CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY SAN MARCOS

THESIS SIGNATURE PAGE

THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULLFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE

MASTER OF ARTS

IN

HISTORY

THESIS TITLE: The Pursuit of Land: Southern Tenancy, Manly Independence

and Mobility on the Agricultural Ladder

AUTHOR: Patricia Manley

DATE OF SUCCESSFUL DEFENSE: May 18,2011

THE THESIS HAS BEEN ACCEPTED BY THE THESIS COMMITTEE IN PARTIAL FULLFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN HISTORY.

Anne Lombard, Ph.D. L~ Sjlt}zoll THESIS COMMITTEE CHAIR SIGNATURE DATE

Jeff Charles, Ph.D. l // ct1 s-/r! J r -TH-ES-o-I--:-S-C_O_MMI--'---T-T_E_E_ME_MB_E_R____ 'f:lffluRE~ . ~ Kimber Quinney, Ph.D. Y:~kh ~J (8/11 THESIS COMMITTEE MEMBER ~ATURE -t- D~l

THE PURSUIT OF LAND: SOUTHERN TENANCY, MANLEY INDEPENDENCE AND

MOBILITY ON THE AGRICULTURAL LADDER

A THESIS SUBMITTED TO

THE FACULTY OF THE CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY SAN MARCOS

IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF

MASTER OF ARTS

HISTORY

BY

PATRICIA L. MANLEY

SAN MARCOS, CALIFORNIA

CONVOCATION MAY 2011 ii

May 18,2011

Copyright © May 18, 2011

Patricia L. Manley iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Several individuals supported the completion of The Pursuit of Land:

Southern Tenancy, Manly Independence and Mobility on the Agricultural Ladder.

First, I would especially like to thank my thesis Chair Dr. Anne Lombard, in whose class it all began and Committee Members, Dr. Jeff Charles and Dr. Kimber Quinney.

Dr. Lombard was the first to recognize the historical value. of Seborn's journals and from the beginning encouraged their use in my research. Dr. Lombard has been a wonderful mentor throughout this entire process. Dr. Lombard always remained encouraging and positive even after reading many drafts. Without Dr. Lombard's historical knowledge, expertise and guidance, this thesis would not have developed into the historical project before you now. A special thanks to Dr. Lombard!

I want to thank, Dr. Jeff Charles who has provided his expertise on agriculture and agrarian movements in history. I will always be grateful for Dr.

Charles' guidance on the history of agriculture and his enthusiasm, which inspired my interest in rural movements. I owe a special thank you to Dr. Charles for his instruction on ARCGIS and his suggestion that the ARCGIS maps be included in this thesis. The ARCGIS maps added a special and needed component to the thesis.

To Dr. Kimber Quinney, who first trusted me to be her teaching assistant and teach U.S. History with her, thank you. I will always appreciate the opportunity and iv experience I received while teaching with Dr. Quinney. More importantly though,

Dr. Quinney's help on my thesis committee was invaluable and our discussions about the New Deal era provided a great historical perspective. Dr. Quinney's special touch on this thesis is the title. Dr. Quinney suggested the original title when she read my thesis proposal almost two years ago and although it has been modified slightly it has stayed on the thesis ever since.

I would like also to thank Dr. Peter Arnade, History Department Chair for introducing many graduate students to the philosophical debates in history. Thank you also to Dr. Jill Watts, History Department, Graduate Program Coordinator, who braved teaching History graduate students historical website design. I will always value their experience and the support they gave throughout the program.

I am also very appreciative of my fellow graduate students in the Graduate

Program at California State University San Marcos who gave of their time and their own writing to assist me with my thesis. I am very appreciative of the time my friend, Joanna Gorman, took to read my many drafts. Joanna has been especially encouraging and positive over the last few years.

Many individuals outside of the California State University supported my efforts along the way. I would like to thank Dr. Jeannie Whayne from the University of Arkansas, History Department. Dr. Whayne shared her cherished list of resources v to help expand my research and answered my questions on Arkansas and its history.

I greatly appreciate her vast knowledge of Arkansas's history.

To my family, thank you for continuing to support my education. There have been many times when family events were planned around my class, research and writing schedule. Thank you to my children Nicole, Brian, Daniel and John who helped me understand and teach the new "millennia" generation. Thank you for supporting my graduate studies while pursing your own education. I especially want to thank my husband Darron Manley who has supported and understood the value in continuing my education. Thank you for listening to the history of Arkansas and tenants for the last few years, for always encouraging my work and understanding the sometimes-crazy amount of time I needed researching and writing. Of course, I appreciated the financial support but I especially thank Darron for making sure we spent every Friday together having fun.

Finally, since Seborn's journals are the cornerstone of this project, I need to thank Seborn's granddaughter, Viola Horton, who casually handed me the diaries one day. I especially want to thank Viola for keeping Seborn's journals protected and safe all these years. I would also like to thank Seborn's other granddaughter,

Dorothy Pierce, who provided valuable information about Seborn's son Logan.

To everyone mentioned above and to the many others who also provided support in various forms, thank you! vi

ABSTRACT

For more than a century before 1900, American men migrated across the continent in search of land, building farms in one region after another as they sought to achieve the status of independent landowners. The possibility of freehold land ownership and the independence that came with it had an enduring appeal for millions of flesh-and-blood American men who transformed land use patterns across

North America between 1790 and 1900. Men found farming appealing because it offered them a chance to work for themselves, to have control of their own time, to avoid working for wages and above all to maintain control over their household.

The men who migrated to Northeast Arkansas in the early 1900s and who became tenant farmers sought independence and eventual land ownership. The evidence suggests that despite their dreams, farmers in Northeast Arkansas experienced diminishing opportunities for independence and land ownership as the economy faltered because large landowners controlled much of the land. Economic stability, job security and more importantly the fulfillment of the idea of land ownership were increasingly elusive goods for southern tenant farmers.

After years of financial struggle and unrealized expectations mainly caused by the unavailability of land, their failure to achieve the ideal of "manly" independence obtained by land ownership was a factor in tenants' decisions to join vii the Southern Tenant Farmers Union. For the tenants, the union addressed many of their immediate concerns including receiving a fair share of New Deal monies and notably that the union supported the belief in individual land ownership.

This thesis examines Southern tenancy and men's expectations of landownership in the years leading up to beginnings of the Southern Tenant Farmers

Union and the ideology of If manly independence" achieved by climbing the agricultural ladder rising from tenant farmer to landowner. A statistical comparative study of changes over a thirty-year period {1900-1930), a period that has not been closely studied, provides the means to understanding tenants' response to the many social and economic changes that occurred in Northeast Arkansas from 1900 to

1930.

Keywords: Southern tenancy, Manly independence, Southern Tenant Farmers Union,

Arkansas, Southern Manhood viii

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... iii

ABSTRACT ...... vi

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ...... X

LIST OF TABLES ...... xii

PREFACE ...... xiii

INTRODUCTION ...... 15

INDEPENDENCE AND LANDOWNERSHIP ...... 26

THE AGRICULTURAL LADDER ...... 31

CHAPTER ONE SEBORN JONES: THE STORY OF A TENANT FARMER ...... 34

WORK IN SAW MILLS, GINS AND FACTORIES ...... 61

THE TENANT'S FAMILY ...... 68

FAMILY AND THE EFFECTS OF WAR ON TENANTS ...... 75

WOMEN'S WORK AS TENANTS ...... 78

CONCLUSIONS ...... 83

CHAPTER TWO THE CHANGING FORTUNES OF NORTHEAST ARKANSAS TENANTS, 1900 TO 1930 ...... 85

THE CONCENTRATION OF LAND OWNERSHIP ...... 88

COST OF LAND INCREASES CONSIDERABLY ...... 92

IMPROVED LAND CREATES A RISE IN THE NUMBER OF FARMS ...... 99 ix

FARM SIZES CUT IN HALF ...... 107

POPULATION UPSURGE ...... 110

AVERAGE AGE OF TENANT FARMERS ON THE RISE ...... 115

KING COTTON WEAKENS ...... 127

CONCLUSIONS ...... 133

CHAPTER THREE THE RESPONSE OF THE SOUTHERN TENANTS ...... 135

TENANT IDEOLOGY ...... 138

STFU'S METHODS AND GOAL FOR LANDOWNERSHIP ...... 141

BANKHEAD-JONES ACT ...... 150

CONCLUSIONS ...... 160

THESIS CONCLUSION ...... 162

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 164

PRIMARY SOURCES ...... 164

SECONDARY SOURCES ...... 170 X

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1- Map of Arkansas with County Level Craighead and Poinsett Counties ...... 87

Figure 2- Average Price per Acre of Land (Land Only) ...... 90

Figure 3- Average Price of Acre of Land (includes land and buildings only) ...... 90

Figure 4- 1900 Total Value of Farmland and Improvements (Except Buildings) ...... 93

Figure 5- 1930 Total Value of Farm Land Arkansas- County Level in dollars ...... 94

Figure 6- Arkansas Counties in 1900: Total Acres of Land in Farms ...... 97

Figure 7- Arkansas Counties in 1930: Total Acres of Land in Farms ...... 98

Figure 8- Number of Farms, 1900-1935 ...... 101

Figure 9- 1910 Poinsett County, Total land in farms- 101,370 acres ...... 102

Figure 10- 1920 Poinsett County, Total land in farms- 127,124 acres ...... 102

Figure 11- 1930 Poinsett County, Total land in farms- 182,671 acres ...... 103

Figure 12- 1910 Craighead County, Total Land in Farms 192,005 ...... 103

Figure 13- 1920 Craighead County, Total Land in Farms 204,899 ...... 104

Figure 14- 1930 Craighead County, Total Land in Farms 260,148 ...... 104

Figure 15- Poinsett County Farms Operated by Owners & Tenants (1900-1935) ...... 106

Figure 16- Craighead County Farms Operated by Owners & Tenants (1900-1935) ..... 106

Figure 17- Change in Average Size of Farms (in acreage) 1900-1935 ...... 109

Figure 18- Growth in Number of Farms by Size in Acres (1900-1930) ...... 109 xi

Figure 19- Change in Population 1900-1930 ...... 110

Figure 20-1930 Arkansas Counties Rural Farm Population Map ...... 113

Figure 21- Map of Poinsett and Craighead Counties 1915 ...... 120

Figure 22 - Map of Poinsett and Craighead Counties 1898 ...... 120

Figure 23- Average Age of Tenants 1900-1930...... 122

Figure 24- Number of tenants by age category- Gilkerson Township ...... 125

Figure 25- Number of tenants by age category- Bolivar Township ...... 125

Figure 26- Number of tenants by age category- Tyronza Township ...... 126

Figure 27- Change in Price of Cotton 1900-1940 ...... 132

Figure 28- Cotton Farmer Cost of Production/Profit ...... 132 xii

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1- Spillman's Agricultural ladder Model ...... 119

Table 2- STFU Tenant Survey ...... 144 xiii

PREFACE

This study was inspired when around four years ago the granddaughter of

Seborn Jones, knowing I was pursuing a career as a historian, casually asked if I wanted Seborn's journals. When first handed to me, I expected typical journals full of casual comments about the day's activities. As I read them, I found the journals fascinating from a historical perspective. From the beginning, I knew that this was someone that I wanted to know more about. Written by an educated white man who moved from Illinois in the Midwest to Arkansas in the South and who worked as a tenant farmer, these journals are somewhat unique. The early volumes document

Seborn's search for independence before he married, the pleasurable things he did along the way, provide descriptions of some of the interesting places he visited and the people he met. The later journals, the ones Seborn kept the last few years of his life and the ones used for this study, are compelling because even in his brief daily comments he expressed the day-by-day struggles and hardships he experienced living as a tenant farmer in Northeast Arkansas.

