In the flat alluvial areas and especially in the western prairies, the level lands make possible more efficient culti vation. Little fertilizer is used and the processes depend less upon man labor and more on machines and mules. The following description is typical of practices in a Texas Black Land county : The beds are thrown up with a four-horse "middle-buster," the mouldboard of which resembles the mouldboard of a right-hand and left-hand turnplow fastened together. This is run in the old row and the dirt thrown to the middle on either side, makes beds in the middle between the old rows. When the beds are completed the land is harrowed. . . . The cotton is drilled on top of the bed, one row at a time with a two-horse planter which both smooths the top of the bed and drops the seed.' As in the East, these rows are from three to four feet apart and require about a bushel of seed to the acre.
The contrast between upland and prairie land cotton culture is essentially that between a walking and riding cultivation. In the East the "cotton growing syndicate," in Tompkin's phrase, is a Negro behind a mule and a Georgia stock ; in the 'West it is a white farmer riding a two to four-mule cultivator. Records of the Department show that the planting process for upland lands in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas requires fourteen to eighteen hours of man labor plus an average of twenty-two hours of mule labor per acre in cotton. In the Texas Black Land the farmer spends five hours of work to fifteen hours for his horse per Cotton planting is general throughout the whole belt during April. It ends usually by May 21 in the northern areas, the process requiring about a month. Given the right amount of moisture, spring warmth, and no frost, the cotton farmer has not long to wait for the little plants to show just above the ground. The bare clean fields with the rows of tiny two-leaved plants stretching away into the distance are a sight to gladden the heart of any vet eran cotton planter.
As soon as the small plants are up to a stand, about a month after planting, the farmer begins to "chop out" his cotton. The first cotton chopping begins in Texas May 1 and reaches North Carolina by May 21. The plants are thinned out to furnish better growing condi tions. The old plantation rule of "once a week and one in a row" sums up current practices. The working in of fertilizer also produces better results. Hoeing cotton for bids the use of machinery to any great extent and must be done by hand. Next to picking it is the most laborious process in the cultivation. Except in the western area such weeds as crab grass and Johnson grass grow rank throughout the South. After chopping out, which lasts
from four to five weeks, it may be necessary to continue cultivation. In the East, chopping cotton requires from fifteen to twenty-five hours of farmer's labor per acre. Texas, however, on the average demands only eleven hours of work for the same process." If he cultivates by plow, the farmer must avoid deep plowing alongside the plant, for this practice causes the early bolls to shed. The average cotton farmer has one answer to the cotton plant's demand for hand tillage, and that is to put his wife and children in the field. If he were able to pay the bills he would find but little agricultural labor to hire, for all his neighbors are busy chopping their own cotton. Except for Mexicans in Texas there have developed no migratory laborers in cotton as in wheat. The cultivation of his corn acreage requires almost two and a half days per acre and comes at the time cotton most needs atten tion. Accordingly, the farmer drafts his family. It is true that the women and children, white and black, of the small cotton growers are more accustomed to work in the fields than those of any other farming group in the United States. Travelers through the South for the first time carry away vivid memories of tired women, leaning on cotton hoes, staring at the passing train. By those reared in the South, women and children working in the field come to be accepted as part of the natural order of things. The women and children carry their hoes and files out to the field; the mother leaves the baby on a "pallet" under a shade tree, and occasionally stops to nurse it. Just an hour before dinner she leaves for the house to prepare a "snack." After dinner the family re turns to the field and works until dark. This description applies equally well to large groups of black and white f arm families.
It is hard to say just when the crop is ready to lay by, because the farmer never knows the amount of culti vation his crop is going to require. A wet April or May will keep the weeds growing as fast as the cotton plants, and one chopping is hardly finished before another is necessary to "get the cotton out of the grass." Continu ous cultivation forces the growth of the cotton. Since the advent of the boll weevil it has accordingly become the practice in many localities to continue cultivation "till the last moment in order to keep the plant making as many squares as possible." 12 Since weevils attack them first, the late squares serve as a protection to the bolls already formed.