. The story of agriculture in the United States. a cash and acredit price, the latter being the higher. The farmer isunder agreement to get all his supplies of the merchant;and the latter charges enough to cover not only a veryhigh rate of interest, but sometimes in addition theexpense of an agent who looks after his security. Atthe end of the year, the crop may not be valuable enoughto pay the debt at the store. So the poor farmer is forced 326 AGRICULTURE IN THE UNITED STATES to renew the contract; or, he shifts to another farm, ina hopeless effort to better his condition. It thus came about
. The story of agriculture in the United States. a cash and acredit price, the latter being the higher. The farmer isunder agreement to get all his supplies of the merchant;and the latter charges enough to cover not only a veryhigh rate of interest, but sometimes in addition theexpense of an agent who looks after his security. Atthe end of the year, the crop may not be valuable enoughto pay the debt at the store. So the poor farmer is forced 326 AGRICULTURE IN THE UNITED STATES to renew the contract; or, he shifts to another farm, ina hopeless effort to better his condition. It thus came about in the South, during the yearsimmediately after the Civil War, that the mass of thenegroes worked under either the share or the tenantsystem. Many of the poor white farmers also becametenants. The typical farm under any of these systemswas the one-mule farm that is still too common inthe South. Concerning it, a writer in the Year Book ofthe Department of Agriculture (1908) says: The one-mule farmer can scratch 3 or 4 inches deep with his one-. Shallow Plowing and Poor Crops mule plow from 10 to 12 acres in as many days. If heplows in the fall the winter rains wash his shallow soilaway, or repack it. He plants his cotton and corn witha Kttle fertihzer, which he purchases with money bor-rowed by mortgaging his future cotton crop. His seedis simply ordinary cotton and corn. His cultivation ofthe growing crop is necessarily laborious and time con-suming from lack of proper horse-power and tools. Heand his family are too busy walking back and forth,hoeing the weeds and grass out of the cotton and corn,to look after a garden, to raise chickens and pigs, or totake care of a cow. THE NEW SOUTH 327 *The one-mule farmer gets at best one-third of a baleof cotton and 10 bushels of corn per acre. The value ofthese hardly pays his rent, his fertilizer bill, and his billfor food and clothing. Year after year he goes throughthe same routine. His children escape to the first factoryor mill tha
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectagriculture, bookyear