Although this study is based on a great deal of statistical analysis, its foundation was most certainly Seborn's personal journals. Statistical data alone cannot completely capture the extent to which the responses of Arkansas tenants to worsening economic conditions centered on their thwarted hopes of achieving xiv independence through landownership. Seborn's story is therefore at the center of this larger story of economic and social change. 15

INTRODUCTION

To character and success, two things, contradictory as they may seem, must go together­ humble dependence and manly independence; humble dependence on God and manly reliance on self. William Wordsworth

For more than a century before 1900, American men migrated across the continent in search of land, building farms in one region after another as they sought to achieve the status of independent landowners. The possibility of freehold land ownership and the independence that came with it had an enduring appeal for millions of flesh-and-blood American men who transformed land use patterns across

North America between 1790 and 1900. Thomas Jefferson may have romanticized the yeomen farmer's lack of interest in money, but it was not capitalist interest alone that drove men, as they acquired land and turned it to the production of food and fibers for sale in markets in America and Europe. 1 Men found farming appealing because it offered them a chance to work for themselves, to have control of their own time, to avoid working for wages and above all to maintain control over their household. This independence was possible as long as they could manage the labor

1 Joyce Appleby, "Commercial Farming and the "Agrarian Myth" in the Republic," The Journal of American History 68, no. 4 (March 1982): 833-849. 16 of their dependents, who by the post-bellum period consisted of their children and their wives. 2

Just like generations of men before them who went west seeking land and new opportunities, the men who migrated to Northeast Arkansas in the early 1900s and who became tenant farmers sought independence and eventual land ownership. Newly emerging economic opportunities from levee construction, in

Northeast Arkansas during the late 1890s, provided land for railroads and opened up rich swamp lands for farming. The availability of these new lands brought in the booming timber industry and then opportunities for farming on newly cleared acreage. The evidence suggests that despite their dreams, the men in Northeast

Arkansas experienced diminishing opportunities for independence and land ownership as the economy faltered because large landowners controlled much of the land.

2 The ideal of yeoman independence has been described in a variety of ways: competence, producerist manhood and household mastery. Historians have identified the ideal of land ownership as the basis for manly independence at various time and places in American history, though undoubtedly its contours varied somewhat by region and period. See e.g. Daniel Vickers, "Competency and Competition: Economic Culture in Early America," The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., 47 (Jan. 1990), 3-29; Stephanie McCurry, Masters of Small Worlds (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); Stephen Kantrowitz, "Ben Tillman and Hendrix Mclane, Agrarian Rebels: White Manhood, "The Farmers," and the Limits of Southern Populism," The Journal of Southern History, LXVI, No.3, (August 2000),497- 524. 17

In the first decades of the 1900s cotton, rice, and tobacco farmers, including tenant farmers and sharecroppers, found themselves struggling and lagging behind other farmers in the nation.3 Fluctuations in prices for crops, especially for cotton and rice, and lack of modern mechanization lessened many of the farmers' incomes to such a degree that often they only had enough to meet their bare needs. Tenant farmers faced an extra burden because they did not own land. Moving from one plot to another as often as three or four times a year, they struggled constantly to make a living and always searched for that next piece of land to work. With increasingly low profit margins, southern tenant farmers gradually became dependent on the property owners, who generally provided them with land and housing in return for more than one-half of the cash from the sale of crops farmed by their tenants. Economic stability, job security and more importantly the fulfillment of the idea of land ownership were increasingly elusive goods for southern tenant farmers.

3 Even though there are legal and material differences between sharecroppers and tenants, the term "tenants" used throughout this study includes all types of tenants (cash, rent, and share) and sharecroppers. Tenants besides their labor typically provide the tools necessary to work the land (mules, wagons, and farm implements) and in theory- legally own the crop and pay a share to the planter. Sharecroppers on the other hand typically provide labor only and receive a share of the profits from the crops. Sometimes the distinctions between the two were not that clear and depended on the makeup of the oral contract between the planter and the tenant/sharecropper. 18

During the early 1930s, anxious tenant farmers in Northeast Arkansas nearly lost whatever independence remained in their lives when Roosevelt's New Deal programs failed to help them; unable to climb the agricultural ladder from tenant farmer to landowner, many of the farmers eagerly joined the newly formed

Southern Tenant Farmers Union. After years of financial struggle and unrealized expectations mainly caused by the unavailability of land, their failure to achieve the level of landowning independence, which American men had long cherished, was a factor in tenants' decisions to join the STFU. For the tenants, the union addressed many of their immediate concerns including receiving a fair share of New Deal monies. At least as important though, the union supported the belief in individual landownership. Tenants understood that the desired end objective of tenancy was landownership. Although the STFU was not as successful as its members hoped, one of the successes for the STFU was passage of government legislation such as the

Bankhead-Janes Farm Tenant Act, which in theory provided for a credit plan to assist tenant farmers in purchasing land.

To a considerable degree, historical literature on American tenant farmers has down played the connection between tenant farmers' aspirations to landed independence and their gradual politicization over this issue. Most of the literature on tenant farmers consists of broader studies on the South, which examine the period just after the Civil War and Reconstruction in the late 19th century and studies 19 that focus on the 1930s in connection with the establishment of the Southern

Tenant Farmers Union (STFU) and New Deal programs. Many of these studies emphasize the economic stresses placed on tenant farmers in the South and suggest they were less stable and financially less well off than farmers in other areas of the

United States.

For example, David Conrad in The Forgotten Farmers (Urbana, University of

Illinois Press, 1965) explains the STFU as a response to the New Deal's Agricultural

Adjustment Act, which reduced the amount of acreage available for cultivation and therefore drastically curtailed the opportunities available to sharecroppers. (The program failed to distribute any of the benefit payments to tenants.) The author's focus is on the Agricultural Adjustment Administration's (AAA) handling ofthe cotton program and its favoritism toward the landlords, but he does not focus on the tenants' aspirations to become independent landowners. Jerold Auerbach agrees that the main motivation for the STFU was disenchantment with New Deal policies. He finds that the STFU adopted a socialistic critique of the New Deal, advocating the collectivization of southern farming.4

4 Jerold Auerbach, "Southern Tenant Farmers: Socialist Critics of the New Deal," The Arkansas Quarterly, Volume VII, (Winter 1966): 113-131. 20

Donald Grubbs in Cry from the Cotton (Chapel Hill: The University of North

Carolina Press, 1971} rejects historian Jerold Auerbach's argument that the STFU was founded solely on Socialist ideology but agrees that the STFU members were agrarian radicals who supported reforms such as cooperative farming. Building on

Conrad's argument, Grubbs finds that the New Deal failed poor tenant farmers in the 1930s by discriminating against them in distributing benefit payments, which went to commercial farmers but not tenants. Additionally, Grubbs contests claims that whereas the union espoused racial equality, it allowed its branches to be racially divided. Grubb instead argues that the Union accomplished something the country could not and that was racial equality.

Other studies have focused on the changing economic fortunes of southern farmers. Gilbert Fite in Cotton Fields No More (Lexington: University of Kentucky,

1984} examines tenant farming during three periods: after the Civil War until the turn of the century, World War I to the New Deat and the period after World War II.

Fite identifies several factors that contributed to negative changes in tenant farmers' lives over the three periods. According to Fite, smaller farms, falling cotton prices, reduction in farm animals kept and farmers choosing not to grow personal crops for their own use, reduced the available cash farmers had to purchase food, goods, clothing or medical services. Fite further suggests that cotton and rice 21 mechanization and New Deal farm subsidies, including price supports and acreage reductions, displaced many tenant farmers, forcing them off their farms.

In a 1984 article, historian Pete Daniel builds on Fite's research by explaining the failures and complications of the government programs enacted to help poor farmers during the New Deal period.5 Daniel finds that government programs and subsidies for cotton significantly benefited the landowners but not the tenant farmers or the sharecroppers. Daniel examines the government's attempts to save the cotton industry and shows how programs requiring landowners to plow over a large percentage of their cotton fields, in an attempt to raise cotton prices, effectively tossed tenant farmers off their temporary homes. Although Daniel does not specifically address the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, his evidence suggests that in 1934, the year the union organized, a significant number of complaints to the

Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) against planters by tenant farmers came from the Arkansas Delta cotton lands. Daniels explains, 11 0f the 1,457 complaints of eviction received by the AAA by September 1934, 477 came from

Arkansas." 6 This is important because it shows that over thirty percent of the

5 Pete Daniel, "The Crossroads of Change: Cotton, Tobacco and Rice Cultures in the Twentieth Century South." The Journal of Southern History 50, no. 3, (August 1984): 429-456.

6 Ibid., 440. 22 complaints received from all the Southern states affected by AAA programs came from anxious tenant farmers in Northeast Arkansas.

Indus Newby, in Plain Folk in the New South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State

University Press, 1989), approaches the subject from yet another angle, examining what happened to the tenant farmers after the Progressive era due to industrialization and the development of cotton mill industry. Newby looks at the failure of government programs and focuses on the poor farmers who chose to leave their farms to work in the mills in order to make a living. Newby finds that tenant farmers left the farms in search of jobs and economic opportunities and although they adapted easily, in some cases they were no better off and worked long hours in difficult situations.

As these examples illustrate, most of the literature on southern tenant farmers and the organization of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union has focused on the consequences of the Depression during the early 1930s and tenants' responses to the effects of New Deal programs including the Agricultural Adjustment Act.

These studies naturally include analyses of falling cotton prices and the government's attempts to stabilize the cotton industry with New Deal programs. In addition, a handful of historians have looked at the inter-racial aspects ofthe STFU trying to understand why and how black and white tenants joined forces for a 23 common cause in the STFU and were able to work together in the ordinarily racially divided South. A few other scholars have studied the Socialist ideologies of the

Union's initial organizers. Others briefly examined the Southern Tenant Farmers

Union members' grievances in order to understand the Union's popularity.

Absent from these studies for the most part has been a close examination of the ideological aspirations of the men who joined the Southern Tenant Farmers

Union. One exception, however, is a suggestive essay published in 1988 by

Alexander Yard, "'They dont regard my Rights at all': Arkansas Farm Workers,

Economic Modernization, and the Southern Tenant Farmers Union."7 Yard argues that sharecroppers and tenant farmers aspired to become "independent farmers" who worked with their families instead of with other wage earners, and hoped eventually to move up the agricultural ladder to own and operate their own farms.

They became distressed during the 1930s because of landlords' attempts to evict them and replace them with day laborers who worked for wages. As Yard states,

"economic motive alone is an inadequate explanation ofthe unionists' desires."8

7 Alexander Yard, "'They dont regard my Rights at all': Arkansas Farm Workers, and the Southern Tenant Farmers Union," The Arkansas Historical Quarterly 47, no. 3 (Autumn 1988): 201-229.

8 Ibid., 208. 24

This study extends Yard's inquiry into the motivations of the tenant farmers in Northeast Arkansas who joined and supported the Southern Tenant Farmers

Union. It seeks to expand historical understanding of the STFU by going back in time. It will interpret some of the earlier and less explored records in order to provide historians a better understanding of tenant farmers' expectations in the early 1900s and their reactions to declining opportunities for financial success and land ownership over the thirty-year period that preceded the Depression.

To analyze tenant farmers' expectations of land ownership in Northeast

Arkansas in the early 1900s, this study examines land promotional materials, local newspapers, Arkansas "boosterism" and tenant correspondence. These sources enable us to identify the reasons men and families moved to this region of the South and tenant farmers' belief that they could achieve independence through land ownership. Statistical comparative studies of changes over time in the number of farms owned, acreage, percent of distribution by tenure, length of tenancy, age of tenants and changes to local demographics over a thirty-year period {1900-1930), a period not closely studied, provide a way to understand tenants' response to those changes. This research provides an opportunity to examine how the failed opportunities for owning land led tenant farmers in Northeast Arkansas to join the

Southern Tenant Farmers Union, which advocated for land ownership. 25

One window into tenant farmers' expectations of land ownership in Arkansas from 1900-1930 can be found in the personal journals of Seborn Jones, a white tenant farmer who lived in Northeast Arkansas during the period 1903-1921. His journals allow historians to examine life as a tenant farmer and the social, economic and family life of tenant farmers during this by-and-large unresearched period.

