THE SOUTH AND COTTON The inevitable illustration of the trends discussed above is the South. It furnishes the region most defi nitely committed to the production of one economic plant, the staple of cotton. In the Cotton Kingdom it has fur nished the most sharply defined section and has led the most aggressive sectional movement in the history of our country. In its Negroes it possesses the largest and most clearly defined racial group in the United States. This group is historically associated with cotton culture, and the association continues. The South is relatively among the least urban and industrial of the regions of the United States. This, of course, is another way of saying that its habits of rural life make up a comparatively large part of its culture. Its leading agricultural product, cotton, may also be expected to play a larger part in the economic life of the section than in other more indus trialized areas. Add to this the popular view that the South is at once the most crude and the most courtly, the most promising, the most provincial, and the most backward of the regions of the United States.
The scientific interest in the culture of the South has resulted in many interesting and valuable interpretations of the region. To a social geographer like Ellsworth Huntington, the South is explicable in terms of climate; to publicists like Lothrop Stoddard and Madison Grant the explanation is wholly in terms of race; to an economic historian like Ulrich B. Phillips, in terms of race and the plantation system ; and to a social historian like Walter L. Fleming, partly in terms of the results of Civil War and Reconstruction. Dr. David Starr Jordan stresses the biological depletion wrought by the Civil War. Professor Howard W. Odum has suggested a treat ment of the contemporary southern situation in terms of leadership, and Dr. Edwin Mims has given an intellec tualistic interpretation. Professors Holland Thompson and Broadus Mitchell have furnished historical com mentaries on the South's industrialization of its cotton. Dr. Francis Butler Simkins and Dr. A. M. Arnett have traced attempts of southern rural folk in South Carolina and Georgia to better their conditions of life by political action. Frank Tannenbaum has published a brilliant though journalistic critique of the South in terms of cotton and racial attitudes. Possibly the most promising attempt at regional interpretation is the series of studies planned and under way in the Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North Carolina." Without assuming the position that the culture of the plant has done more than condition the development of the region, it is the purpose of the following chapters to trace the relation of cotton to its growers and the sec tion. The presence of cotton is assumed in every study of social conditions in the South, and its culture is usually fitted into the predetermined categories of the investiga tion. The buyers and spinners speak of cotton in terms of
supply. To them the question of cotton is a matter of increased production and decreased cost. To the county agent and the specialist of the experiment stations cotton offers a technical problem of increased production of better grades. To the experts of the Crop Reporting Bureau cotton is a matter of tabulation of acreages, plantings, weather damages, weevil damages, and gin nings, conditions of crops that are and that are to be. To the southern educator it is a matter of education. Given a school term of six months, eight months, nine months, all other things shall be added unto the children of cotton growers. To the racial propagandist cotton is simply another aspect of race, the exploitation of black men by white. To the inarticulate cotton farmer, cotton is often simply "hard luck." One year drought, another year weevil, a next year good crops and a market with the bottom knocked out of prices. Our concern is with the producers.
R. Clyde White in attempting to trace the relation of cotton to certain factors in southern culture used the method of correlation.' In eleven cotton states the 151 counties having the highest acreage of cotton were taken. These counties represented 40.4 per cent of all the cot ton acreage in those states for the census year 1919. The correlation of acreage planted to cotton with the ex tent of tenancy was found to be +.51, that of cotton and illiteracy was +.099, cotton and Negroes +.123, and tenancy and illiteracy +.537. In an area of high ten ancy, illiteracy, and Negro population ratios the only significant relations found are those of cotton and ten ancy and of tenancy and illiteracy. Mr. White concludes that the South cannot be regarded as a cultural unit nor can cotton, on the basis of mere correlation, be con sidered a causal factor.
In seeking to trace the reaction of cotton on its human factors in the South, one is confronted with the necessity of a unity of the social sciences. Descriptive and factual materials of human geography, economics, history, agri cultural economics, and sociology accordingly are used wherever found valuable. In addition to the statistics the method of presentation by case studies has also been found valuable. Expressions of attitudes as found in in terviews and letters, which would be regarded by his torians as primary sources after a sufficient lapse of time, are also used.
From the methods and materials of geographers the facts of soil, climate, and topography may be employed to account in some measure for the concentration of cot ton culture and the distribution of races, tenancy, and the plantation in the different areas of the Cotton Belt.