49 COTTON 



which the slave system provided would be unprofitable, 

 if not impossible. Of all the evils which the defenders 

 of the South prophesied from the freeing of the slaves 

 probably none has been so strikingly fulfilled as this. 

 Negro labour under conditions of freedom has certainly 

 not increased in efficiency; but its cost has gone up to a 

 degree which even the gloomiest prophets could hardly 

 have anticipated. A few figures will bring out the 

 startling rise in the labour cost of the crop. The exact 

 rates, of course, vary a good deal in different districts, 

 but the following were obtained from an absolutely 

 reliable source in Texas; and although the labour diffi- 

 culty there is notoriously more acute than in the older 

 parts of the Belt, the difference is only one of degree 

 and is probably not sufficient to invalidate the argument. 

 In any case, Texas already provides nearly one-third of 

 the total American crop. 



Most of the work of the cotton crop is done by day 

 wages or piecework rates; but where men are employed 

 as permanent hands the wage was stated at about $20 

 per month, or an average of $i per working day, for 

 they take Saturday off as well as Sunday. Day wages 

 are anything from $i a day upwards, but in the picking 

 season the work is done on piece rates. These range in 

 Texas from 60 cents per 100 Ib. of seed-cotton at the 

 beginning of the season, when there is plenty of cotton 

 on the plants and picking is easy, up to $i per 100 Ib. 

 at the end of the season, when the cotton is scarce and 

 more difficult to pick. A good picker can-do 300 to 400 Ib. 

 per day; 800 Ib. in a day is recorded at a competition, 

 but that was with assistance to carry away and weigh the 

 cotton. Even at these prices labour is not easily obtained. 

 In 1913 there was a special scarcity of labour in Texas 

 owing to the Mexican War, which prevented the usual 

 supply of transitory labour from across the border, with 

 the result that in the first week of the picking season 

 the pickers struck for 70 cents, and had to get it. In 

 ordinary seasons the average cost of picking throughout 

 the season is said to be about 85 cents. As the out-turn 

 of lint from seed-cotton is about one-third, this means 

 that the actual cost of picking the cotton alone is about 

 2\ cents per Ib. of lint. Considering that the average 



