The Wilmington morning star., 1940-07-29
Human Erosion Has Tended
To Out-Run Soil Erosion
In Some States
GUY A. CARDWELL

General Agricultural Agent
Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Co.
There is much food for thought
in the following information from
an address delivered by Milo Perk-
ms, Director of Marketing, U. S.
Department of Agriculture, at a
Los Angeles, Calf, meeting Of
farmers, consumers, merchants,
garment manufacturers and work
ers in the textile trade, arranged
by the California Farm Bureau:
Prior to the first World War cot
ton farmers got about three per-
cent of the national income; re-
Gently, even with benefit payments
added, they have gotten about half
that. The over-population in rural
areas in the cotton South is more
critical than in any other farming
section. Our cotton farms have g
million more persons on them than
was the case before the first World
War. Large families on S m II
farms! Hard work on thin land!
Small incomes even on the rich
lands of the delta. A shocking LACE
Of cotton goods in homes on the
very land where the cotton is pro-
duced! That's part of the picture
Of the cotton South.
Human erosion has tended to
out-run soil erosion in some of our
southern states. Some SO percent
of the. farmers in the cotton grow
ing states are tenants. A third Of
them move every year. Statistics
are not dull and uninteresting when
we translate them in terms of fam
lilies who know real poverty as in
timately as they know the weary
treadmill of the seasons. Today
the richest state in the cotton grow
ing South ranks lower in per capita
income than the poorest state out
side. Even in 1889 Southern farm
families received only one-third
the average annual income of
farmers elsewhere. No wonder
they can't buy enough to give the
wheels of industry more than a
turn or two. No wonder there is
unemployment in our cities.
1T is really impossible for us
who are fathers in this room to
know what it would be like to bring
up families on a cash income of
around $500 a week; and yet these
southern farm families are tn e
families which are contributing
more children to our democracy
than any other group in proportion
to its size. Innocent victims of
malnutrition make mighty poor cit
liens. Let's not fool ourselves
thu problems of the cotton South
are the problems of the whole ma
ton.
49,. erosion on the lands where
cotton has been grown TO-: over a
century is nov a matter of national
onc,.n. Cotton has been grown,
for the most part, on the poorest
land in The nation. About 81 per-
cent of all the land in the United
States that is badly eroded is in
the southern cotton belt. In these
same southern states twenty-five
million of acres of formerly fertile
soil are ruined beyond immediate
repair. An expanse as large as
South Carolina has been washed
away. Another area the size OF
Oklahoma and Alabama has been
s-.iously damaged. and the sand
and gravel washed off this land
has covered another valley the size
of the state of Maryland.
"Grest progress has been made,
of course, in stopping further ero-
sion. Farm management plans
which call for diversified farming
rattle: than one crop cotton farm
ing have made some Roadway. The
very excellent work of the Farm
Security Administration with sew
eral hundred thousand cotton farm
ers is proof of the fact, but they
would be the first to admit that it's
a long, long road. And yet, I am
convinced, it's a road along which
the :" tn may be forced to walk
by world events over which it had
no " troll. It makes sense, theo-
retically, to combine three or four
small cotton farms into n more
diversified production unit, but the
difficulty lies in finding a way for
the two or three displaced families
to make a living not only in terms
OF available jobs but in terms of
their skills. That does not mean
that this is not a desirable direction
IN which to move; quite the con-
trary. I am only pointing out that