COTTON 
89 
A DIFFERENT TYPE OF NEGRO FARM EE 
Such is our typical negro — "light-hearted, good- 
natured and aisily lynched," as Mr. Dooley says — 
typical, but not the only type. A by no means in- 
considerable number of negroes are acquiring 
property, building better houses, and adopting im- 
proved methods of farming. Many negroes once 
tenants have bought portions of the farms where 
they formerly worked. For example, take Deal 
Jackson, a Georgia negro cotton grower, who every 
year for seven years past has beaten every one of the 
110,906 white farmers of his State in getting the 
first bale to market. Less than twenty years ago 
Deal was a tenant. He borrowed $1,000 to buy a 
run-down farm, mortgaging the place as security. 
Then like that proverbially modest man who 
wanted each year to buy just the land "j'inin' his," 
so Deal continued to buy adjoining tracts until he 
has 2,000 acres of fertile land, operating, with his 
tenants, forty-five plows. 
WHEN LOW PRICES CRUSHED BOTH WHITES AND 
BLACKS 
Nor should we forget that it is not the negro 
alone who has struggled year after year, Sisyphus- 
like, with the burden of debt. Thousands of white 
tenants, and of white farm owners as well, have 
had the same experience. In fact, unless the farmer 
carried some surplus savings into that long period 
of low prices from 1891 to 1901, such an experience 
was almost unavoidable. With any reasonably 
high standard of living, cotton was then below the 
cost of production. No wonder farm owners moved 
