It is thought that the insects found so far from their place of origin must have been placed there by some agent. Indeed, it was early foreseen that unscrupu lous speculators could, by the judicious distribution of the weevil, in four or five selected places pull the price of cotton up sixty to a hundred points almost over night. It has since become known that the Department was fearful of such a contingency and kept a strict watch.
Records of economic disaster became common history as the area of infestation moved northward or eastward each successive year. The first invasion of the weevil into new territory commonly destroyed 50 per cent or more of the crop and carried consternation to the re gion. The direct effects were found in the economic loss of lint and seed cotton to the growers. The consequent failures of farmers and landlords were transferred to their creditors, the banks, and supply merchants. Many of the credit institutions failed. In 1920 the Depart ment of Agriculture estimated the average annual direct loss from the boll weevil at The indirect losses due to failures of merchants and bankers, the closing of cotton gins and cotton oil mills, and depre elated land values cannot be estimated. They give an eloquent report, however, of the extent to which com munity after community had built its financial and eco nomic structure on cotton bales.
Representative Scott Field of Texas well described before the hearing on the Boll Weevil Control Act the economic effect upon a community.
. . . take my little town and the county in which I live upon the Brazos. I am appalled at the results that this de structive agent has produced there.
The town is accustomed to ship from 20,000 to 24,000 bales of cotton. This year we will not receive 500 bales. In con nection with my brother, we plant 800 acres, certainly ex pecting a return of 600 bales. We will not get a hundred. Men survive partial losses but when it comes so that every man looks into the face of his neighbor and is alarmed at his own condition and knows full well that he cannot discharge the obligation which the law has created; when the bank is locked like a frozen river; when no man is able to discharge the obligation that is incurred to his neighbor; when busi ness is suspended; when land values are such that you can not get money to make another crop and the moneyed men of the East stand in fear to invest a single dollar upon as fine real estate as there is in the state of Texas, you begin to realize the gravity of the situation.' The invasion of the Black Belts by the Mexican wee vil had the effect of disorganizing the whole economic and social structure. The plantation economy was disrupted and impetus was given for the Negro migrations of the war period. In certain localities the first two or three years of infestation rendered landlords and Negro ten ants almost equally helpless. "In Alabama," writes an investigator, "thousands of landlords were forced to dismiss their tenants and to close the commissaries from which came the daily rations. Some planters in Alabama and Mississippi advised their tenants to leave and even assisted them. The banks and merchants refused to ex tend credit when cotton was no longer to be had as security. A host of idle persons thrown suddenly on the labor market could have no other effect than to create an excess in the cities to which they flocked, make labor ers easily replaceable, and consequently reduce wages.
A southern paper in commenting on this situation de clared, 'there is nothing for this excess population to do . . . if there is a tap that will draw off the idle population that will be a good thing for the cities at least.' The effect of the weevil on Georgia was also to weaken the plantation and to encourage migration. Z. R. Pettit, state crops estimator for Georgia, said in his annual re port for 1916: "The Negro exodus has been greatest in the territory that has been infected [with the weevil] long enough to make it difficult to grow a paying crop of cotton. The reported acute labor shortage line co incides closely with the line of third year infestation except along the southern state line." 41- Woofter also suggests that "the labor agents from the North, who were probably aware of the disorganization caused by this pest, operated more extensively in the rural district of southwest Georgia than anywhere else." 42 Dr. Moton, President of Tuskegee, told the members of his race, "there is too much scientific knowledge, too much resourcefulness, and too much determination in the South for us to be swept off our feet by a little bug." 43 But someone, somewhere had started a song and Negroes all over the Cotton Belt were singing: Oh, have you heard de lates', De lates' all your own? All about de Boll Weevil What cosed me to leave my home? Fust time I saw de Boll Weevil He was sittin' on de square Nex' time I saw dat Weevil He was sittin' everywhar Jes a looking for a home, looking for a home!" Following the shock of the first insect ravages, cotton acreage was cut down, and many regions turned through necessity to the diversified farming so earnestly preached in and out of season. The greatest immediate disadvantage to the Negroes, in fact to all tenant farmers, "was the lack of money to sustain them while corn and velvet beans were being grown." " The increment on live stock is not as assured as the cash returns on cotton. The means with which to begin raising live stock cannot be secured as easily as credit on cotton. But under the stimulation of war prices the South produced more "hog and hominy" in spite of its depleted man power than ever before. Between 1913 and 1920 "ten southern states increased their production of corn 18 per cent, oats 50, rice 72, white potatoes 60, sweet potatoes 117, hay 150, mulch cows 16, and hogs 23." 46 The people of Enterprize, Alabama, enriched by the war-time demand for the food stuff produced by their diversified farming erected a monument with this inscription: "In profound appreciation of the Boll Weevil and what it has done as the Herald of prosperity. This mon ument was erected by the citizens of Enterprize, Coffee County, Alabama." With the close of the war came a slacking of the demand for foodstuffs followed by the economic depres sion and the fall in land values. In many areas the habit of diversification had been established, but in other places the Cotton Belt tended to return to the cultivation of cotton with the boll weevil added to the risks of pro duction.