Evening star., 1934-02-18
BY THOMAS r. HENRY.

essentially a land OF farmers.
OF its population Of about
i two million nearly half are
engaged directly in agricul-
ture. There are $4,000 farms, cover
ing a total of about 100000 acres.
Two-thirds of this area is cleared OF
forest.
There are only 10 cities Of more
than 10000 population. Even these
depend, at present, primarily on the
farms. The smaller cities and towns
depend almost entirely on the sur
rounding agricultural land. The
whole tradition of the countryside is
agricultural. The way of life Is
agrarian The climate and rainfall
over much Of the area is adapted to
crop raising. Most of the people know
no other way of livelihood.
Farms Difficult Problem.
Consequently. the Tennessee Valley
Authority finds agriculture one of its
chief concerns. 1t is one of the three
foundation stones for the whole en-
terprise-the others being industry
and electricity. And it affords some
very difficult problems. The farmers
are notably conservative, even more
so here than in other parts of the
country. They constitute the largest
"low-income group" In the United
States. There are whole groups of
counties where the average income is
less than $500 year per family. In
some localities it is much lower than
this In this land of mules and blue
denims the people have very little
money-not enough, in many cases, to
spare the few dollars necessary to en-
able them to eat what grows in their
own back yards, beyond the immedi-
ate growing season.
The reasons for this sad economic
condition over a potentially rich coun-
try are various. The people have been
caught in a variety Of vicious circles
from which there was no easy escape.
The land, for one thing, has grown
poorer and poorer. The chief crops
are cotton, corn and tobacco. All
three are notorious land robbers. They
take nitrogen and phoSphates out Of
the soil. They require intensive culti-
vation. These keep the soil loose 1t
is left loose after the crop is harvested
and the Winter rains start. There Is
little frost or snCw to hold it. The
country is notable for very heavy
showers-the so-called gully washers.
AS a result, much of the cultivatable
top soil, especially of the hilly land,
long since has been washed into the
Gulf of Mexico.
Great Gullies Washed Out.
Much of the country affords a sad
object lesson of what the folly of man
can do to a countryside. Everywhere
the hillsides are SCARED with deep.
red clay troughs, which look like
bleeding wounds in the bodies of
giants. The erosion effects here are
comparable to those found in Greece
and Portugal, where they have re-
duced once thriving civilizations al
most to the brink of ruin In the
Tennessee Valley the effects have been
achieved in a much shorter time. Not
much more than century has elapsed
since the land was first plowed. Fro
sion can be checked-and the damage
repaired if it has not gone too far-by
the comparatively cheap method Of
terracing. Its application depends
upon education, and this is one OF the
points upon which the Tennessee VAL
ley Authority is laying greatest stress.
But the fact remains that many a
once fertile farm is gone beyond re-
demption. It must be cast back to
the forest primeval out of which 1t
was made with infinite labor. Only a
century of unhampered forest growth
can build it up again.
Much of the land never should nave
been p.owed in the beginning. Ma
ture didn't intend 1t for cultivation.
At the best only poor crops can be ex-
pectea from it, obtained with far more
labor than they are worth.
Let TO Inevitable Ruin.
Then there is the matter of fer
tilization. The poorer the crop the
less the farmer could afford to replace
the necessary elements taken out of
his soil. And the less he replaced
them the poorer the next crop-and
so on to inevitable ruin in the end.
In a good many cases, especially in
the cotton country, the farmer didn't
care. He was "cropper" His feel
ingS for the owner were often far
from friendly. His only interest was
to get as much as possible off the
land IN one season. The next Sum-
mer he would be cropping" another
farm. He moved on from one
wretched shanty to another. He had
no more interest in improving his
home than a migratory bird in i'm
proving its nest. 1t was only tenn
porary camping place. There could
be no pride of possession.
Worst of all, perhaps, has been the
one-crop system through much Of the
area. It works as the most vicious
of vicious circles. There is single
crop. such as tobacco or cotton, for
which a particular section is espe-
cially adapted and for which a good,
immediate market is available. Natu-
rally the farmer raises as much OF 1t
as possible At first he may combine
it with other crops for his own use.
But the more the land is robbed the
more area must be devoted to this
single money crop, and the more the
growers energies must be given over
to its production in order to keep up
an income. Finally there is no room
left for the other crops and no time
left to tend them. Thus many CROP
per does not even have vegetable
garden. In the midst of lush pastures
the farmers children hardly know the
taste of milk.
Not Fault of Individual.
The devotion to cotton growing over
a large part of the area, says DR.. H.
A. Morgan, one of the directors OF
the Tennessee Valley Authority, who
has devoted lifetime to the prob
lens of the Southern farmer, is not
altogether the fault of the individual
or of the section. Unconsciously, per-
haps, the farmer has been subjected
to terrific pressure from outside.
Cotton has been the one American
commodity which has kept up Ameri-
can credit in the money markets of
the world. The business interests Of
the Nation we're pressing the farmer
to raise more cotton, at the expense
of everything else. They favored the
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