Seborn's journals, which offer an excellent beginning to uncovering some ofthis history, recount the narrative of his life and at the same time provide clues about the stories of the hundreds of other tenant farmers in this area. Close examination and research into Seborn Jones' life and daily activities as a tenant farmer is significant because it supports past research to indicate that southern tenant farmers struggled. More importantly though, the journals provide a backdrop to understanding the expectations, labors, and disappointments of men like Seborn

Jones, who migrated to Northeast Arkansas at the turn of the twentieth century.

The journals provide detailed information about Seborn's personal finances along with entries concerning the wide-ranging difficulties and great effort associated with living as a tenant farmer. The journal entries are placed in context with statistical data for three townships within Poinsett and Craighead counties

(where he lived) and target a specific period from 1900 to 1930. Census records from 1900, 1910, 1920, and 1930 provide some of the statistical data necessary to identify changes over time. Additionally, information available from the U.S. 26

Censuses of Agriculture and government reports such as Census Bureau 1916 report on Plantation Farming in the United States provide data such as tenancy rates, income, landownership and general demographics from these censuses in order to evaluate change over time.

Seborn died in 1921 at age sixty-one well before the Depression and thus he never became a member of the STFU. Nevertheless, there is good reason to believe his experiences and aspirations were typical for tenant farmers in Northeast

Arkansas during the period from 1900 to 1930. Many of these other tenant farmers did join the STFU, for reasons that can be identified using records from the Southern

Tenant Farmers Union. The collection housed at the University of North Carolina and the Southern Tenant Farmers Union museum in Arkansas contains primary source documents, including letters from members telling about their struggles and requests for assistance from the union. In addition, articles from local newspapers

provide us with the communities' thoughts and concerns during this period of change including economic concerns and the availability of land.

INDEPENDENCE AND LANDOWNERSHIP

For much of its history, American culture tied the ideals of independence and

manliness to landownership. American men in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries believed that rights and power also came with landownership. The 27 independent small farmer was the ideal man and the ideal citizen. According to historian Richard Hofstadter, the agrarian ideal of the small farmer, whom Jefferson called "the most precious part of a state," had by the nineteenth century become

"an American creed, a nationalist ideology."9 From images of Presidents to images in literature, the picture of the ideal independent man on the family farm carried into the early twentieth century.10 Farmers almanacs carried the message and so too did farm journals which encouraged boys to "Stick to the Farm !"11 The belief in

landed independence remained a part of America's master narrative.

The ideal of landed independence was always deeply connected, at least in the South during the 19th century, with masculinity and manhood. In the early

nineteenth century, young white men in the South headed to the Midwest to find

land to achieve not only economic independence but also to achieve what they

called "manly independence" a psychological independence from control by their

patriarchal fathers. 12 For white male household heads in the South before the Civil

War, this independence would be built on their ability to operate farms on which

9 Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform From Bryan to F.D.R (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1963), 25, 28.

10 Ibid., 31.

11 lbid.,32.

12 Joan Cashin, A Family Venture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 34. 28 they controlled their labor of their wives, children, and servants or slaves. 13 During

Reconstruction, freed slaves built their future aspirations around the promise of forty acres and a mule, sharing with white Americans the belief, that landownership represented the best available route to economic autonomy for themselves and their families. 14 Though African American freedmen did not obtain the land they sought, many preferred sharecropping to wage work in the fields, because at least it offered them the chance to work with their families and control their labor.15

Operating one's own farm, even on rented land, meant independence from white plantation owners, as well as the ability to direct the daily work of one's wife and children. The ideal of "manly" independence resonated with white and black men alike.

As recent studies have shown, ideals of manly independence through landownership continued to motivate men who joined agricultural organizations and movements like the Agricultural Wheel, the Farmers Alliance and the Southern populist People's Party in the late nineteenth century. Southern men had a shared

13 Stephanie McCurry, Masters of Small Worlds (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995}, 13-19.

14 Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution (New York: Harper & Row, 1988}, 70-71, 104.

15 Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Library, Scholarly Publishing Office, 1985}, 61-62, E-book http://hdl.handle.net/2027 /heb.00656/ (accessed May 15, 2011}. 29 culture "as the master[s] of... small farm household[s] ... as independent citizen[s], soldier[s] and voter[s)."16 The notion of manhood, which was also defined in terms of independence, citizenship, productivity, household mastery and patriarchal responsibility, existed in the South even within biracial organizations. 17 White men in particular imagined themselves as independent, while the dependency of white women, children, and black men reassured them of their status as worthy citizens.

By the 1880s, large landowners and speculators in some parts ofthe country had driven up the price of land, causing many small famers to become landless or to become beholden to creditors. In the 1880s and 1890s, the agrarian Populists fought to preserve their aspirations to independent land ownership, attacking land monopolies and landowning by immigrants?8

Populists supported agrarianism and as some argue, "appeared to be reactionaries in search of the lost world of Thomas Jefferson," a country of small self-sufficient farmers who could also participate in the market economy.19 Based

16 Stephen Kantrowitz, "Ben Tillman and Hendrix Mclane," The Journal of Southern History LXVI, no. 3 (August 2000): 498.

17 Ibid., 522.

18 William Cooper and Thomas Terrill, The American South: A History (Lanham: Rowland & Littlefield Publishers Inc, 2009), 536-538.

19 Ibid., 538. 30 on a set of common experiences and expectations, the Populists envisioned themselves as male "producers" whose ownership of land would allow them to rely on themselves and their dependents. Fighting against high land prices and a controlling credit system, faced with losing their farms and independence, farmers in the 1880s and 1890s fought for land reform policies and land collectivization.20

Despite changes in the economic structure of farming, there is evidence that many American farmers in the early twentieth century continued to cling to a notion of themselves as would-be patriarchs who could achieve the status of independent

household heads if only they could obtain farms of their own. One place where that

ideal remained alive, it will be argued here was, Northeastern Arkansas. Almost certainly, the men who shared this ideal understood that the old ideal had changed.

By now, it no longer entailed self-sufficiency, since farmers in the early twentieth

century participated more fully than had their ancestors in a commercial capitalist

society and met more oftheir subsistence needs through the purchase of mass

produced consumer goods than in the past. However, the idea that landowning

offered autonomy or "manly independence," making it possible for a man to have

self-fulfillment and self-determination, was still very much alive. That

20 Steven Hahn, The Roots of Southern Populism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 269-289. Robert J. McMath, "C. Vann Woodward and the Burden of Southern Populism," The Journal of Southern History LXVII, no. 4 (November 2001):746. 31

landownership would provide a way for a man to take care of his family

responsibilities, to be a good citizen, and to be responsible for his own work and

labor and that of his wife and sons. 21

THE AGRICULTURAL LADDER

Scholars have shown that American men's strategies for achieving autonomy through landownership varied by place and time. Some men acquired land outright with the help of their families. Others rented land and saved what they earned with the eventual expectation of buying their own farms. Farmers generally understood that a man who did not inherit a family farm might start out as a young man working

on his father's farm, and as he gained experience, equipment and capital would

eventually be able to purchase a farm. As scholars began to study the effects of the

disappearance of "free land" and the growth of tenant farming in American

agriculture in the early 1900s, the term "Climbing the Agricultural Ladder" similar to

"Climbing the Corporate Ladder" was introduced and became commonly used to

describe this path to land ownership.22 Movement up this "theoretical" agricultural

ladder in practice brought increased income and greater independence. A wage

21 Yard, "Arkansas Farm Workers, and the Southern Tenant Farmers Union," 228.

22 Carl Wehrwein, "An Analysis of Agricultural Ladder Research," Land Economics 34, no. 4 (November 1958): 329. 32 laborer would typically earn less than a tenant farmer would and the assumption was that a landowner would make more than either. In addition, a landowner would need to provide less supervision for a tenant farmer who provided his own mule and plow, working on a smaller farm or responsible for a particular piece of land than a wage laborer or a sharecropper working on a larger plantation using the landowner's capital.23 likewise, a man who owned his own farm would have no supervision and be very independent.

The culture of tenant farming during the early 1900s included the belief in the almost certain possibility of climbing this agricultural ladder from worker, to tenant farmer, to land owner. It was a familiar concept in agrarian society. 24

Tenants generally understood this agricultural ladder and in Northeast Arkansas, landownership still seemed in reach in the early twentieth century.

In the first few decades of the twentieth century, however, a vast array of changes occurred that left most tenant farmers unable to climb the agricultural ladder to the top rung to achieve land ownership. Besides failing to achieve

23 Lee J. Alston and Joseph Ferrie, "Time on the Ladder: Career Mobility in Agriculture, 1890-1938," The Journal of Economic History 65, no. 4 (December 2005): 1070.

24 Felix Belair, "President Offers Plan to Cut Evils of Farm Tenancy," The New York Times, February 17, 1937. Margaret Jarman Hagood, Mothers of the South (New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 1977). Raleigh Barlowe and John F. Timmons, "What Happened to the Agricultural Ladder," The Journal of Farm Economics 32, no.l (February 1950):30-47. 33 landownership, some tenants became even more dependent on planters, as they faced the possibility of falling down the ladder to sharecropper or wage laborer.

In order to understand clearly these men's expectations and responses to economic hardship, scholars would benefit from consideration of their very existence as tenant farmers. How did their struggles to achieve independence affect not only their financial well-being but also their responsibilities as husbands and fathers? How did their economic difficulties affect their ability to assert their authority within their own families, and thus their sense of themselves as men?

Understanding how their growing economic challenges affected tenants' relationships with their wives and children is crucially important in considering tenants' response to changes from 1900-1930. Their daily practices and lifestyle, their way of life mattered and can only be understood by taking a close examination of tenants' daily activities and responses to their social, political and economic environments. 34

CHAPTER ONE

SEBORN JONES: THE STORY OF A TENANT FARMER

What was daily life like for a tenant farmer and his family living in northeast

Arkansas in the early twentieth century? The private journals of Seborn L. Jones provide us a unique opportunity to understand the daily activities and lives of

Northeast Arkansas tenant farmers. 25 Seborn's writings, even his sometimes- mundane thoughts and comments on daily activities, give a voice to tenant farmers in the early 1900s.

To understand the circumstances and tell the story of an event historians sometimes use diaries (and often from the elite) to research the past. Journals like

Seborn's provide historians with a way to understand the past through an individual's experiences. During the last five years of his life, from March 1916 to

December 1921, Seborn recorded his daily activities, financial transactions and feelings- however simple they might have been. This chapter examines Seborn's writings during those five years to provide historians with a picture of a tenant

25 For the most part, the spelling and grammar have been left exactly as written in the journal. Changes or corrections were only made when clarification was necessary. 35 farmer's way of life including daily activities, work, consumer habits and family construction.

For historians, having the privilege of being the first to examine a private journal and conduct original research on a document is an exciting moment.

Historian Laurel Ulrich said it best, "Opening a diary for the first time is like walking into a room full of strangers .... enjoy the company."26 By looking at the private lives of individuals, historians can understand the human element in history and learn from others' experiences. Seborn's journal provides us with a personal perspective from someone living as a tenant farmer and much more. The entries in the journal represent the problems and concerns that were most important to Seborn. The journal illuminates not only the social and economic environment in Northeast

Arkansas but also demonstrates how Seborn managed the tasks of daily living and working as a tenant farmer without government subsidies such as FOR's New Deal

Programs or the benefit of modern mechanization.

Seborn recorded various financial transactions between himself and landowners, and other budget matters including accounts of debts owed, logs of time worked on the farm, money earned working as a laborer, other financial and moneymaking transactions and just as important, the work of his wife, Florence; his sons: Logan, Riley, Bill and Simon; and his daughter Myrtle. The journal provides a

26 Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife's Tale (New York: A. Knopf Inc, 1990), 35. 36 record of Seborn's efforts to maintain the household finances and expenditures

(which he was solely responsible for making) but more importantly, it provides a

record of his efforts to control his household and family relationships. There are also firsthand accounts of tenants and landowners interactions, the interworking of tenant's family and men's role as "masters" of their household from the tenant's

perspective. The journal also provides a record of the economy in Northeast

Arkansas during this period and the effect of being landless on a typical tenant farmer.

