86 COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE 



depletion of the virgin fertility, the saddest 

 results have followed. The former owners have 

 often lost the land and a system of tenantry 

 farming has gradually developed. This is marked 

 in all regions that are dominated by a one-crop 

 system of agriculture. In parts of the Southern 

 states this loss of available fertility is specially 

 noticeable, particularly where cotton is the main 

 if not the only crop. In some parts of the country 

 this condition and the social results are pathetic, 

 and particularly where the farmers, whether 

 white or black, by reason of poverty and lack of 

 credit and want of experience in other kinds of 

 farming, are compelled to continue to grow cot- 

 ton. Large numbers of Southern farmers are 

 still obliged to mortgage their unplanted crop to 

 secure the means of living while it is growing; 

 and, as a matter of course, they pay exorbitant 

 prices for the barest necessities of life. The only 

 security that the man can give, either to the 

 banker or the merchant, is cotton, and this 

 forces the continued cultivation of a crop that 

 decreases the soil fertility in a country of open 

 winters where the waste by erosion is necessarily 

 at the maximum. The tenants have little interest 



