Mr. E. A. Goldenweiser " in 1916 estimated from a statistical analysis of the 1910 Census returns that the labor income of the average American farmer was about $600, $200 of which he received in cash, and $400 he secured in goods from the farm." The estimate was based on a gross farm income of $1,236 minus $512 paid for farm expenses such as fertilizers, feed for stock, labor, etc., and $322 interest at five per cent on the farm cap ital.' This was above the average of urban wage-earners and below that of salaried employees." An analysis of 4,018 farms selected from regions representing better than average conditions showed the average earnings of these farm families to be $952 a year, of which $400 came from the farm as food, fuel, and housing.' In this case also, the farm living remained the constant factor.
Allowing for the rise in food prices these figures agree with the figures on the value of living furnished from the farm, cited for the higher groups of farmers. In these cases, also, the living from the farm tended to remain the constant factor. Diversification may be said to ap proach its limit when it feeds the family and the work animals. Any further rise in the standard of living will depend on increased production of cotton, or other cash crops.
Thus on even the better diversified farms the food crops may do no more than feed the household and work animals, leaving the living purchased to be defrayed by the receipts from cotton. The retarded development of urban and industrial centers in the South has not cre ated wide markets for truck and dairy products. Ac cordingly, in many instances the farmer's money income will depend on two factors : the acreage in cotton and the level of tenure. Acreage in cotton determines how much the farmer produces, and his tenure level deter mines what part of his product he receives. As a matter of fact this formula for ascertaining the money receipts of the cotton farm is an oversimplification in that it leaves out the ever-present fluctuations in yield and price.
Morris Sheppard,' former United States Senator from Texas, suggested in 1924 an estimate of the average money income to the cotton grower for the sixty year period since the Civil War. For that period he figured the average yield of lint per cotton acre at 178 pounds, the average farm price at 13 cents per pound, and the average income per acre at approximately $23.05. Set ting the average cotton patch at seventeen acres, Shep pard estimated the average gross income at slightly less than $400 for the whole farm family. The 1920 Census of
Agriculture showed the average cotton acreage per farm reporting cotton to be 17.7 for the United States ; slightly over fourteen acres for the Eastern Belt, about twelve acres for the Gulf states, almost twenty-five acres for the western states, and thirty-three acres for Texas.
In this general way the amount of cash income may be determined from the cotton acreage. Then the share going to the producer may be estimated on the basis of tenure: one-half to the cropper, two-thirds to three fourths to the share tenant, and all, less credit charges, to the owner. We shall have more to say about the credit charges later.
Dr. E. C. Branson and J. A. Dickey " made a survey of the money income of 329 farm operators in Chatham County, North Carolina, for 1921. In this region of mid state Carolina, cotton and tobacco are the money crops, while corn, wheat, oats, potatoes, milk and butter, poul try and pork are the homegrown staples of existence.
They found the average cash income to be $424 per family, divided by races and tenure as follows: ' The share tenants were found to have a cash income less than half that of owners, and croppers received less than a third. The Negroes tended to outrank the white tenants and croppers. The variable factor we most need to know in this connection is the size of the farms.
It is necessary to emphasize in regard to the cotton farmer two facts: first, the extreme concentration of the farm's cash income on cotton, and second, the fluctua tion in living purchased that results from the variations in price of cotton. It is difficult to overestimate cotton's place in southern agriculture as a cash crop. For ex ample, studies " have shown that farms in Catawba County, North Carolina, with only 6 per cent of their tillable land planted to cotton, draw 35 per cent of their total cash receipts from the sale of lint and seed; in Jones County, Mississippi, 8 per cent of the land in cotton accounts for 38 per cent of the total income; while in Sumter County, Georgia, 23 per cent of the farm in cotton brings in 79 per cent of the cash receipts. The farmer who grows cotton at all is thus dependent upon it to a most remarkable extent for the amount of the family living that may be purchased.