The merchant and the planter must also be financed. The southern planter once received advances from his factor. It is safe to say that most plantation owners pre paring to plant a crop now go to see their bankers. After a conference covering details of amount of acreage, number of plows, costs, and production, the planter is given a line of credit secured by personal note. The loans are to be issued according to seasonal needs ; so much for furnishing, planting, chopping, and picking. The supply stores are granted credit by wholesale houses. This, how ever, is considered precarious business since the failures of 1914, 1921, and 1926. Accordingly, many supply mer chants now borrow from banks to pay off their thirty day bills with the wholesaler.
To the landlord and tenant, the large planter and small farmer the question of credit is preliminary. After sup plies, work stock, tools, land, and men have been brought together, they await the turn of the season. "Christmas" lasts a long time. From the close of cotton picking to the beginning of cotton planting includes a vacation of two to three months. The man who grows cotton and corn finds little to occupy his time except chores and attention to the stock. Except for vegetables in the extreme South, no crops are grown to use the farmer's labor during this period. The family is likely to consider itself lucky if the men-folks during these winter months are able to secure employment on road work or levee repairing. For the delta plantation owner it is a period of suspense and un easiness only to be relieved when the Negroes go to work. The black boys drive about the country roads at a great rate in their second-hand cars, go possum and rabbit hunting, sometimes drink too much, and once in a while get into serious cutting affrays. The orthodox southern planter is likely to feel that his tenants are wasting their substance in riotous living. He is torn between the feeling that some of them ought to be in jail for tearing around the country so, and the devout hope that none of them will get into trouble with the officers. He may make no effort to put a stop to their hilarities, but he heaves a sigh of relief when the routine begins.
Professor R. P. Brooks, writing from first-hand ob servation of plantations in the Black Belt of Georgia, is rather severe: Tenants usually spend all of the proceeds of the year's work before Christmas and return to the landlord for small sums to tide them over the holiday season. The writer can not recall an instance of a planter who had not found it necessary to make such advances. . . . As a general thing the [tenant's] surplus melts away without substantial return. Whiskey, gambling, indulgence in sexual pleasures, purchase of useless articles of luxury, and excursions to distant towns, absorb their profits. . . . Christmas money is commonly ad vanced on the agreement of the tenant to renew his contract for another year. It is said that the landlord who would refuse to make these advances would very likely be unable to secure tenants.' It is doubtful if the white tenants enjoy the vacation so much. Hunting, driving, loafing about the small town stores are regular pastimes with them. But puritan strains have rendered their pleasures less simple and di rect than those of the Negroes. In many places the merry square dances once prevailed. The rural preachers have ruled dancing out. The southern cotton farmer does not
know how to play. His recreations are little mixed with the strains of culture, and he is likely to grasp pleasure with a crude and brutal hand. Before prohibition the orthodox dreaded Christmas in the little inland towns of Arkansas, Mississippi, and Georgia. Drinking sprees and shooting affrays were common during the winter months. With the passing of time, manners and customs have softened somewhat, but the rural distiller and bootlegger plies a brisk if less obvious trade. "If cotton prices are low," the saying goes, "there will be a quiet Christmas this year." The fields are left barren from the last year's harvest with black and withered cotton stalks straggling down the old rows. The farmer's first task is to cut or break the old stalks. He may clear the land in January or Febru ary unless he has burned the stalks just after harvest in an attempt to prevent the hibernation of the weevil. At the same period the corn stalks if left in the field can be cut. The disposal of the old stalk is often left until plant ing time. The farmer is able at the usual rate to clear about seven and a half acres a day. The stalks may be turned under. It is becoming more the practice, espe cially in the Western Belt, for the farmer to plow up the stalks, rake them up with a hay rake, and burn Cotton planting begins about the middle of March in southern Texas and moves upward through the belt to reach North Carolina and the northern margin about April 21. By the first of April, cultivation is under way in the Black Waxy Prairie of Texas and in central belts of Louisiana, Alabama, and Georgia.' In order come the processes of plowing, bedding, har rowing, and planting the fields. The following descrip tion refers to the cultural practices in the Eastern Belt: A one-horse plow is run along the side of the old row and the dirt is thrown toward the middle by running one or two furrows on each side of the row. This leaves the old cotton stubs standing on a balk or small ridge, which is broken out with a one-horse shovel plow, leaving a furrow in which the fertilizer is distributed with a one-horse fer tilizer distributor. The land is bedded back on the fertilizer with a plow taking from two to four trips per row. This leaves another "balk" between the two old rows, which may be left until the cotton is cultivated. The top of the bed is leveled off with a harrow or a board and the cotton planted on top of the bed, the new row being in the same place as the old one.' This practice gives the new cotton plants the left-over benefits of last year's fertilizer. The rows are left about three to four feet apart. The farmer is likely to use a bushel of seed to the acre. On many farms it is customary to drop the seed and fertilizer at the same time, using a combination planter and distributer. The whole opera tion, with the use of one-horse implements, requires almost a day to the acre. It is the very opposite of time and labor saving. The small size of the eastern farms and the ruggedness of their contour, however, have served to pre vent the general use of better methods. At the same time the farmer must plow and lay off rows for his corn. These operations easily require more than a day's work per acre. The supplementary crops of cotton and corn thus interfere rather .seriously with each other.