The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1929-12-14
By MYRA PAGE.
(Continued)


concerning their conditions as small farmers
with the reasons for it. Believing the main
cause of their difficulties to have been the
unequal competition to which they were sub
jected by large-scale agriculture based upon
slave labor, they carried over their hatred for
this system to the Negro, even illogicaly hold
ing him responsible for their hardships! They
overlooked the fact that the slaves were even
more the victims of this system, and that it
was the plantation-owners who exploited both
white and colored. The Negroes, for their part,
despised and mistrusted the Poor Whites. For
these mutual prejudices and suspicious, both
white and colored labor in the south are still
paying heavy penalty. Shareholders and en-
ployers, on the contrary, have greatly profited
by race prejudice
The most powerful factors retarding this peo-
pies social development have been their isola-
ton, their extreme poverty and their necessary
absorption in the cruder aspects of the struggle
for existence. Poor roads and forbidding noun
tain trails made social contacts outside of the
family very rare, indeed. Widespread litter
acy has prohibited contact through the written
world. There has been no time nor money for
books, for those few who could read. In the
past, there were no regular, free schools with
in reach of the children, and the poor farmers
could not afford, in any case, to take their
children out of the field and place them in the
class room. In consequence, illiteracy and child
labor became a customary though disliked part
of their life. Stunted bodies, undeveloped minds
and high rates of illness and death in south
ern rural regios are some of the results.
All aspects of the tenants and farm laborers'
standard of living have been equally low. They
have always been in debt always seeking Gre
dit from or trying to meet their accounts with
the landlords, village merchant, and sometimes
in recent years, with the bankers. This con-
tinual Indebtedness to townsmen, coupled with
townsmen's scorn for these "No Counts" has
bred in the latter a strong dislike and distrust
of city people.
The average farming incomes in the cotton
states are extremely low, ranging from gross
yearly income of $153.OO for troopers to $251.O0
for renters, and $4,000 for owners. Farm
owners among the whites are less than one
half of those farming, and among the Negroes,
less than one-fifth. When the production ex-
penses, which are estimated at the minimum
to be $11500, are subtracted from the gross
income, the farm family has very little cash
left with which to meet its many needsi Agri-
cultural labor is paid around twenty to twenty
five cents day, or approximately $3.50 a
month Assuming eight months steady work,
a laborer can earn only $500 year. The
conditions of life have caused the southern
tenant class to become a migrating people.
Not all have migratory habits, but the major
ity of them are continually "movin' on" as
they term it, from one farm to another in a
rather hopeless and aimless search for "some-
thun better'n we-uns he'd" But to whatever
farm they go, the facts and conditions of their
life remain the samoa poor plot of ground,
worked with few and primitive tools and for
hard taclr S+o bxy and hair twin,
folks N chilen,' who farm in the manner of
the eighteenth century. In the center of their
barren stretch stands the log or board cabin,
often without windows and on an earthen
floor Perhaps window openings would be
superfluous, for there is no lack of ventilation.
Wind and rain enter through numerous chinks,
followed by many of natures small creatures.
Heating and cooking are often by means of an
open fireplace, though in some instances
wood-stove has been added. Lighting is by
lamps or from homemade rag wicks standing
in saucer of oil. Furniture is usually coarse
and often home made. It is not unknown for
a housewife to have only one saucepan in which
to do all her cooking
Corn pone, hogs meat and white potatoes
are the main foods. Milk and butter are not
a customary part of their diet Snuff and to-
bacco habits are common to all-men women
ana cnlluren. Among some lOWlanderS ana
many highlanders the brewing of lincolnshire"
is also practiced. There is an economic basis
for this practice, since the small farmers in
poor road sections not manage to get their
corn to the railway station or to pay the
freight rates demanded, but they can transport
the modest supply of whiskey made from their
corn and dispose of it, at much less cost. Pro-
hibition, of course, has given an additional i'm
petus to moonshning. The long struggle be-
tween federal authorities and mountaineer
Poor Whites over the distilling of corn-whiskey
has led the southern mountaineers to assume
a hostile attitude toward "the government" in
what they consider righteous cause. Even
those families in the community who them
selves do not make moonshine will protect dis
tillers from federal agents.
Both speech and dress distinguish Poor
Whites from other elements in the population.
Men and boys wear overalls or shapeless home
spuns and enormous straw or felt hats, while
women and girls are costumed in sunbonnets
and ginghams, or homespuns cut in the early
and ugly fashion. Their speech is an inter-
estng mixture of Chaucerism and Shakespear-