40 
COTTON 
to towns and mortgages became almost as common 
as they were in the West in the days of low-priced 
corn. Ten-cent cotton then seemed an iridescent 
dream, and men talked of it as the feature of some 
Golden Age gone never to return. 
CHANGES RESULTING FROM HIGH-PRICED COTTON 
Of course, with the coming of higher prices for 
cotton, important changes are taking place. The 
mortgage and the crop lien, with all except the 
hopelessly shiftless class, are disappearing like snow 
before a summer sun — unless we except the mort- 
gage given by the aspiring tenant in his ambition 
to become a land-owner himself. 
As to the future, one must not predict too lightly, 
for it is easy to see that the present high price of 
cotton will make itself felt not in one direction only, 
but in counter currents. 
As one result, more tenants wish to buy lands 
for themselves ; as another result, land is increasing 
in value so that it requires greater savings to buy 
it. On the whole, however, it is now relatively easier 
to become one's own landlord, and with high prices 
the tenant class is likely to decrease. 
As one result, too, more people are attracted by 
the old plantation system; as another result, labor- 
ers find it so profitable to work for themselves that 
labor is much more expensive than it used to be. 
But as the negro works better in groups, the large 
plantation has at least this advantage in its struggle 
to reassert itself. 
With high prices then, the one sure thing — 
whether the proportion of tenants increase or de- 
crease, whether the plantation system decline or 