Seborn Layman Jones was born September 18, 1860, in a small town in

Southern Illinois called Frankfort. He grew up working on his father's farm, helping

to provide the labor that gave his father the much-desired status of an

11independent" household patriarch. For a time, it seemed that Seborn wanted a

different life for himself. In his first steps to secure his own independence, Seborn

acquired an education. When he was a young man in 1882 at just twenty-two years

old, Franklin County, Illinois certified Seborn to teach elementary school and in

1884, the Public Schools of the State of Illinois certified Seborn to teach in their

public schools. 27 He became a teacher, but had his sights on other enterprises. In

27 Franklin County, Illinois, 11County Superintendent's Certificate, Second Grade" (County Superintendent of Schools, 1882). Public Schools of the State of Illinois, "Teacher's Certificate Second Grade" (County Superintendent of Schools, 1884) 37

September 1887, 26-year-old Seborn Jones left Illinois on the Cotton Belt South keeping a journal of his experiences along the way. The journal offers clues that help us to understand why he left. He called his father "the master," suggesting that he resented working under the control of the older man. He referred to his stepmother as "the queen." Seborn was a middle son; very likely, he realized that his father favored his oldest son and perhaps his children by this second wife, meaning that Seborn could expect little financial help from him.

Visiting with uncles, cousins, siblings and friends along the way Seborn began a stirring adventure with his male friends, as he traveled through Southern Illinois,

Missouri and into Arkansas. Seborn did the typical things a young single man might do when sowing his oats and in search of independence; he cozied up to women and occasionally imbibed a little. His story was not unique; in fact, his journey was typical for a young man in search of independence. Just eighty years earlier, also in his early twenties, Seborn's grandfather Thomas Jones, born in South Carolina during the America Revolution had also moved "west" to Indiana seemingly in search for independence. And before him, Seborn's great grandfather, William

Horrall, had left his home in Virginia, where he was born in 1757, and ventured to

South Carolina in 1783 at the end ofthe American Revolution. Seborn appears to

have been following a long tradition for the men in his family by moving away from 38 home and doing what many men did at that time to acquire their own independence separate from their fathers and family. 28

According to his Illinois State marriage certificate in 1892, Sehorn at the age ofthirty-one married twenty-one year old Florence Odie in Franklin County lllinois.29

Together they had seven children. By 1903 at forty-three years old, Sehorn and his wife had migrated from his hometown in Southern Illinois to Stoddard County,

Missouri, where he also became certified to teach. Within a few years they would move again: this time, to Arkansas.

Arkansas's agricultural economy had struggled after Reconstruction.

Particularly in central Arkansas, with its limited credit system and falling cotton prices, some farmers were faced with losing their farms. Even before 1882, disgruntled farmers in Arkansas began to organize agrarian movements including

Arkansas's Agricultural Wheel, which the nationwide Farmers Alliance eventually absorbed; by 1891, the Populist movement had stirred in Arkansas as well.30

28 Steve Blankenship, "William Raoul's Alternative Honor: Socialism and Masculinity in the New South," in Southern Masculinity Perspectives on Manhood in the South Since Reconstruction, ed. Craig Thompson (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009), 83.

29 County Clerk of Franklin, "Certificate of Marriage" (State of Illinois, County of Franklin, 1894).

30 Matthew Hild, "Labor, Third-Party Politics, and New South Democracy in Arkansas, 1884-1896," Arkansas Historical Quarterly 63, no.1 (Spring 2004): 24-25. 39

Meanwhile, the State of Arkansas was heavily in debt. The State turned to

"boosterism" and began recruiting new settlers from Northern and Eastern States distributing over 15,000 pamphlets in 1870 but without much success because of

Arkansas' image as a backward state. State officials tried to recruit new settlers again a few years later, and magazine articles on Arkansas described the states as "a good poor man's country."31 By 1886, a writer for The North American Review thought no other place had more "advantages for the home-seeker and capitalist than Arkansas."32 Private boosters and real estate brokers worked on changing

Arkansas's reputation and by the early twentieth century, it seemed that Arkansas was managing to attract newcomers at last.

The evidence suggests that during this same time industry in Arkansas (and particularly northeast Arkansas) was developing its large forest regions. The construction of the St. Louis Southwestern Railroad in 1881, the St Louis, Iron

Mountain and Southern Railroad in 1882, which ran through the County Seat,

Harrisburg (near Bolivar Township) and the Kansas City, Fort Scott and Gulf Railroad in 1882 opened up the region. Additionally, the building in the late 1890s of new

levees provided land for construction of the Jonesboro, Lake City and Eastern

31 James P. Henry, Resources of the State of Arkansas {Little Rock: Price & McClure Printers, 1872), 132.

32 Simon P. Hughes, "Progress of Arkansas," North American Review 143, no. 357 (August 1886): 141. 40

Railroad and also opened up access to rich swamp lands near the St. Francis River. 33

The expansion of railroads into Arkansas provided faster shipping methods for the logging industry and increased the prospect of making a living in the booming timber industry or farming on the cutover timberlands. During this period several sawmills, including the Chapman Dewey Lumber Company and the Chicago Mills and Lumber, came into the area as the large forest regions were cleared, first offering temporary jobs and then reselling the cleared land. Chapman Dewey Lumber Company owned over 100,000 acres in Northeast Arkansas; after removing all the trees, it formed the

Chapman Dewey Farms Company to act as the agent responsible for renting or selling the cutover land.34 The availability of new lands and the railroad made

Arkansans optimistic about the economy and growth of agriculture in the state.35

Since he had visited the state in 1887, Seborn would have been well aware of the prospect of new opportunity in Arkansas. Promotional materials about the

region were certainly available in Missouri, where he lived in 1903. In 1904, the

33 Carl Moneyhon, Arkansas and the New South 1874-1929 (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 1997), 98. Whayne, Jeannie. "Reshaping The Rural South: Land, Labor and Federal Policy, Poinsett County, Arkansas, 1900-1940." PhD diss., University of California, San Diego, San Diego, CA, 1989.

34Jeannie Whayne, "Reshaping the Rural South: Land, Labor and Federal Policy" (PhD diss., University of California, San Diego, San Diego, CA), 1989.

35 Carl Moneyhon, Arkansas and the New South 1874-1929 (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 1997), 61. 41

Land Department of the St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern and Little Rock and Fort

Smith Railways issued the Northeast Arkansas real estate guide targeted to potential land seekers and distributed it at the 1904 Saint Louis World's Fair. 36 The booklet advertised 2,960 acres of railroad land for sale, listing Craighead County land prices as starting at $3.00 an acre. The marketing for Poinsett County in the same publication stated, "Lands are very cheap, but are good quality and prices will rise rapidly with demand."37 Sometime between 1903 and 1906, Seborn moved his family to Northeast Arkansas, the place he had visited just a few years before as a young man. Continuing to take actions necessary to support his family, Seborn received a teacher certificate again. At this time, Arkansas did not have a "normal school" for teacher training and the only teacher certification that existed was typically a weeklong summer institute. Since Seborn had worked as a teacher in the past, it appears that at least when he first came to Arkansas, he may have expected to earn a living by working as a teacher rather than farming.

Shortly after receiving his teacher certificate, Sehorn's life took a new turn.

Instead of working as a teacher, Seborn worked off and on in the sawmill industry,

36 The 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition was also known as the Saint Louis World's Fair

37 S. L. Kay, Northeast Arkansas, 2nd ed. World's Fair Industrial Series No. 9 (Little Rock: Land Department of the St Louis Iron Mountain & Southern and Little Rock & Fort Smith Railways, 1904). 42 then turned to tenant farming in Gilkerson Township, a rural community in

Craighead County in Northeast Arkansas. One can speculate that it was difficult for

Seborn to earn a living teaching because teaching positions in a small community were limited and the wages offered were not enough to support his family. In 1900, the average salary for a teacher in Arkansas was close to $32 a month, even less in rural areas; with four children under the age of twelve, Seborn would have been unable to support his family on a teacher's salary had he been successful in securing a teaching position. Since 1874, Arkansas funded its schools through taxation based on property. Consequently, rural schools in Arkansas and most farming counties such as Craighead and Poinsett had less money available for schools than larger cities and usually hired whoever would work for less. 38 Schools in rural areas were often small and frequently older students or recent graduates were responsible for teaching.39 By the late 1890s to early 1900s, school districts had begun to prefer

38 Clara Kennan, "Early Days in Teacher Education: The First of Two Articles on the History of Teacher Education in Arkansas/' The Jrby Project, Early Days in Teacher Education: The First of Two Articles on the History of Teacher Education in Arkansas. http://www.irbyproject.com/early-days-in-teacher-education.htm (accessed May 1, 2011).

39 Carl Moneyhon, Arkansas and the New South 1874-1929 (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 1997), 74 and Clara Kennan, "Early Days In Teacher Education: The First Of Two Articles On The History Of Teacher Education In Arkansas," The lrby Project, Early Days in Teacher Education: The First of Two Articles on the History of Teacher Education in Arkansas. http://www.irbyproject.com/early-days-in-teacher-education.htm (accessed May 1, 2011). 43 female teachers, who were typically paid salaries less than half of those earned by men. Consequently, women replaced men as a majority of teachers.40 Although some monies came from the State, local communities through a local levy of five millage and a $1.00 poll tax were mostly responsible for the school systems in their communities. Arkansas rural schools only spent somewhere between $4 and $7 per student on their school system while the national spending per student was around

$28.41 Often rural residents felt that the expense for school was an unnecessary additional financial burden. Additionally, because rural school terms were short, typically less than five months in order to accommodate the local farming seasons, a teaching position would have not provided year around income, leaving Seborn

unemployed most of the year. Seborn would still have needed to find other work for the rest of year or search for a piece of land to farm during a difficult period, when other tenants had already secured a place for the spring or summer crops.

Seborn did not own land, so besides teaching, his only source of income was

his labor and the labor of his wife Florence, sons Logan, Riley, William and Simon,

and daughter Myrtle. In his earlier journals, Seborn's entries document his and his

fifteen-year-old son Logan's work at the local sawmills and Seborn's work at the

40 David Tyack, The Best One System: The History of American Urban Education (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974), 62.

41 Moneyhon, Arkansas and the New South 1874-1929 74, 128. 44

Kerch Mfg. Company.42 Seborn's entries also document the beginnings of his work tenant farming. Besides working in the local sawmills industry, tenant farming was very likely the most viable way he had to provide an income and a home for his family. It also would have provided him with the chance to work with his family, supervising the labor of his wife, sons, and daughter on land surrounding the house in which they lived.

Certainly Seborn was not the only newcomer to Arkansas who believed that cotton farming would provide a good way to make a living. By 1910, just four years after Seborn moved to Craighead County, census data shows that the population in that county increased by an astounding 42% over 1900 numbers. The figures show that from 1890, just a few years after the first railroad construction until 1910, the population changed a staggering 210% from 12,025 residents in 1890 to almost

28,000 in 1910.43 One can speculate that, like others who came to Arkansas, Seborn believed moving to Arkansas would bring him independence as a landowner and financial stability for his family.

42 Seborn Jones, "The Journals of Seborn Jones, January- December 1910- 1912," Unpublished personal journals, Jones Family Papers, Author's personal collection, San Marcos, CA.

43 Arkansas Institute for Economic Advancement, "Arkansas Population," University Of Arkansas Little Rock, http://www.aiea.ualr.edu/Arkansas-census­ data/161-Arkansas-historical-census-data.html. (accessed March 8, 2009). 45

Moreover, we can surmise that since Seborn had already taken the first few steps on the agricultural ladder, having grown up working on his father's farm and later as a young man worked as a wage laborer for his father and his uncle, Seborn

believed when he returned to farming, that it would provide a route to

landowning.44 Since Seborn's father John and his uncle Thomas (John's brother) were both farmers, Seborn would have certainly recognized the independence and autonomy that came with being a household head and a family farmer. Seborn also

knew that his father, John, had been able to provide for a comfortable subsistence for his family (which included his wife and ten children) with farming.45 Tenant farming thus would have seemed to offer Seborn some independence, even though

landowners often watched over a tenant's work as Seborn's journals document.

