The producers news. [volume] (Plentywood, Mont.) 1918-1937, 1935-05-31
Living Conditions Worse
Since AAA Program
Was Started

"fhree families were living in
tworoom -house, The legs Of the
children were as thin as those of
"a dog. Ricketts, and anemia nau
weakened one boy 80 that he could
hardly walk a dozen steps at "A
time, His stomach was swollen
several times its normal size. One
of the men brought home a pound
OF sailed hog-side and two POUNDS
of cornmeal. One of the boys,
about six, licked the greasy papeg
which had covered the meat"
This Is an excerpt from the re-
port of a Georgia relief investig-
ator-one Of the volume Of reports
which has turned the spotlight Of
national sympathy on the plight of
the southern sharecropper.
"Three and a quarter million
American farmers" says Senator
Bankhead Of Alabama, fare drift
ing from year to year, hunting a
place to roost, and thousands of
them are starving"
The sharecropper Is a farmer
who farms another mans land with
another mans tools and seed, lives
in another mans house, and buys
his goods at another mans store.
Nearly 20 per cent of the farmers
in such states as Georgia and Mis-
sissippi are sharecroppers. Such
a mans pay for his work Is a
hack in which to live and a small
portion of the crop he grows.
There are nearly 100000 fam
lilies of tenant farmers in the 10
states which make up the cotton
belt of the south, and virtually
none of them could truthfully be
called successful.
Homes Are Miserable
Thousands of those who still
have homes live under miserable
conditions. They exist in rough
board shaclSs, without plaster on
the walls, without running water,
or sanitary conveniences, even
without ventilation except that af-
forded by cracks in the walls. They
go without shoes or stockings OF
sufficient clothing. The children
never saw inside a school.
But for hundreds Of these fam
lilies conditions became infinitely
worse In 1888, when the Agricul-
tural Adjustment Administration
put into effect its cotton reduction
program, Employers reduced their
acreage, and the sharecroppers
had no work to do. The planters
themselves lived precariously, AZ
many instances, and were forced
to eviet their sharecroppers from
their lands.
Families Are Starving
Today scores of these families
roam the clay roads, sleeping in
patches of woods, and many are
actually dying of pellagra, ricketts,
and anemia.
For a whole year, while condi,
tions turned from bad TO worse
nothing much was heard about the
plight of the shareeroppers beyond
the state in which they lived,
Investigations Made
Mrs, Mary c, Myers, legal off,
cial Of the AAA, was sent into the
cotton belt by Chester c. Davis
administrator of the AAA.
She told about evieted tenant
farmers struggling along high,
ways, wandering hopelessly II
search Of shelter and employment
She said novels were crowded un,
I'll there was "atanding room only
because families in slightly better
economic circumstances had shar
ed shelter with the evicted.
Some landlord planters, Mrs
Myers charged, had turned ouf
their tenants without warning ant
| influenced local relief officials L
refuse TO give them aid.
From a tour of the cotton belt
she took TO Washington pictures. o.
rough-boarded ahaclxs in muck
mired fields, the gaps In theil
walls admitting the wind; evicte'
Negroes standing in the roads;