In normal years the crop has begun to look well by June. Everybody expects a good yield. The Department's forecasts are likely to be high. Hubbard cites an old say ing of the cotton trade that "The man who can once sell the June prospect at the August price will never have to work again." 13 By the middle of July the cotton plant has begun its fruitage. First appear the squares, three leaves folded together with the bud inside. Given fair weather, it is three weeks until the squares open into cot ton blooms. The blossom resembles that of the hollyhock, first cream colored, next pink and red. On the third day the bloom withers and drops to the ground, leaving a little pod. If the southern sun shines on, the folk saying has it right: "It takes six weeks from the bloom to the grown boll." The routine of the cotton cropper and tenant is incom plete without an account of the activities of the landlord, the plantation owner, and the supply merchant during the growing season. In general, it is safe to state that the landlord living in town visits the tenant when he fears the crop is being neglected; the tenant visits the land lord when he wants to ask for something, be it wire screens on the window or more seed for planting. The tenant's every trip to town on Saturday is occasion for a conference. But if the trips become too frequent the landlord is likely to suggest that he is neglecting the crop. Sunday is occasion for the vigilant landlord to visit his farm, walk over his acres, and inspect the crop. The tour often ends with a visit to the tenant's shack and much good advice. The advent of the boll weevil caught tenants and croppers unprepared, and the landlords and managers have supervised the fight in many cases.
The plantation manager or owner keeps a closer tab on his renters than the town landlord. Negro croppers in the Black Belts and the Deltas hitve more of the status of hired men paid with a share of the crop than of ten ants. They are under close supervision, and on some plantations the work stock is returned to central farms at the close of the day to be fed and secured from thence in the morning. The routine in planting, fertilizing, and chopping is standardized, and each cropper and his f am ily are instructed by the manager to follow a set routine. While this practice in many instances makes for efficiency, it is likely to go against the grain with many tenants. Many of the white renters, for instance, are, with the exception of good advice, left to shift for themselves.
The supply merchant also exercises an amount of su pervision over "his farmers." Each Saturday trip to town is an occasion for discussions of weather, markets, and weevil, as well as for purchases of side meat, sugar, flour, and cheap coffee. The relations are social as well as economic, and it has been observed that the merchant bestows more attentions upon his debtors than upon the cash customers. Rough and ready jests mixed with re minders of a mortgage on a certain worthless mule, pre sumably blind, are exchanged. The Negroes seem to have an uncanny sense of how far they dare to go in jest, and many a loud laugh and "Yass sir, boss, that's sho' the truth" enliven the country and small town store on Saturday.
Cotton is usually laid by about the first of August. This means that cultivation has put the plant far ahead of the weeds, and the farmer must now wait for the chemistry of sun and soil to do its work. His hopes are for dry hot days with moist hot nights, and in normal times his hopes are answered, for this is the southern climate that has made cotton a southern crop. It is al most a month until cotton picking begins, no other crops are ready for harvest, and the cotton workers are free for a time. In the country districts the summer term of school may be in session, for when autumn comes the chil dren will be picking cotton. It is after the cotton is laid by that protracted meetings are held all over the South.
In lowlands and uplands, strange sects, the Holiness, the Nazarenes, the Holy Rollers, draw the croppers and their families to the bush arbors, or maybe the family packs up and goes to the camp grounds for several weeks. There
the shining lights of the sect are gathered and rotate in preaching their best sermons. The summer revivals par take of the nature of a southern culture trait. None is more religious than the Negro, and late into the summer nights in many a countryside can be heard the sweet strains of an old spiritual and the rhythmic rise and fall of the preacher's voice announcing judgment to come. The landlords and town dwellers are likely to belong to the more orthodox sects, but they, too, have their revivals during the lull in the cotton season.
There is much dissatisfaction among landlords with the habit among cotton renters of easing up during August, "but it seems sensible to me," writes one.' "Cot ton anyway must be grown by a series of spurts rather than by a steady daily grind." During the hot season "about the best thing for croppers to do is to quit work, visit around, and attend the protracted meeting. Then if they haven't killed each other ad interim, they are physi cally fit when the rush of cotton picking begins." H. C. Brearley found in a study of 1601 homicides in South Carolina from 1920 to 1924 that "months of high homicide rates concur rather closely with the seasons of little farming activity, with one peak during the winter vacation and the other during the midsummer lay-by and camp meeting time. Two of the three months of least homicides, May and October, are also the months when farm labor is most busy." 14a By the first of August cotton picking is well under way in south Texas. It moves up the belt until by Sep tember 11 the whole rural South is engaged in harvesting its cotton. The bolls have opened, and the white fluffy fibre stands encapped in the five pointed star of the opened boll—Dixie's trademark. The harvest is to con tinue for three months. The bolls open at different times, and the fields must be picked over thrice or more. Cotton picking requires more hand labor than any other process in contemporary agriculture. It has never yet been suc cessfully mechanized. The average Negro hand is expected to pick 150 pounds of seed cotton a day. In the Western Belt, where the bolls grow larger and open, wider, the average adult picks 250 pounds a day. Depending on the yield it takes a man from thirty to a hundred hours to pick an acre of cotton. The average time required out side Texas is estimated at fifty hours of man labor an acre. Seventy-two planters of Louisiana averaged over six and a half days per cotton acre in picking and haul ing the cotton.' The amount of the farmer's time re quired to pick an acre of cotton would produce three acres of corn in Iowa or four acres of wheat in Kansas.' At the approach of the picking season the rural South begins to mobilize its labor force. Business picks up. Negroes from the towns and villages load on the planter's wagon or truck and journey out to the fields. Maids, cooks, and men-of-all-work desert their employers with mingled announcement and apology to make "cash money." It is a saying in the South that it takes a country Negro seven years to forget the call of the cot ton fields. Loud is the grumbling, and many are the aspersions cast on the loyalty and honesty of the family cook, but she is likely to continue to accept her chance to make the highest wage offered the southern agricul tural laborer. The demands of the cotton system are inexorable, and the townspeople continue to bow to them. Payment is likely to range from 75¢ to $1.50 a hundred pounds, and a good picker may make as high as $4.00 a day. Lower wages are paid for picking cotton earlier in the season, and the price may advance from a dollar to $1.25 a hundred. There is a reason. The first cotton to open is heavier, since it is still moist from the boll, and the leaves prevent drying. Later the fibres, being exposed longer, dry out, and a higher price rate compen sates for their decreased weight.