The county record. [volume] (Kingstree, S.C.) 1885-1975, 1921-01-20
THURSDAY, JANUARY 20, 1921
The Planter and the Wage-hands.
(From the Columbia State }

Mr.. Coker's Illuminating analysis
of the cotton growers troubles print.
ed a few days ago, stresses the plight
of the tenant farmer or sharecropper,
who, even when producing the ideal
yield of bale per acre, received for
the labor of his family and himself
less than half the average wage of a
single farm laborer for the year 1920.
Equally as d-plorable is tie debit
account of the planter who Employed
wage-hands cr day laborers oily. If,
according to Mr.. Coker, a shaecrop-
per received a maximum of SLOT for
the labor of himself, wife and three
children, how much per day on the
basis of actual production, was the
wage-hand worth to the planter who
paid him more than 81 cash Fer day? :?
The share-cropper, hard-hit as ne
is, received all he actually earned
all that what he produced sold for.
BY the same computation, the wage
hand or day laborer received two or
three times more than he produced
and this excess wage came out OF the
pocket of the planted.
It may be augured that these scores
of millions of dollars paid to South
Carolina farm labor, in excess of what
that labor actually produced, were
not wasted because they went into the
hands of labor, but probably only a
small part of these excess millions
went into permanent investments or
in improved standards of living. Our
farm laborers are proverbial beggars-
on-horseback in the expenditure of
earnings in excess of the requirements
of their long established standards OF
living. True, the money speedily got
into circulation, but the large profits
made by the merchants who received
the patronage of the wasters, will be
taxed out of them by the Federal gcv-
ernment and add little to the proper
ty values of the state.
The cotton planter of the South,
caught in a cruel trap between the
jaws of high production costs and low
markets, has Jared far worse that the
wheat grower, the corn grower or the
live stock grower of the West, for IN
no other extensively grown crop in
this country is the labor cost for man.
power and horsepower even 'approSt'
mately as high as for cotton
The State, like other newspapers,
has preached diversifcation for a
generation, but the truth is that South
Carolina farmers are better organized
for growing cotton than for any other
crop. Practically all our lands can
grow cotton; part of them cnly can
grow proftably corn, oats, potatoes
or tobacco. Cotton, under intelligent
management that returns to the soil
stalks, leaves and the seed, or its eq-
uivalent in cottonseed meal, takes
practically no fertility from the land,
and the crop fits ideally into farm ro-
tation.
Those who think the cotton planter
to blame for his heavy losses of last
year, should consider what other mar
ket crops could have been grown at
a profit in South Carolina during 1920.
How much have our tobacco growers
realized? A recent report puts the
price of day labor of South Carolina
farms at $3.50 a day for 1920. I'm
der this labor charge and the high
price of fertilizer, could we have
grown rs cent corn proitably?
Hard as it is to face, the problem
of the cotton growers of South Car
olina this year resolves itself into 4
question of how much they can afford
to pay for farm labor. The share
cropper divides the hazard of weather
and market with the owner of the land
but the planter who paySwages must
risk it all.
The planters of 1920, riding high
on the hope of 40 cent cotton, will
ingly paid the $3.50 wage imposed
upon them, but as not even 80 cent
cotton warrants the payment of such
wages, and as no sane man will plant
cotton this year with the, expeeta-