Presumably, with the help of three sons who would soon be entering their teens, he

could save enough money eventually to buy a small farm of his own.

Seborn may still have been optimistic about his chances of becoming

independent on July 12, 1912, when the Lee Manufacturing Company provided him

44 Seborn Jones, "The Journals of Seborn Jones," Unpublished personal journals 1887-1889, Jones Family Papers, Author's personal collection, San Marcos, CA.

45 Seborn's father, John Jones, listed on the Illinois 1870 Census as a farmer and landowner with real estate holdings valued at $800 and personal property valued at $400; and on the 1860 Census as a farmer and landowner with real estate holdings valued at $500 and personal property valued at $150. 46 with a Certificate of Credit Endorsement, an important step in establishing his credit worthiness at that time.46 In the journal, Seborn's entries display his efforts to maintain control over his financial situation by keeping track of all his debts and the debts owed to him. Yet by 1916 when the journals begin, he was evidently no closer to achieving his financial goals. Seborn's records show that he often felt cheated on trades or deals, a particular concern with oral agreements and crafty landowners.

"September 27, 1916- Sent check to bank to pay note that my friend C. W. Morgan failed to pay for me." May 5, 1917, "Went to town to get grub & feed and traded cows with C. W. Morgan got cheated a little."47 Moreover, the credit system itself was a major source of problems. Seborn used store credit much like today's consumers use credit cards. Since he as the head of the household was responsible for the family's finances and was frequently in town, Seborn would be responsible for purchasing their groceries and supplementing their food supply as needed. Often he recorded his negotiations with the local grocer to get more groceries on credit.

Sometimes the family was dependent on a landowner to provide groceries to meet their basic needs. April 22, 1916, "made a deal to get more groceries from R. W.

46 Lee Manufacturing Co. "Certificate of Credit Endorsement #1201" (John Magnus President, July 12, 1912)

47 Seborn Jones, "The Journals of Seborn Jones, January- December 1916- 1921," Unpublished personal journals, Jones Family Papers, Author's Personal Collection, San Marcos, CA. 47

Smith for the summer."48 Seborn's dependence on credit from local merchants and planters is due to the furnish system where landowners gave tenants credit (often at their own stores) rather than cash with the expectation that any monies needed to repay the debt would come out of the current season's crop profits. Local businessmen and planters generally controlled the local banks and stores in Poinsett

County, and prices at local stores, owned by the planters and businessmen who offered credit to tenants, were generally higher than at cash stores. To some degree the price mark-ups probably helped protect the store from losses due to unpaid debt but at the same time kept tenants in a cycle of debt to the planters.

Despite their continued efforts, it must have been clear within a decade after the family's arrival that they could not afford a home, even in the developing community in Northeast Arkansas. In the newspaper, Harrisburg Modern News, a

January 1918 real estate advertisement lists two bungalow style homes with limited acreage for sale between $3200 and $4000. In the same newspaper, a local bank offered home loans at 8% interest.49 Consumers today would consider that rate high. The loan's annual interest of over $300 would have been almost 50% of

Seborn's average annual income. It is unlikely that Seborn would have qualified for

48 R. W. Smith was a prominent business owner in Harrisburg who after catching measles during an outbreak in the area died on January 11, 1918.

49 Real Estate Advertisement, The Modern News, May 6, 1921. 48 a home loan. During the Depression, it would have become even more difficult for tenants to qualify for loans after the closure of the only two banks in Harrisburg,

Poinsett's County seat.

Taxes were another financial burden. The government required tenants to pay personal property taxes and Seborn consistently paid these taxes despite his limited income. On June 5, 1917, he wrote, "To town registration day & tax assessment day for us."50 Since Seborn did not own land, he only paid taxes on his personal property. Typically, tenant farmers' possessions consisted of plow, wagons, mules and hoes. In 1915, Seborn listed his household possessions in the journal, recording six chairs and rockers, one stove range, one kitchen cabinet, one dresser, three bedsteads, one spring cot, one sewing machine, one sow and five pigs, one heating stove, which he valued in their entirety at $90.00, then added one graphophone and thirty records valued at $24.50. In 1920, listing few possessions,

1 Seborn paid $2.60 for personal property taxes. 5 Besides personal property taxes,

2 Arkansas also required voters pay a poll tax in order to vote. 5 Voters were required to pay the poll tax ahead of the election, sometimes almost a year before. Even

50 Jones, "The Journals of Seborn Jones, 1916-1921."

51 1920 Personal Property Tax Record, by (Harrisburg, Arkansas: Poinsett County Arkansas, 1920), microfilm, p. 150,

52 Arkansas Constitutional Amendment #2 1892, Amendment #9 1908 49 though the individuals name was placed on a 11VOter list," voters were still required to present the receipt to an official before voting. Usually the voter had to pay the

3 tax months before the election; generally by July for a November election. 5 Even though the poll tax fee in Arkansas was only one dollar, its requirement kept many

4 poor tenants and sharecroppers from voting. 5 In many counties in Arkansas, the local sheriff or local officials controlled the poll tax sales because they served as the tax collectors in the area. Because they controlled the voting lists and poll tax receipts, they essentially had the power to restrict who voted - planters or tenants.

Without the power to vote, tenants had no recourse to remove corrupt officials from office or to throw out local laws that were unfavorable to tenants. This was especially significant during the 1930s when local officials arrested tenants and members of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union for allegedly breaking a variety of local laws. Tenants who joined the STFU in the 1930s opposed the poll tax and

5 supported its repeal by organizing meetings and signing petitions. 5

53 "Arkansas to Vote on Repeal of Poll Tax," The Sharecroppers Voice, Spring 1938.

54 Calvin Jr. Ledbetter, "Arkansas Amendment for Voter Registration without Poll Tax," Arkansas Quarterly 54, no. 2 (Summer 1995): 138.

55 J.R. Butler, Memphis, Tennessee, to H. L. Mitchell, December 10, 1935, Southern Tenant Farmers Union Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Durham, North Carolina. so

Seborn's family's economic status changed very little over the five years between 1916 and 1921. Plowing with mules and working by hand with hoes was the way Seborn and his sons, like other tenant farmers and sharecroppers, worked the land.56 On April 5, 1919 Seborn wrote, "Listed for cotton with 3 plow mules."57

One of the major difficulties facing the farm industry in the South during this time was the absence of machinery and equipment that could have increased production per acre substantially. The main ingredient missing was capital. Landowners sometimes were not much better off than tenant farmers were and often worked side by side with their tenants. On occasion Seborn records in his journal the interactions of the landowner and himself working side by side in the fields. Here

Seborn seems to see himself on equal status with the landowner even though he is careful to record the work he does alongside the landowner. Some landowners were fortunate enough to avoid the daily grind but even so were not wealthy enough to invest in machinery. The lack of mechanization, which continued into the

1930s, limited cotton yields keeping tenants' income low but at the same time keeping more tenants working.

56 In 1919, Seborn worked as a tenant and provided the mules necessary to work the land.

57 Jones, "The Journals of Seborn Jones, 1916-1921." 51

The journals also provide a record of the landlords' supervision over tenants and the tenants' dependence on landowners. Seborn regularly recorded the visits the landowners made to the property to check the progress of the crops and work.

In an example of how landowners controlled a tenant's finances and supervised his work, Seborn wrote on June 5, 1921- 11A. Hamilton brought our groceries out & seemed well pleased with our work so far."58 Landowners often brought groceries to tenants, charged them to the tenant's account and settled at the end of the crop season. Not owning land affected Seborn and his family's diet as well. When they did not have a personal garden and could not afford fresh fruits and vegetables,

Seborn and his family lived on what some describe as the 3Ms diet: molasses, meal and meat.

Seborn did not live long enough to take advantage of the New Deal in the

1930s and the transformation of the southern agriculture through mechanization and government subsidies. Even with the New Deal, however, Seborn's position as a tenant farmer would very likely have worsened. The 1930s left many sharecroppers and tenant farmers without jobs and land as machinery and production methods improved and as the Agricultural Adjustment Act paid landowners to remove acreage from production.

58 Jones, "The Journals of Seborn Jones, 1916-1921." 52

The costs of not owning land were personal as well as economic. Living as a tenant farmer meant moving sometimes three or four times a year from farm to farm. As Seborn's journal shows, having fewer possessions most likely made the moves easier. Tenant farmers moved frequently because they did not own land; consequently, there was always the need to pursue future opportunities for work.

For example, from July 17, 1915 to August 19, 1915, Seborn and his family secured a lease from JH Mardis for $4.00 per month.59 JH Mardis' father, John P. Mardis was one ofthe early settlers in Poinsett County. One month later, August 20, 1915,

Seborn moved his family to E. Y Adelsberger' property and rented a home and land from him until March 27, 1916. The rent was $5.00 per month, a huge 20% increase over his previous obligations.60 Again, Seborn offhandedly recorded after one such move, ~~we moved to Mr. A.C. Cooper's place on Monday March 27, 1916, some rain on road."61

In his journal, Seborn recorded the daily work he performed for Mr. Cooper and was careful to separate out and record the work completed on his share of land as well. At the same time, some of Seborn's entries provide a record of the likely

59 In 1915 and 1916, Seborn worked as a tenant farmer who "rented" land and shared the crop profit with the planter.

60 Jones, "The Journals of Seborn Jones, 1916-1921."

61 1bid. 53 satisfactions he felt as a tenant farmer, such as working with his sons and being able to organize his own work day. These gave him a measure of control over his life that

he would not have possessed while working for wages at the sawmill.

April 6, 1916- Thursday plowed all day got mine done at 2:30 and put in the time for Mr. Cooper

April11, 1916- Finished Coopers corn by 10 o'clock. Bill & I planted our corn and boys helped

April13, 1916- Planted Mr. Cooper's corn till noon, finished coopers corn by 2:30 plowed up ground for sweet potatoes.

April 24, 1916- Monday bedded cotton land for Mr. Cooper & planted in the evening

April 25, 1916- Finished one piece for him by 8:30 then I done nothing in evening to the woods a while.

April 26, 1916- Planted on my cotton all day

April 27, 1916- Finished planting on my cotton by 10 o'clock and rested in the evening

Particularly after the Civil War, this area of the South became a cotton

dependent market. Seborn and his family, just like everyone else, were reliant on

cotton. Several journal entries provide evidence that Seborn and his family worked

planting cotton, growing cotton or picking cotton. To maintain some control over

his labor and his crop, Seborn meticulously recorded the weight of the cotton they

picked for the day and sometimes the wages paid for a day's work. He wrote on

January 21, 1919, "We picked cotton till noon 294 lbs rained us out for the day we 54 got $13.01 picking cotton." Once again, Seborn wrote on January 27, 1919- picked cotton all day got 349 lbs. January 31, 1919- picked cotton got 412 lbs."62

The journal entries demonstrate how the fluctuation in cotton prices affected Seborn (much like tenants in the 1930s), often to a greater degree than landowners. Other sources show that the price of cotton fluctuated over the years and often tenant farmers received only pennies an hour for their hard work. In an

October 3, 1919 article in the local newspaper, The Harrisburg Modern News, The

American Cotton Association urged farmers to hold their cotton because cotton prices were going down.63 We can find in the next day's entry the steps Seborn takes to have control over his labor and crop. Seborn wrote about taking the cotton to town to sell it only to bring it home because the prices were too low. 64 October 4,

1919 "I went to Marked Tree but did not sell the price was down to low I thought."

Seborn wrote again, November 21, 1919 'Took Bale off- got home at 9:30."

Returning just one day later to pick up his cotton Seborn notes, "November 22, 1919

"Back to Marked Tree got what we left but did not sell cotton."65 Seborn's story

62 Jones, "The Journals of Seborn Jones, 1916-1921."

63 "Urged to Hold Cotton/' The Modern News, October 3, 1919.

64 In 1919, Seborn worked as a tenant farmer who had some control over the crop. His entries show that he was responsible for bringing the crop to the market.

