The management of a plantation is a difficult task calling for technical knowledge of cotton culture and tact in managing the human factors. The cases which follow show how, of four planters in South Georgia, two were able to adjust their farming operations to the advent of the boll weevil and the Negro migration: 84 I am going to take here four cotton farmers whom I know personally, all of whom live in South Georgia. All of these farmers made money growing cotton up until and including the war period. The first heavy damage the boll weevil did in that section was in 1919. All of these men lost money in 1919. At this time each man found himself facing two serious problems which he had not encountered before. The boll weevil ravished the cotton crop, and there suddenly developed a shortage of Negro tenants.
Two of these farmers seemed to be able to meet the situa tion and overcome these difficulties, while two of them could not.
Two of these farmers lived on the farms they operated. They were brothers-in-law, living about seven miles apart. Tom Simpson operated a twenty-mule farm and John Howell ten mules on the home place. In 1925 Mr. Simpson was operating twenty-four mules and making money, while Mr. Howell had dropped down to five mule operation and was losing each year. Both of these farmers grew enough grain and hay for home consumption. Both have enough hogs each year to give them enough meat for the family use, and both have good gardens, several milk cows and a farm flock of hens. Mr. Howell usually sells a little surplus hogs, eggs, butter, and vegetables. Mr. Simpson has plenty for home consumption but does not sell any.
The chief difference between their farming methods in 1925 was that Mr. Simpson operated his entire farm with riding cultivators. Per acre in cultivation he has just one-half as many tenants as he had in 1919 and he has never had a tenant since starting operating riding cultivators to fail to make enough money to "pay out" at the end of the year. This is the way he has met the shortage of labor. He has about fifteen acres of cotton planted for each mule he feeds. For each "run bill" he furnishes there are thirty acres in cotton.
Before the advent of the boll weevil Mr. Simpson fertilized his cotton at the rate of four hundred pounds of a low grade fertilizer per acre. Since 1920 he has used from one thousand to one thousand two hundred pounds of a high grade fertilizer per acre. He is using much thicker spac ing than he did before 1920 and has discontinued planting the damp, slower lands to cotton. He is getting yields of from three-quarters of a bale to a bale of cotton per acre. These are the ways he has met the boll weevil problem.
On the other land Mr. Howell is still using the old one horse method of cultivating cotton. He now plants about twelve acres of cotton to the plow. His tenants often fail to make enough cotton to "pay out," and he usually has one or two who are badly in debt to him to leave him each year and has a great deal of difficulty in replacing them. He is using some heavier applications of fertilizer than he did, but not more than five hundred pounds of a low grade fertilizer per acre. At first he did not change the spacing of the cotton but in the last few years he is beginning to realize that it is necessary to leave the cotton thicker. He is selecting the better drained lands for cotton, probably because he is now letting part of the farm lie idle. His yields run from one
fifth to one-half bale per acre.
The other two farmers I shall compare are James Thomas and Alec Johnson. Both of these men were so-called "ab sentee landlords," living in a town in South Georgia. Both of them were interested in other businesses besides farming. Mr. Johnson died in 1926. He lost heavily in his business as well as in his farming and his farms were foreclosed and sold shortly before his death. In 1919 he was operating forty five mules, in 1925 he was operating twenty-five. Mr. Johnson was a very old man, probably around seventy. He told me he never made any change in his farming methods after the boll weevil came except that he had so much difficulty get ting labor that he had to let some of his farms "lay out." He actually reduced the amount of fertilizer he used because he could not get credit. He raised some corn and hay but usually had to buy a little feed each year. His yields ran down as low as one-tenth bale per acre and never higher than one-fifth bale, although he had better cotton land than any of the others. At the time I knew him he had gotten his farms badly infested with Johnson grass from using com mercial hay, and he had the most shiftless Negro tenants in the country.
James Thomas is a most unusual man. He is generally considered very lucky. Everything he touches turns to gold, and many of his friends attribute it to James Thomas' luck. As a matter of fact he is an excellent business man, with a most pronounced talent to handle labor. He was operating in 1919 ten mules. In 1926 he was operating sixty. He does not use riding cultivators for the simple reason that he never has any trouble not only in getting all the tenants he wants but in getting the most industrious Negroes in the country. He studies his tenants. Some of them he allows to plant as much as twenty-two acres of cotton to the plow and some only ten acres. The Negreos have learned that if they can man age to get on one of Mr. Thomas' farms they will have plenty of money in the fall; and in a section where there is not sufficient farm labor to tend more than three-fourths of the land which has been cultivated, he often has five or six ap plications from tenants for each farm. Mr. Thomas has a most perfect control over his labor and they work under his close supervision. He is using heavy applications of high grade fertilizer; is spacing the cotton thick and never plants any but his best cotton lands to cotton. He is able to get his tenants to pick up and destroy the squares which fall after the weevil has punctured them. He is also able to get surplus labor at cotton-picking time and gets his crop out quicker and in better shape. If one of his men gets behind with his crop, Thomas is always able to get his other tenants to go and help cultivate and chop the crop. Of course he pays them for this work and charges it up to the man who got the help. His yields run from three-quarters to one bale per acre, some times higher.
In 1924 I went through a cut of fifty acres of Mr. Thomas' cotton with a party including one of the most prominent cot ton agronomists in America. This gentleman stopped in the middle of the field and said: "Mr. Thomas, with this cotton crop, if we had the 'two quarts a month law' back in Georgia, it would seem like old times."