In a report of family labor employed per farm October 1, 1927, the South Atlantic states averaged 3.85 and the South Central 3.62 persons as compared with 1.79 for the "Western states, 1.82 for the North Atlantic and North Central states, and 2.51 for the United States as a whole.'a The distribution of the field labor of women according to states is shown in the following table. It will be seen that the percentage of women working in fields tends to vary with the percentage of farm lands devoted to cotton. Texas and Oklahoma, because of the large scale farming and comparative scarcity of Negro farmers, offer the two exceptions.
That the agricultural labor of women and children is much more prevalent in specialized cotton areas has been shown by investigations. In selected localities studied in North Carolina, children worked in the field in 65 per cent of 219 families, and in 75 per cent of 270 Negro families.' In a Texas survey ' out of 1,561 children from six to sixteen, 75 per cent were reported as doing field work. One-third of these children were ten years of age and under, and 57 per cent were twelve years and under.
They averaged ten hours a day picking cotton. More than half of the white mothers and 85 per cent of the black mothers in each Texas county studied worked in the "To some extent," says a Children's Bureau report, "the amount of rest a mother can have before and after confinement is determined by the time of year or by the stage of the cotton crop upon which depends the livelihood of the family." ' It may be said that cotton culture, the tenant system, credit, and the crop lien have resulted in a standard of living for southern farmers of which the field work of their women and children is an index. One southern jour nalist has said without any intent to be a phrase-maker that cotton is the by-product of large families.
The questions of the living from the farm implied in diversification, the percentage of the family income spent for credit, and the extent of labor of women and chil dren lead logically to a consideration of the cotton growers' standard of living.