Cotton Fields No More: Southern Agriculture 1865-1980 (review)

Southeastern Geographer Vol. 26, No. 1, May 1986, pp. 68-72 REVIEWS Cotton Fields No More: Southern Agriculture 1865-1980. Gilbert C. Fite. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1984. xiii and 273 pp., appendix, chapter notes, comment on sources, index. $28.00 cloth, $10.00 paper (ISBN 0-8131-0306-1, ISBN 0-8131-0160-3 pbk.). A volume of the New Perspectives on the South series, Charles P. Roland, General Editor. In 1940, two striking aspects of southern agriculture were the antiquity of production methods and the legions of poverty-stricken persons who were attempting to eke out a living from the soil. Migrants who left southern farms during World War II were told on return visits of sweeping changes that were occurring, not only in agriculture, but in the scope of southern rural life. In the late 1940s visitors were shown new International and John Deere tractors and a few years later mechanical cotton pickers that mounted on the tractors. In the 1950s kinfolk talked of Diuron and other chemicals that killed grass and weeds among the cotton plants where once they could be removed only by chopping with hoes. On each return visit relatives also would proudly show new wonders that were dramatically transforming rural life. First were electric lights that replaced the kerosene lamps, then a bathroom built at an enclosed end of the back porch, and finally a new three-bedroom house with two bathrooms and a den constructed on the same spot where the old log house that great-grandad built just after the Civil War had stood. Relatives also talked of the displacement of farmers by machines, of a growing rural population that no longer was associated with agriculture, and of changes wrought by the civil rights movement and the war on poverty. Gilbert Fite has written an excellent book that discusses the recent, dramatic transformation in southern agriculture and analyzes it within the historical context of the period that began at the conclusion of the Civil War. A principal thesis is that the major economic problem confronting southern farmers for three generations after the Civil War was an excess of rural population in relation to land resources. The lack of non-farm employment alternatives prevented the development ofwidespread prosperity. Fite explains why from 1865 to the Great Depression Vol. XXVI, No. 1 69 of the 1930s change was slow and then discusses the transformation of southern agriculture that began with Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. Fite does not attempt to cover every major facet of southern agriculture . The focus is on cotton, historically the most significant segment of the agrarian economy. Cotton peaked in 1926 when 47 million acres were planted from southern Virginia to western Texas, and 13.5 million Southerners resided on 2.5 million farms. The principal contribution of the book lies in its scope rather than in treatment of individual topics. Cotton Fields No More is the only general history of southern agriculture that covers the period from 1865 to the present. The factors that contributed to the rural Souths descent into poverty after the Civil War, the characteristics of southern life up to World War II, and the efforts of southern farmers to solve their problems through attempts to organize politically and economically and to become more scientific and efficient have been trreated in greater depth in more narrowly focused studies. However, Fite concisely covers the major themes, skillfully weaving into his narrative less wellknown aspects of southern agriculture such as the campaign in 1915-1916 by Clarence Poe, editor of the Progressive Farmer, to promote legislation that would have required segregation in the ownership of farmland. The transformation of southern agriculture that began during the Great Depression was characterized by two principal themes. One was the technological and landuse changes that occurred within the agricultural production system; the other was the displacement of more than ten million persons from southern agriculture. Fites excellent analysis of the modernization of southern farms is one of the major strengths of the book. He draws from a large body of diverse literature, including studies by geographers. However, the analysis of landuse change is limited . There are no lengthy discussions...