No triumph has been so confidently announced and so often delayed as the expected triumph of diversification in southern agriculture. The cotton crop lien system was thought to have been destroyed by the crop failure of 1868 which ruined so many furnishing merchants. Again in 1873 and in 1881 at the first Atlanta Exposition, speakers announced that the problem of southern agricul ture was solved. Low prices from 1890 to 1891 led many merchants to refuse to grant further credit on cotton." In every case the optimistic prophecies came to nought. In recent years the boll weevil invasion and the demand for foodstuffs imposed by the World War were thought by some to have changed southern agriculture beyond the possibility of relapse." In proof of the triumph of diversification, total figures on production are usually given. These, however, are not fitted to serve as an adequate index of diversification in that they tend to distribute the products of specialized fruit, truck, dairy, and poultry farms among the general averages and thus to make it appear that production on each farm has increased. Thus to say that South Caro lina has exported $100,000 worth of poultry cannot be taken to mean that poultry in excess of normal consump tion on South Carolina farms has been produced. It may as well mean that many of the farm families who do not produce these things are also unable to buy them.
A valuable index of the extent of specialized cotton farming was furnished by a special tabulation of the 1900 Census. It was found that at least 40 per cent of their income was derived from cotton by 19 per cent of the farms in the United States!' There were 1,071,545 of these specialized cotton farms in the South, forming 52 per cent of all the farms in the ten chief cotton states.
Another index of diversification is furnished by the percentage of farms growing specified crops. The year 1919 may be taken as a season in which southern farm ing was supposed to be well diversified, and the 1920 agricultural census may be analyzed in regard to farms growing certain products. In the ten chief cotton states there were 2,550,407 farms, with 92,645,980 acres of im proved land, on which lived 13,367,407 persons. The aver age number of acres in crops on each farm was thirty six; excluding Texas and Oklahoma it was twenty-seven. Seventy-three per cent of all farms grew cotton, produc ing 11,376,130 bales on 36 per cent of the crop land area in the ten states.
The percentage of farms growing specified crops is given in the following table : 22 products shows that the smaller the percentage of farms in the state growing cotton the higher the value of these products, except in Oklahoma and Texas.
When we come to account for the lack of diversification we are faced with a vicious circle. Lack of home sup plies, raised on the farm, increases the need of consump tion credit. On the other hand, the credit system calls for the production of cotton more or less to the exclusion of other crops. To begin stock raising, fruit farming, or dairying not only requires a larger initial outlay for capital, but the returns are regarded as less immediate and less certain. There exists the question of equipment
needed in diversified farming. Fences and barns in the South are often too poor for the farmer to be able to care for live stock or crops of grain. For the small owner such outlays call for more credit. Landlords do not want to go to the expense of building good barns and fences, and the tenant cannot afford to make repairs that will revert to the landlord as soon as his tenure is up. Cotton culture, moreover, is comparatively simple in that poor methods will grow some kind of crop. There is a saying that any fool can grow cotton. On the other hand, the duties of management in dairy farming or stock raising are complex and require constant supervision. Whether equitable or not, a system of division of the product by shares between landlord and tenant has been worked out by custom and law for cotton and tobacco. No generally accepted system of share cropping has been worked out for more complex forms of farming.
Not only would it take a wise landlord to supervise a dairy or poultry farm, but he would start without pre cedent as to the system of tenancy. The question leads again to the human elements. The landlord and supply merchant are afraid to trust stock, poultry, grain, and feed crops to many of the renters. Grain may be eaten or fed to stock ; pigs may take to the swamp or cane breaks ; and blooded stock may die. But cotton is food for neither man nor beast. Some tenants may be inclined to steal, but the crop lien is a form of restrictive credit, limiting the sale of the cotton. Cotton is a bulky product difficult to cart away ; it has to be delivered at a gin, and it is at the gin that a careful landlord checks up. For this reason the system has grown up in some localities of charging a cash rent, say $10 an acre, for corn while accepting a fourth share of the cotton. The effect of this form of rent has been to restrict the production of corn. It does not take the tenant long to realize first, that he must pay for his corn out of his cotton, and second, that the landlord is sharing his risks of production on cotton, but that he himself carries the whole load when he raises corn.
The crux of the matter may be summed up by saying that cotton made the one-crop system because it is the one cash crop. As W. J. Spillman has said, cotton has been the only product sufficiently high-priced to permit its shipment to distant markets. Oats and corn are too cheap, and wheat and hay meet with climatic difficulties. At any time at any place in the South, cotton is the one commodity that can be exchanged for cash—be it much or little. Every little town is a primary market, and cot ton buyers from interior markets and cotton quotations from New Orleans and New York are ubiquitous. The cotton market is a world market—possibly the world's best organized market for any agricultural product. For one time in her history, when the New York Cotton Ex change closed at the outbreak of the World War, the South was without cotton prices. The business stagna tion and dismay of the section during those weeks can hardly be described.