Thus it comes about that the Negro cropper, the white tenant, and the small cotton farmer live upon a basic diet of salt fat pork, corn bread, and molasses. This forms the "three M diet," meat, meal, and molasses, noted by Dr. Joseph Goldberger of the United States Health Service as pellagra producing. When cotton farmers pur chase food, these are the articles of diet they purchase ; first, because all three are cheap, and second, because food likes and dislikes come to be matters of habit im posed by culture. Exclusive reliance on this diet impairs health and economic efficiency and thus may serve to ce ment the cotton farmer closer to his basic diet.
The southern rural attitudes toward the field labor of women and children to a great extent grow out of the seasonal demands of cotton. The unmechanized processes of chopping and picking call for a large amount of un skilled manual labor. The time element also enters. "The limiting factor is the amount of cotton the average farm family can pick before the cotton begins to deteriorate." One small mule can easily till more cotton than the aver age farmer can chop and pick. It is true, then, that the most successful cotton farmer is the one who can com mand a large amount of human labor within his own household. "It has been said with some degree of truth," writes Alexander E. Cance, "that successful farming rests on the unpaid labor of women and children." 8 Large families are an economic asset. A young cotton tenant wrote: A young married man single-handed can hardly rent land to farm on, as the landowner wants a man with a large fam ily, children large enough to work so he can realize on their labor. . . . What must the young people among the renters do? They are practically denied the land to farm on until they rear enough children to gather a good-sized cotton crop; that is what the landowners want? Children thus may be said to cost the cotton farmer less and pay him more. Forced by the demands of the plant and his economic needs, the one-horse cotton farmer ac cepts the field work of his women-folks and children as a matter of course. This attitude on the part of rural families is carried into cotton mill villages. It is every where met in attempts to enforce compulsory school at tendance.
That exclusive devotion to cotton is an attitude to be reckoned with is recognized by all agricultural extension agencies operating in the South. As a section the South has vacillated between sober realization of the plight of her cotton farmers and pride in the magnitude of her out put of the fleecy staple. Cotton cultivation has become a
social habit that can hardly be broken. An observer writes of the immigrant farmers in southern Oklahoma, "They have never cultivated anything but cotton, and do not want to raise anything else." 10 When forced by price failures to the cultivation of other crops, the cotton farmer is prone to return at his first opportunity to cot ton. Bradford Knapp has recounted an interview with an East Texas farmer: "I see you have a splendid field of oats," said Mr. Knapp. "Ever plant any before?" "No. Wouldn't have planted an acre of them this time if it wasn't for this European War," replied the farmer.
"You'll get a good price for them and you won't have to buy any winter feed, will you?" "No. But say, have you seen what cotton's doing? Nearly nine cents this morning. And I tell you if she holds at that figure very long I'm going to plow up every foot of that oat field and plant it to cotton."' The fluctuations in price which render the cotton farm er's life uncertain have not served to check this devotion to cotton. Periods of rising prices have led to plowing up of food crops and chopping down of peach orchards to make way for cotton. On the other hand, falling prices may throw the growers deeper in debt to landlords and supply merchants, and thus force them to renewed culti vation of the cash crop. This attitude, intangible like all attitudes, is a very real thing, growing out of basic economic and geographic factors, and limiting efforts to ward diversification and restriction of acreage.
Closely connected with devotion to cotton, indeed a part of it, is the speculative attitude engendered by the fluctuations in the price of cotton. A prominent cotton factor in the Eastern Belt writes : This attitude—a matter of degree, a degree beyond the legitimate risks of normal business—spreads itself in a thor oughgoing way and permeates the economic life of the South. Our most successful and so-called conservative busi ness men grow up with it and are often not aware of its dangers until a crash comes. Meantime, in general, the cotton producer, lien merchant, or dealer has no other outlook, and has learned to live from year to year on the fortunes of risks over which he has absolutely no control, and upon the hazards of which he will stake his all. And when he happens to combine some other line of business with cotton, the risks he exposes himself to are in proportion.