PEERLESS EXPOSITION Shows Want Concessions of all kinds. Now playing North Georgia where there is plenty of cotton money. Have 5 rides, 6 shows, band, 10 concessions. Positively out all winter. Haven't closed in seven years. 'Nuf said." Given as an added attitude, the fact that all cotton growers, even the planters, are bulls on cotton who find difficulty in realizing that high levels of prices are bound to fall, and one has the improvidence of the southern cot ton grower. The standards of living are not only low but shifting. The income of the cotton grower has its peaks of high prices, but these peaks are not expected, they are not planned for, and they do not always serve to level up the general standard of living. Instead, they serve oftentimes to gratify whims and vagaries of con sumption. The cotton farmer's income often just balances his upkeep from the landlord or a supply store. He has had nothing on which to exercise the virtue of thrift ; and when his cotton crop brings him a larger money in come, he is likely to regard it as a windfall and treat it accordingly..
Two other sets of attitudes peculiar to southern cot ton and tobacco renters, have grown out of the conditions of tenancy rather than of cotton cultivation. The fact that they characterize an important number of cotton growers makes these attitudes an integral element of the cotton culture complex. The first attitude may be de scribed as the shiftless attitude of the renter toward the place on which he lives. The common complaint of land lords is of houses allowed to go to ruin, fences torn down, and lands lacerated by erosion. Law gives the tenant no interest in his tenancy. A tenure of twenty years gives the renter no more right to remain than a tenure of twenty days. In this the American practice differs from the English. In addition the law gives the tenant no claim for improvements made. The tenant then does not look forward to a future but only to a present use of the farm. In self-defense his is the philosophy of get what he can while he can. To fix fences, clear land, stop gulleys from washing, to repair a shed, or shingle a roof is from his viewpoint a foolish waste of time and energy. From this attitude it may be only a step to the use of fences for fire wood. Much of the shiftlessness of southern tenants, regarded in this light, is a self-defensive adjustment.
Mobility furnishes a closely related attitude of tenants growing out of a lack of attachment to the farms which they have cultivated. In almost any region the form of share rent set by custom can take no adequate account of the variations which exist in the fertility of cotton producing soils in a given area. Variations in character of landlords also exist. Having nothing to lose, the tenant is easily led to move by a desire to secure better land, or to find a more agreeable landlord. Poor housing, inferior educational facilities and health conditions may be re garded as additional factors inciting to mobility. There is always the chance that the tenant may find a better place for no greater expenditure. Let him move a number
of times, and mobility itself tends to become a habit ; the renter has then acquired the reputation of being a shift less, roving tenant. A study by the Department of Agri culture in 1922 estimated that there was a shifting of occupants on 19 per cent of all farms in the United States, 27.7 per cent of tenants and 6 per cent of owners shifting. In eight cotton states, however, 30 to 40 per cent of all farms showed a change of occupants. "White croppers reported much shorter average periods of occu pancy than colored croppers," ranging from a third of a year to a year and a half.14a When traits such as we have described are confronted in the behavior and attitudes of individuals, these traits are described in terms of personality and character de fects. Two investigators close a survey of a Texas cotton growing county with the comment: In the editor's judgment there is one important shortcom ing in the work, . . . an omission to touch with due balance upon the character of Texas tenant farmers as a cause of their own troubles. The troubles are shown, and they are shown as the troubles of the tenants. . . . Always shifting, often shiftless, sometimes unruly, the average tenant is to be regarded with pity mixed with sympathy for the one who as a business man has to deal with him.' President Andrew M. Soule of Georgia State Agricul tural College and L. E. Rast, agriculturist of the Arkansas Bankers' Association, have said that the inef ficient, lazy farmer is one of the greatest evils with which the real farmers of the South have to contend. In a state ment issued to the press, Dean D. T. Gray, University of Arkansas, College of Agriculture, said: "We want the inefficient farmers to leave and the sooner the better. What we are worried about is what will become of this type when he moves to the city." 16 Heretofore we have proceeded more or less on the as sumption that the problem of the growers of cotton is a matter of geographic and economic factors. A view com monly held is that as regards the cotton renter: "in its chief essence the problem is sociological rather than economic." The statement may be taken to mean that both biological and cultural factors are involved in the plight of the lower strata of cotton farmers. Except for those of a physical nature the biological traits of social import are difficult of appraisal. Until adequate meas urements have been worked out for distinguishing and estimating inherent characteristics and until more exten sive investigations are conducted, it is difficult to give factors of heredity their due. For instance, many of the traits making up the cotton culture complex may be re garded in the individual as either inherent deficiencies in character, energy, or intelligence, or as socially condi tioned habits. In general the view of inherent individual differences in intelligence has come to be accepted in psychology. It is thus possible to hold that all present inefficient cotton farmers were born with inadequate hereditary equipment.