and animal husbandry, interest and advice 

 in local leadership and family affairs, and aid for local 

 churches and schools are among the methods used by land- 

 lords to make their laborers and tenants feel that the rela- 

 tionship is one more vital than a matter of dollars and cents. 

 Above all these planters emphasize an attitude of even- 

 handed justice in contracts and accounts rather than the 

 paternalistic attitude of the past.' They have realized they 

 are paying earned wages not giving gratuities. 



The plantation and the community of small independent 



