The researches of Joseph Goldberger, Surgeon-General, United States Public Health Service," and others have shown the relation between an insufficient dietary and pellagra. In tenant areas during hard times the cotton farmer's diet tends to be restricted to the "Three M's," meal, molasses, and white meat. "This basic diet," writes Dr. Goldberger, "when made up in conventional propor tions is pellagra producing. It contains some vitamin, P-P, derived from the corn meal, dried beans, and col lards, but ordinarily this is much too little to prevent pellagra." 72 This diet, it is believed, will lead to the development of pellagra in 40 or 50 per cent of those partaking of it within three to six or eight months." Unfavorable cotton years have been followed by an in creased incidence of pellagra 74 as in the well-known prev alence of the disease in 1915 following the depression of cotton values, and in 1927 in the areas affected by the Mississippi flood. Nesbitt," public health officer of Wilmington, has shown that in New Hanover County, North Carolina, from 1912 to 1915, a period of decline in cotton prices, the death rate per 100,000 from pel lagra increased from 21.38 to 64.60. During the same period, however, cases of typhoid and communicable dis ease showed a decrease. In the four cotton raising states on the Mississippi, the deaths from pellagra increased from 1,020 in 1924 to 1,850 in 1926, and Dr. Gold berger " estimated from 2,300 to 2,500 during 1927. The cases during the same period, it is estimated, in creased from 20,000 in 1924 to 45,000 or 50,000 in 1927. Crop failures due to the overflow thus operated as a causal factor.
Much has been done and is still being done to improve dietary habits in cotton areas, but many of the white and black cotton growers live, during periods of low prices, dangerously near the level of John Charles Mc Neil's "Tar Heel": "Oh, I gits my stren'th frum white-side meat, I sops all de sorghum a nigger kin eat, I chows wheat bread on Soddy night, En Sunday's when my jug gits light." Some figures on housing have been given in connection with living furnished by the farm. The houses of the higher level groups in the South are not equal to those of New England and the Middle West in regard to water supply, electric lighting, and home conveniences. Greater differences exist in housing within the Cotton Belt. A survey " in a Georgia county found the value of the white tenant's house to be about half that of the white owner's ; the houses of black owners were valued at 46 per cent of those of the white owners, and the Negro tenants at 26 per cent. For the same groups the black tenants had the greatest number in the family, and the white owners the smallest.
Descriptions of these homes are to be met with in many different reports. In the old Cotton Belt the land lord, in many cases according to an observer, lives in "a big comfortable farmhouse with a generous brick fire place at each end—the traditional southern home with its large cool rooms, deep verandahs, fine trees, sturdy old scuppernong vines, and in the distance well-kept cot ton fields." 78
The tenant usually lives in an "unpainted, clap-boarded cottage of four small rooms" or less, "ceiled inside" pa pered with old newspapers, "often with no shade around the house." The yard is "a hot, sandy, little plot of ground" with a dug well, usually open and unprotected. Often the house is unscreened and open to the flies, gnats, and mosquitoes A Negro renter lives in "one, two, or three rooms." The cabin is "hot in the summer" and in the winter "al most impossible to heat." Daylight shows between the cracks ; the cabin "leaks in stormy weather, and leaves the floor damp for a day or two afterward." The demands of the Renters' Union of McClain County, Oklahoma,' may be regarded as a kind of mini mum standard of health and decency set up by tenants in the Western Cotton Belt. The specifications called upon landlords to furnish tenants houses with not less than two rooms and a lean-to. "The said two rooms shall not be less than 14 feet square with a ceiling not less than feet high. The said room shall be plastered and have a lumber floor." The building shall have at least six win doors, with sashes that can be raised and lowered, and the doors and windows shall be screened. "There shall also be built to said building a front porch at least 16 by 6 feet, which may be roofed with boards and batten." The demands included a stable for at least three ani mals, a tool shed, and "a chicken coop not less than 10 by 12 feet and 6 feet high." On the whole it is a rather dreary picture and somber group of facts that we have presented here. It is pos sibly true that we cannot speak of the average cotton farmer. Conditions vary among the different areas. We have found western cotton farmers making money, for instance, during years in which eastern farmers lost. The varying size of the farm is another factor for which we need more data. The trends as regards the different levels of tenure are unmistakable. It is undeniable that cotton croppers live below what may be called the rural poverty line. However unprepossessing the conclusions are as to the cotton producer's standard of living they appear in substantial agreement with findings of the Industrial Conference Board: The average cotton farmer has hardly more than about 25 acres in cotton and as crop diversification is still very rare among cotton farmers, it follows that the total gross cash income of these farmers is often only $500 to $600 per farm year. This means that after deduction of the operating expenses as a rule there remains only an amount which is entirely insufficient to maintain an American standard of living 80