65 Jones, "The Journals of Seborn Jones, 1916-1921." 55 mimics that of H.L. Mitchell who in 1919 held his cotton when it was selling for .75 a pound. The landowner told Mitchell that the price was going to rise to $1.00 per pound. Unfortunately, cotton prices fell to .10 per pound soon afterwards. Mitchell and many others, like Seborn, who could not afford to hold their cotton, lost hundreds of dollars.66

Seborn's journal entries support the experiences of the tenant farmers and members of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union in the 1930s in that tenant farmers, who were becoming more dependent on landowners, constantly negotiated and bargained with planters for work. In the following entries, Seborn records his visits with a landowner to negotiate work for the next crop and reports a trip to town in order to secure a deal for the sale of rice for the next three years. Seborn secured work from the same landowner; however, his family was required to move from a home near the cotton fields to the property where the rice fields were situated.

October 14, 1916- Went to town and to Mr. C. W. Morgan's for the night and made a deal for next year on rice farm came home in evening at 6pm Sunday.

October 29, 1916- Boys went to see if Mr. Morgan was ready for us to move or when.

November 7, 1916-Teams came at last and we loaded up by 1:15 with three wagons and hiked it to Morgan's rice farm got there by sun down.

66 H. L. Mitchell, Mean Things Happening In This Land (Montclair: Allanheld, Osmun, 1979), 10. 56

November 15, 1916- Went to Harrisburg and closed up deal for rice crop for 3 years or more home at sundown.

Seborn wrote less than a year later, on September 8, 1917, "run the pump for the last time on C. W. Morgan place by golly."67 His entries over the next few months are testament to how little tenants earned for a year's work, which clearly affected the tenant's ability to buy land. In 1917, Seborn and his family spent the whole year planting rice, running the water pumps late at night every night, shoring dikes, and cutting rice. Just one week later on September 13, 1917, the Jones family moved from Morgan's rice farm to a house owned by a man named Henry Evants.

Seborn was again looking for a farm for the next year. A few months after leaving the Morgan rice farm, Seborn's journal entries voice his frustration at how little money he had earned and how the landowner controlled all the money. December

1, 1917- "No return for our rice yet" January 1, 1918- "Morgan went to Memphis and got the returns for the rice and we after about a week got a little settlement with him but was all his way and we virtually got nothing for our whole year work only $129.50 and had a duce of a time for that much."68 H.L. Mitchell, one of the founders of the STFU, came to Northeast Arkansas almost twenty years after Seborn

in 1927, also with expectation of providing for his family. Mitchell only earned a

67 Jones, "The Journals of Seborn Jones, 1916-1921."

68 1bid. 57 total of $185 that year and earned part of that money picking strawberries in spring.69 Increasingly, many tenant farmers and sharecroppers were also becoming dependent on landowners to sell their crops on the market. Unfortunately, after the landowners took control of the cotton or rice, they sold it and then decided how much money to give to the tenants. One can tell from all his detailed record keeping and daily logs that Seborn, like other tenant farmers during this time, worked hard all year and someone else, typically the landowner, reaped the majority of the profit.

In March 1921, Seborn again searched for a home and work for almost a month. Early March was the start of cotton season and it was extremely important that Seborn find land to work to get a crop in before April. March 1st or "furnish day" was the day that stores opened lines of credit for tenants, depending of course on whether the tenant had secured land to work.70 Seborn's writings document the amount of effort and the almost two months it took to find a place to move. Seborn met with three different people before finally making a deal with Mr. Hamilton to work on his land in exchange for a team of horses and $75.00. Subsequent entries in

1921 demonstrate the constant need to find another place to live and work. like all tenants, Seborn and the landowners made all the negotiations and agreements

69 Mitchell, Mean Things Happening in This Land, 17.

70 Ibid., 19. 58 orally, which often created later disputes. Over the next decade, oral contracts continued to be the usual method of agreement between tenant and landowners.

The tenants who joined the STFU often experienced aggravation when it came to settling the year's earnings with landlords and had no recourse because of oral contracts. Because he was landless, the responsibility of locating a place to live and work caused so much stress and anxiety for Seborn, that he recorded daily his struggles, failures and feelings about finding a new place to live and work. If tenants were dissatisfied with their current situation, typically with no legal recourse against the planter, their only option and their only way to regain some of their independence was to find a new parcel of land to work. Moving was, as historian

Jeannie Whayne suggests, a way for "landless farmers to avoid complete domination and maintain some control over their lives."71 We find this in many of Sehorn's journal entries.72

March 8, 1921 -See Geo Dill about place

March 14, 1921-to town to see about place- no good

March 30, 1921 went to see NJ Whitaker about place- no deal

April 2, 1921- Back to See Whitaker

71 Jeannie Whayne, A New Plantation South (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996}, 7.

72 Jones, "The Journals of Seborn Jones, 1916-1921." 59

April 4, 1921- Back to See Whitaker- no good, feel bad

April6, 1921-Went to see Morgan's still don't know what to do

April 8, 1921- No Place- Maybe in a few days

April 9, 1921- Out to A Hamilton place

April10, 1921- Out to Hamilton's place again

April11, 1921-Trade with Hamilton get a team & home $75 for work if we

could

April 18, 1921 - Move to Hamilton place

Seborn must have finally felt relief to find a place for his family to live and work, despite the low return for the year. Over the next few months, as on every other farm, Seborn attempted to be responsible and remain in control of his financial situation by keeping track of the work he did for Mr. Hamilton and the groceries that Hamilton brought out to the farm for the family. Since Seborn was educated, unlike the typical tenant, he kept detailed records of his expenses and monies earned. The landowners supposedly kept track of expenses incurred by the tenant and the tenant usually ended in debt without any way to dispute. Just four • months later, August 13, 1921, Seborn wrote, "Took bills in for A. Hamilton & was let loose for the time being with $65 due A. H."73 From August 1921 until January 1922,

Seborn's entries are unclear as to the arrangements he made with Hamilton, while

73 Jones, "The Journals of Seborn Jones, 1916-1921." 60

Seborn and his family were able to remain on Hamilton's farm. Seborn occasionally mentions taking goods to Hamilton for debts owed. October 14' 1921- "We took load of corn to Mr. Hamilton and fixed up for 2 notes we owed."74 It is clear that toward the end of 1921 and until his death in January 1922, Seborn's economic and family position had worsened. It appears that by 1921, Seborn had fallen down the agricultural ladder to the status of a wage laborer. Entries from the last six months of 1921 show that Seborn continued to look for a plot of land to work while he and his sons worked randomly as wage laborers on at least two other farms, sold corn for cash, (corn that he was able to grow while living on Hamilton's place), and sporadically worked doing odd jobs. November 26, 1921- "I went to Greenfield but no good," November 27, 1921- "Logan went to see the A.D. Miller place for rice."

December 6 "To town to see Hazelwood & A. H. about the place but did not close the deal." By the end of the year, Seborn's oldest son, Logan who had recently married, chose to leave the family and to work his own piece of land to secure his position as

head of his household, much as Seborn had done after he married. In his final entry on December 31, 1921, Seborn stated, "Logan moved to the G. Smith place but I am

still on A. H. Place."

Although tenant farmers moved frequently they typically found little

improvement in their living or financial situations. But sometimes moving was the

74 Jones, "The Journals of Seborn Jones, 1916-1921." 61

only way to improve their situation. If a tenant could work a deal for land that had

room for him to grow produce in addition to cotton or rice, his situation would

improve slightly. As discussed earlier, being landless and the necessity to move frequently affected the tenanfs ability to become self-sufficient even in the simplest terms, such as growing extra crops. In 1920, Seborn recorded planting 32,000 slips

of sweet potatoes that covered almost four acres, not for personal use but for the

landowner's commercial market. Seborn also planted corn and beans but took care

of the landowner's share of the cornfield before he tended to his own rows.

Meanwhile, by this time he was regularly spending much of his time working for

wages, leaving his wife, sons and daughters to do a majority of the farm work while

he was away.

WORK IN SAW MILLS, GINS AND FACTORIES

By the early twentieth century, the development of industrialization made

available occasional jobs in the local sawmills, cotton gins, and factories. The very

same lumber companies that by 1930s controlled much of the land provided Seborn

with low wage jobs, which helped supplement his earnings. From July 3, 1915 until

March 26, 1916, Seborn earned $360 working at the Bott Bros. Stave Factory

performing various jobs.75 Trying to maintain control over his family and finances,

75 Jones, "The Journals of Seborn Jones, 1916-1921." 62

Seborn worked at the factory again from January 13, 1918 until November 24, 1918.

In November 24, 1918, Seborn records the last eleven months in one long entry.

January 13, 1918 to November 24, 1918- I put in most of the time working at

Bott Bros Stave factory and made expenses for the table while the boys Riley

and Bill made a cotton crop with Mr. Ohler on the John Ainsworth place and

only made two 475 pound bales on over ten acres after getting the cotton

out and matters settled up. 76

During 1920, he again worked intermittently at the Bott Bros. Stave Factory.

In his journal, Seborn commented that it had been over eighteen months since he last worked at the mill. Like many who went to work in mills, it took him away from his farm for a week or more at a time. Most roads in the rural communities were poor and farmers generally traveled by foot or in wagons. Because it was too far to walk from his home, Seborn stayed in a boarding house near the factory. His entry for May 3, 1920 reads, "Worked at factory all day & went to Mr. C. V. Kosser for the night & put up with him for the week at $1 per day." Recording his salary for working six days at the factory, on May 11, 1920 he wrote, "Payday $33.45" and again on May 24, 1920 "Worked May 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 at factory full time payday

$23.45."77 For every day Seborn worked and earned approximately $5 to $6 per day

76 Jones, "The Journals of Seborn Jones, 1916-1921."

77 1bid. 63 working 12 to 14 hours, he paid $1.00 for his room and board. Over 15% of his income went to paying for his housing while he was away (a percentage comparable to or even less than what Americans paid for housing in 2009). Just as in 1918,

Seborn still needed to meet the expenses of the family at home. Even though it appears Seborn's wages increased during 1920, work at the local mills was sporadic at best and was not a consistent source of income. In fact, when he returned to work at the mill in 1920, Seborn had not worked there for almost two years. Within a very short period after returning to the factory on December 10, 1920, Seborn

records the closure ofthe factory, "Factory shut down for an indefinite time."78

While working at the stave factory, Seborn was still responsible for his family

and the farm and needed to return home frequently on either Saturday or Sunday.

On Saturday, July 3, 1920, he wrote, "At home all day hoed cotton some, sent off 20

gal of blackberries."79 Seborn clearly understood the cultural expectations for men

and was aware of his obligations as a tenant farmer, husband and father. Seborn worked on the farm on Saturdays and supervised the responsibilities left to his

family. Often on Sundays, he visited with family and friends and was happy to find

his family doing well. On Sunday, July 11, 1920, "At home today Mr. & Mrs. Carson

78 Jones, "The Journals of Seborn Jones, 1916-1921."

79 1bid. 64 took dinner with us today.80 Late in eve I went back to Mr. Kosser's (boarding house) for the night to work at factory some more." Sunday, August 8, 1920 11At home eating watermelons and mush melons all day till ate in the eve then went back to Kosser's for the night for work next week." Sunday, November 7, 1920, 11At home

& fine day, boys gone rabbit hunting, had duck for dinner today back to Mr. Kossers for the night to work next week."

