An Interesting Study in Agricultural 

 Fields 



*ff T had been a busy morning in Clayton. It might well be 

 " that, for it was a day in the heart of the cotton gathering 

 and cotton selling season. For two weeks no rain had fallen, 

 and the sun had beaten fiercely down upon cotton farm and 

 cotton plantation. 



In the dry heat, in the white sunshine of an ideal September, 

 day the cotton bolls had burst open, each with its own fleecy 

 cloud of white had burst open so rapidly that the farmer might 

 not gather it all, nor find sufficient cotton pickers to keep pace 

 with the rapid volunteer work of the September sun. Every gin 

 house was an ant hill of industry ; each and every one was 

 surrounded by wagons with double-decked bodies packed to 

 the top with gathered seed cotton, and the loaded cotton was 

 ornamented, more or less so, with a negro sprawled peacefully 

 sleeping in the sun and contentedly waiting his proper place 

 at the gin under the time-honored policy of "first come, first 

 served." 



Cotton caravansaries were climbing the red hills that lead 

 to the town of Clayton, the center and capital of Barbour 

 County. Cotton wagons were standing in the old square, or 

 pulled up against the sidewalk and cotton buyers, knife in hand, 

 were busy as bees in a fresh flower yard. It was a busy day 

 ir Clayton. 



This trip through Barbour County was to find out how 

 strong, how persuasive an invitation the County of Barbour 

 could offer to white immigrants. It is, from the nature of 

 things as they now exist in the county, a most propitious time 

 for the inviting and for the coming of white immigrants for 

 the farms. 



A line cut through the county from east to west, and very 

 near t<he towns of Eufaula and Clayton, would separate the 

 vvhite belt of Barbour, on the south, from the section on the 

 north where in the past the negro predominated, but from 

 which he has been rapidly moving in later years. It is the 