In the early 1900s, the large forest areas and the logging industry in

Northeast Arkansas helped tenant farmers subsist. Tenant farmers, sharecroppers, and others who worked at the sawmills set up tent cities around sawmills, known as

log camps. Although Seborn did not live at the sawmill camps, every so often he worked at the mill cutting trees; clearing land and selling cut trees or lumber to the sawmill for processing. July 16, 1916, 111 went to fire at the saw mill for a man at $2

per day." The saws at the mill ran on steam and it was necessary to keep the fire hot

in order to produce enough steam to run the saws to cut the timber. During July

and August of 1916 Seborn worked firing at the sawmill earning $2.00 per day until

August 3rd, when he wrote "worked till 9:30 and stopped on account of price cut

from $2.00 to $1.50 a day" quitting after his pay was cut by 25%. Clearly, Seborn's

manhood was challenged when he was asked to work for less money. Seborn did

80 Seborn's son married the Carsons' daughter and three years later, shortly after Seborn's death, his sixteen-year-old daughter married the Carsons' twenty five year old son. 65 not know that by 1934 things would be so bad that the Southern Tenant Farmers

Union only sought .75 or $1 for a day's work. Over the next few years, in addition to farming, Seborn and his sons worked off and on at the sawmill but most often they cleared land and sold the timber to the mill for processing. Access to the railroads and improvements in transportation allowed Northeast Arkansas and the community surrounding Seborn to develop. On several occasions, Seborn wrote about going to the sawmill to get commodities. Seborn was able to supplement the family's food supply by getting goods such as flour, sugar, lard, and coffee from the

log camps in the winter. The log camps housed a general store and sold

merchandise to their workers "January 11, 1919- Went with Riley to log camp got flour & lard." "February 13, 1919-Went to log camp got coffee and sugar."81

With the extra money Seborn earned, from time to time he participated in a

consumer society and purchased consumer commodities such as shoes, pants,

suspenders, and other items from the local dry goods stores owned by a few elite

planters, like E. Ritter who also operated large plantations and provided housing for

men who worked for Chapman & Dewey Lumber. Seborn's entries provide

examples of his control over his finances and his ability to negotiate with the local

banks for credit. On July 22, 1916 he wrote "I went to Harrisburg, made a note for

$11.00 at the bank came home got 10 lb meat at .13 cents, 1 pair suspenders .25, 2

81 Jones, "The Journals of Seborn Jones, 1916-1921." 66 handkerchiefs .10 & 1 razor .05, 1 pair supporters .15, 2 dozen eggs .25." The landowner and size of farm worked determined whether tenants had personal gardens or room for farm animals. As shown earlier, one of the effects of not owning land was that sometimes tenants purchased staples such as eggs, milk or even chickens from local stores, owned by planters, because they did not have time or space to plant personal gardens or raise small farm animals. Indeed, landowners discouraged tenants from having individual gardens because fruits and vegetables matured in summer about the same time as cotton, taking time away from tending to the cotton crop.

In 1919, Seborn noted that he paid $7.00 for two pair of boots. August 9,

1919 "Went to Marked Tree to get groceries & shoes for boys spent $17 in all $7.00 for shoes." In January 1919, Seborn reported earning about $40 for approximately

1,000 pounds of cotton. Costing almost 20% of January's income, in comparison to modern standards, that was certainly a very expensive purchase, although the boots would probably last a long time and be made of high quality materials that would be worth repairing when needed. On May 6, 1921, the local dry goods store, A. J.

Tanenbaum's, advertised men's shoes in the Modern News newspaper at 50% off or

$3.50 a pair. 82 A few months later Seborn wrote, "November 21, 1921, Went to town got boots." Seborn was able to purchase these items for his family because,

82 "Tanenbaums Quality Store," The Modern News, May 21, 1921. 67 even while farming, he worked at various jobs including: cutting and hauling wood, working at the stave factory and working at the sawmill, which provided him with extra cash.

Hunting and fishing could also provide a way to supplement earnings produced through tenant farming. Although Seborn wrote often about hunting and fishing, it is evident that he did not participate in these activities merely as a leisurely activity but used them to supplement his family's food supply (in the case of fishing and hunting) and to earn extra income by selling the meat and furs (in the case of hunting). January 17, 1920- "Boys & I went to town with 10 rabbits sold 9 gave Mrs. Malone 1- got groceries & came home." January 23, 1920- "At home today boys caught rabbits and took 13 to town."83

Limited by the amount of land he was able to secure, to some degree Seborn modeled his tenancy after the Jeffersonian ideal of a small self-sufficient family farm. The Jones family only succeeded with the cooperation of all family members.

They all worked, whether in the family garden (when they had one}, in the cotton fields picking cotton, in the rice fields, or hauling wood. The labor of every member of the family was vital to their survival. Seborn cut and sold wood to the local sawmills; when he had his own garden, he grew corn for sale; and when he could, he sold dairy products such as chickens and eggs to earn extra income. Seborn's wife,

83 Jones, "The Journals of Seborn Jones, 1916-1921." 68

Florence, worked also. "April10, 1916- Florence planted potatoes in the morning."

Typical of small farms in the south, women often worked in the family garden and often in the fields alongside their husbands. In 1916, Seborn's three oldest sons already ages 17, 18, and 20 still worked alongside their father daily in the fields, cutting wood, seeding rice, planting crops or picking cotton. By 1921, when she was fourteen, Seborn's daughter Myrtle began to help in the field doing work typically done by the boys. July 1, 1921, "Bill & Myrtle plowed corn all day & done well."84

The $129.50 income Seborn recorded in 1918 was from the labor of all seven people

in his family: two adults (Seborn and Florence), three almost grown boys and two younger children. If we give Seborn credit for fifty percent of the work, he would

have earned about $65 for the year and the other six individuals split equally would

have earned about $6 for a year's work. It would have been impossible for Seborn's family to carry on without the labor of all seven of them.

THE TENANT'S FAMILY

Like the tenants who joined the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, Seborn's journal confirms that, his was a patriarchal family, typical of a southern family at this

time. Consequently, Seborn bought the food and clothes, paid the bills, negotiated

financial arrangements, and worked outside the home. White Southerners held the

84 Jones, "The Journals of Seborn Jones, 1916-1921." 69 belief that a man was master over himself and more importantly over his family.85

Southern men saw themselves not in a slave and master relationship we might think of when we hear the word "master" today but as the master of a ship, responsible for his family in every way. Men like Seborn and the tenants in the 1930s existed in conflicting environments, sandwiched between being an independent man, or

"master" responsible for his family and being dependent on landowners. On one hand, society expected them to behave as independent and responsible adult men, masters of their own households. Yet on the other hand, as tenants, that same social order supervised and controlled them, as tenants, like dependent children.

Using the 1910 census as evidence, one can understand the gender structure of this community. Each household listing starts with the husband and lists his occupation only. The wives or women conspicuously listed beneath their husbands are associated with no occupation even though we know that they worked diligently on the farms. Seborn's wife was apparently solely responsible for the care of children and the household in general, as reflected in the near absence of entries in

Seborn's journal on disciplining the children, counseling them or seeing to it that they received an education. By the time his sons reached their teens, Seborn occasionally mentioned his disquiet about their behavior. "April 9, 1916 Logan gone

85 McCurry, Masters of Small Worlds, 304. 70 back to work for Harve Landers at $100 and board for a while (so he said)."86

Seborn, who was perhaps miffed that his son had decided to work for someone else, appeared to question the truth of his son's statement. About a month later, Seborn again expressed his disapproval at his sons' apparent disobedience. "May 4, 1916-

Too wet in the morning to plow boys gone to town against my will." Was he becoming concerned that he was losing control over them?

As a father, Seborn would have been expected to provide for his children and train them for a livelihood. His own father had provided Seborn with an education, which had enabled him to work as a teacher for some years. Yet Seborn's journal contains few entries about his children attending school, which would support the claim that the local community did not place any importance on the children of tenants attending school. Even though the nearby community of Harrisburg created its school system in 1868, Seborn's entries mention his children going to school only three or four times over the course of a five-year period. By the beginning of the journal entries in 1916, Seborn's two oldest sons were already 20 and 18 and most

likely already finished their schooling, but the younger children were still at an age where they might have been expected to be in school. Seborn does mention his 17- year old son Bill attending school on February 5, 1917, writing, "Bill went to school today." One could conclude that his children attending school was such an

86 Jones, "The Journals of Seborn Jones, 1916-1921." 71 uncommon occurrence that Seborn recorded it in his journal. In 1917, Arkansas compulsory attendance law had only been existence for six years, and state funding for high schools was available only on a limited basis beginning around that same time.87 On a few occasions, Seborn also recorded his daughter's attendance at school. On July 25, 1921, "Myrtle went to school." August 4, 1921 "Myrtle went to school." Although the journal does not say what grade Bill or Myrtle attended,

Myrtle would have been fourteen in 1921. Still, we can assume that she was not in high school. Most rural adolescents did not attend school beyond the 8th grade. In the South, fewer than one-half of all children attended school around the turn of the century. Most children attended school less than six months per year for fewer than five years.88 Typically, in rural areas the school calendar was set to accommodate the farming seasons. By 1917, Arkansas's school term was about five months, an increase from roughly two months around the turn of the twentieth century.89 Even though Arkansas at this time was developing a public school system, education was

not entirely free. Based on an article in the local Modern News newspaper, there

87 "The Public School System," in The Book of Arkansas, (Little Rock: NP, 1914), 130.

88 Steven Mintz, Huck's Raft (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 135.

89 Cook, George B, A Documentary History of Arkansas, ed. Fred C. Williams, S. Charles Bolton, Carl Moneyhon, Leroy T. Williams (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1984), 166. 72 was a fee, depending on the grade, of between $5 and $8 per 8-week term to send a child to school.90 Students had to show proof of paid tuition before they could attend school. In addition to the cost of tuition, the parents had to purchase the

required textbooks and supplies such as writing tablets and pencils.91 The financial impact of sending three or four children at a cost of $20 to $32, for eight weeks of schooling would have wiped out the money the family needed for food. Because

Seborn was a certified teacher, he presumably understood the importance of education, and his children were all literate. But for Seborn, like most Southern small farmers, his priority was to employ the boys' labor on his own farm,

particularly during harvest and planting season. Almost daily, Seborn recorded the work that his three sons did on the farm picking cotton, hoeing the fields, cutting

rice, hauling wood and other labor-intensive chores.

Though Seborn appears not to have prioritized education for his sons, he did

make an effort to provide for the family financially in case he died by purchasing life

insurance. The evidence in the journal indicates that in 1915 the cost of life

insurance police from The Mutual Aid Union was $8.80 for $150.00 coverage. The

Mutual Aid Union, established in 1907 in Rogers, Arkansas by R. H. Whitlow,

90 A. B. Caplinger, "School Notice," The Modern News, September 19, 1919.

91 Brown Druggist, "Notice School Books," The Modern News, July 7, 1918. 73 provided ordinary farmers and workers in Arkansas affordable life insurance.92 He paid for the life insurance policy by budgeting the $1.00 per month charge into his monthly expenses, exercising remarkable self-discipline in continuing to pay for the policy even as his income continually declined. Still, his financial legacy would amount to little in the end. Eventually valued at $750, his life insurance policy would have been sufficient to provide for his family for only a couple of years after his death, and still would not have given them enough for a house.93

Seborn's role, like any other father's, would have required him to do more than just provide financially for his children by making sure that they had a roof over their heads and food. It required a father to make difficult decisions and this was especially true when children were sick. Without healthcare, something in the

1930s the STFU sought for tenants, Seborn and most tenants knew that costs for medical care or medicines would be at the expense of something later on, keeping them in debt to the planters. Seborn's journal entries illustrate that he obviously worried about his children. Seborn clearly believed it was important to care for his children and his wife when they were sick and often wrote about sitting up all night

92 Gayle Bland, "The Mutual Aid Union Building," City of Rogers Historical Museum, http://rogersarkansas.com/museum/photo/mutualaidbuilding.asp (accessed November 25, 2010).

93 Jones, "The Journals of Seborn Jones, 1916-1921." 74 with them, calling the doctor to check on them, going into town to get medicine and staying home from work in order to care for them.

Seborn's journal suggests that for him, masculinity meant not only maintaining control over his finances but also managing his emotions. There are entries where

Seborn wrote almost without emotion about his sister dying, a friend dying and his own son's death. These entries seem, at first glance, almost detached. Tuesday,

March 6, 1917, "at home this morn at 10:30 got a phone message that my sister was worse and we went in to see her she did not know us and never got any better and

at 15 min before 2am she died." Wednesday, March 7, 1917, "at town at SW getting things ready for the burial for Thursday." Thursday, March 8, 1917, "At 2pm we

94 returned to the grave and laid her away at the (Ainsworth ) cemetery to await the

resurrection morn and came home all wore out."95 Though succinct, his choice of

words and their tone nevertheless carry a sense of hopefulness, sadness and love.

When Seborn's son died on August 27, 1921, through Seborn's words one can hear a

father's anxiety and fear. "Called dr. (to check on Riley, his son) he came but

nothing doing, at lOam Riley passed away peacefully."96 To know that Riley passed

94 The cemetery is named after Harrison Ainsworth family one of the early settlers in Poinsett County

95 Jones, "The Journals of Seborn Jones, 1916-1921."

96 1bid. 75 peacefully must have been comforting to his father. Seborn would not have wanted to see his son suffer and to know that he passed at home without discomfort was most likely soothing and consoling to him. We do not know why Riley died but that he had been sick for only a short period. Riley was only twenty years old and apparently a healthy young man before his illness. Sehorn's journal is absent of any entries that explain Riley's death and he does not elaborate on any long-term illness or difficulty that Riley may have suffered. Even if Seborn could not express his emotions publically, his brief words let us share a few of them.

FAMILY AND THE EFFECTS OF WAR ON TENANTS

In 1916, Woodrow Wilson was the Democratic nominee for President with the Democratic convention held in St. Louis, Missouri and the campaign slogan, "He kept us out of the war."97 Wilson clearly won the Arkansas delegates in the 1916 election and his running mate was Thomas Marshall from Indiana, where Sehorn's father lived. The country was divided at the prospect of going to war and with three teenage sons, Sehorn's vote went to the anti-war Democratic Party. On March 29,

1916, Seborn states "Elections today, primary, Democrats."98 Since Seborn only

records the Democratic primary election date, one can surmise that Seborn voted as

97 US History, "1916 Democratic National Convention," www.u-s-history.com/ (accessed April 2, 2009).

98 Jones, "The Journals of Seborn Jones, 1916-1921." 76 a Democrat. Arkansas voters typically followed the one-party Democratic South program with the exception of Northwest Arkansas, which was the only area with a

Republican following since the Civil War era.99

In 1916, the US was still neutral in World War I. That ended on April 4, 1917 when President Wilson declared war against Germany. Although World War I caused cotton prices to rise higher than they had been in years, the war also took sons offthe farms. Just four months later on August 6, 1917, Seborn wrote, 'To town with Logan {his oldest son) to pass the draft examination." Being a father during this period included watching your sons go to war. World War I affected

Seborn's family as much as World War I affected any other American. On August 10'

1917, the Modern News reported that 400 local young men were required to report to the local examination board.100 Seborn wrote, September 15, 1917, "Logan got

his card to go." September 19, 1917, "At 6 O'clock the boys, 83 from here started to

99 Diane Blair, Arkansas Politics & Government Do People Rule? {Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988), 45. Barth, Jay, "Democratic Party," The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture, http://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/ encyclopedia/ {accessed May 1, 2011). Barth, Jay, "Republican Party," The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture, Party," http://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/ (accessed May 1, 2011).

100 "The Selective Army Draft," Modern News, August 10, 1917. 77

Little Rock, sad hour for us." Still upset one week later, Seborn wrote, "All tore up about everything at home and abroad."101

It must have been a heartbreaking day for the whole town when eighty-three boys from a small rural area left for the war. Additionally, there was now a huge opening left in the labor force in this area. His son's draft into the war cut one-third of Seborn's farm labor. This was a fact of war that Seborn and many tenants had to face; young, strong men who had provided requisite labor were now fighting abroad, leaving a major gap in the labor force. Seborn and his family struggled to fill this gap as best as they could.

Seborn's family and economic situation worsened after the war even though by 1919 cotton prices rose to almost 35 cents a pound. The unexpected lower demand for cotton after the war, on top of a general surplus from the previous year's crop, caused cotton prices to drop severely, nearly collapsing the cotton economy. By 1920, the price of cotton had fallen over 50 percent to about 15 cents per pound.102 With the population of Poinsett doubling from 1910, by 1919 tenants and sharecroppers competed for any available land to work.

Additionally, Logan's military experiences seem to have made him reluctant to come home and work for his father after returning from the war. To Seborn's

101 Jones, "The Journals of Seborn Jones, 1916-1921."

102 "Cotton in 1919/' The New York Times, January 4, 1920. 78 great chagrin, Logan kept disappearing without telling the family where he was going. On February 1, 1919, Seborn wrote, "All bothered about Logan." Five days later Seborn heard from his son. "February 5, 1919, we moved today and heard from Logan. He had been in lllinois."103 One month later, Seborn commented again about Logan's absence. "March 18, 1919- No letter from Logan yet." The absence of the labor of his son Logan appears to have caused Seborn much distress as he struggled to maintain control over his family's financial fortunes. In 1919, with a volatile cotton market, as evidenced earlier, and less labor from the boys, the journal begins to provide evidence of an increased demand on the labor of Seborn's wife, Florence, and his daughter Myrtle.

WOMEN'S WORK AS TENANTS

In early twentieth century Southern farming communities most women worked on their family farms. Ideally their jobs were limited to the household and garden, but scholars have long understood that in poor farming families women also worked outdoors and in the fields. 104 In Seborn's journal, we find examples of his wife Florence and his daughter Myrtle working in the fields, like so many other tenants' wives and daughters. It was women like them who formed the all female

103 Jones, "The Journals of Seborn Jones, 1916-1921."

104 Cooper and Terrill, The American South: A History, 594-595. 79 locals of the STFU or who helped their husbands receive federal aid from the

Resettlement Administration in the 1930s.

Yet Seborn's journal entries gave them minimal recognition. Instead of crediting their work, he saw them socializing and wasting their time. This manner is similar to the Craighead and Poinsett County census records, which place men at the top, listing older sons who still lived at home as farmers but failing to identify the occupation of their mothers. Southern culture did not recognize women as workers or farmers even though it was common knowledge that wives, especially tenants' wives, worked beside their husbands on the farm. Tenant men still expected to be heads of the household and imagined themselves as fully responsible for their family's well-being while at the same time assuming their role as dependents of planters.

Florence, for her part, appears to have been more realistic than Seborn about the family's future prospects. As their farming income declined and their financial situation became increasingly dire, she would take steps early in 1919 to supplement the family's resources by taking in washing and ironing for cash.

On January 20, 1919, for example, Seborn recorded that, "Florence washed for Mrs. Mills." On January 21, 1919, "Florence worked for Mrs. Laura Bracher."

March 10, 1919, Florence went to Mr. Sanders at 30'clock in the morning and got 80 home at 4:10 in the evening." Monday May sth, 1919- "Florence went to Mr.

Bradshaw's with clothes."105

Did Florence become more assertive once she had begun to earn some cash through her own work? It is hard to know, but several of Seborn's journal entries provide clues that family dynamics may have begun changing subtly after she began her laundry business. Just as fieldwork had always been a family responsibility, to some extent Florence's laundry work now became a family enterprise as well. On

January 23, 1919, Seborn wrote, "Nothing in the morning, helped women wash in evening." On May 15, 1919- "Riley helped his rna wash till noon." As their economic situation grew increasingly dire, it seems that gender roles within the family were growing increasingly fluid.

Because Florence, Myrtle, and their female neighbors generally worked on their farms and in or near their homes, historians can hypothesize that they did not have the opportunity to go to town on a daily basis or travel by themselves on the train to nearby communities as Seborn and his sons frequently did. However, they did have some sources of independence. For example, Florence regularly attended church on Sundays even though by the mid-teens her husband almost never went with her. Religious and church activities provided an opportunity for women to

105 Jones, "The Journals of Seborn Jones, 1916-1921." 81 interact and socialize, and Seborn's journal provides ample evidence that Florence and Myrtle had friends and relatives who formed a network of social support.

July 20, 1919- Mrs. Austin + her daughters here.

February 27, 1921- Florence home with Sara in eve rest of us left here by

ourselves.

February 28, 1921- Florence came home from Sara Pendergast.106

Florence's relationships with other women were no doubt a source of emotional support for them all. In addition, they may have served increasingly as a counterweight to the authority of their husbands and a source of protection against actual or potential abuse. In the summer of 1919, Florence briefly sheltered a neighbor woman before she left her husband and moved back to Mississippi to be near her family. On Sunday July 13, 1919, Seborn wrote, "At home today Mrs.

Sanders leaves us today her and Mr. Sanders had racket last week she leaves him for

Miss [Mississippi] 'so she says."' 107 Seborn's sarcasm suggests that he disapproved of this act of female self-assertion. We do not know, however, whether he expressed his feeling of disapproval to his wife.

By 1921, it must have been clear to both Seborn and his family that his goal of securing his independence and household authority as a landowner would never

106 Jones, "The Journals of Seborn Jones, 1916-1921."

107 Ibid. 82 be achieved. By this time he was sixty-one years old and still working daily at difficult manual labor. Although Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 addressed the

Progressive Party Convention and called for a social insurance plan for the elderly,

Social Security did not develop in America until 1935, almost six years after the

beginning of the Depression. Sehorn's only financial security came in the form of his labor, which depended on his physical health.

Sehorn's journal increasingly reflected feelings of malaise. A few times, he was sick and stayed home from work. On January 11, 1921, "Still no work my leg

mending." On February 5, 1921, "Still feel very bad to town in morn home at 3pm saw no Dr. either so I am still feeling poorly." On May 13, "Still I am not able to do

any work rest of them cut brush getting in 10 hours." On May 21, 1921, "Got up this

morning & got a good fall and hurt myself. No good today."108

Finally, after a short illness at the age of 62 in January 1922, Sehorn died. Up

until his death, he still lived in Poinsett County, where he continued to work as a

tenant farmer, dependent on landowners and poor, never having achieved what he

hoped for, namely landed independence.

108 Jones, "The Journals of Sehorn Jones, 1916-1921." 83

CONCLUSIONS

Over the years, Seborn's journal tells the story of a southern tenant farmer's continued hardships and struggles as he worked to provide for his family and achieve economic independence. Early entries show Seborn renting land as a tenant and providing his own farming equipment including mules and plows. Later entries show Seborn becoming increasingly dependent on landowners, as prices for crops and opportunities for owning land decreased. They document a steady increase in the length of time it took for Seborn to find a place for his family to live and work.

Consequently, we find Seborn moving down the agricultural ladder from the rung of a renting tenant to that of a sharecropper. With cotton prices falling even further after the war years, Seborn, by the end of his life in the 1921, had fallen even further down the agricultural ladder to work primarily as a wage laborer.

Seborn's journal also reveals some of the human costs ofthis economic decline. It provides a firsthand account of the efforts it took to provide for a family, the grief of a man whose inability to afford medical care led to the untimely death of a promising son, and the frustrations that one father experienced as he fought to

maintain his authority as head of the household. As the family's financial wellbeing

became increasingly tenuous, Seborn gradually lost his authority as a husband, father and household provider and experienced a decline of deference from his wife

and children. 84

Is Seborn's story of decline and fall down the agricultural ladder and loss of

"manly independence" typical of Southern tenancy in the early twentieth century?

In order to answer that question, we need to examine evidence of how the farming economy of Northeast Arkansas was changing during the period. The following chapter will examine economic and demographic data from the region for the period from the 1900s to the 1930s. The data can be used to discern patterns in the availability of land, land prices, numbers of tenant-operated farms, farm sizes, population, and crop prices, in order to provide a clearer picture of how the economic and social environment of tenant farmers changed during the early twentieth century. 85

CHAPTER TWO

THE CHANGING FORTUNES OF NORTHEAST ARKANSAS TENANTS, 1900 TO 1930

In the first few decades of the twentieth century, tenant farmers still commonly believed that land ownership would supplant tenancy; however, a vast array of changes during the first three decades of the 1900s left most tenant farmers in Northeast Arkansas without any landownership. Farmers generally understood that the reasons a man worked as a tenant were to learn farming skills, to earn enough money to purchase farming equipment and eventually to own land in order to become independent and self-sufficient. In 1919, the associate editor of the Farm

Journal William Spillman stated, "Young men starting out with little capital frequently find it financially desirable to be tenants rather than owners because of the larger business they can conduct with limited capital."109 This was true for tenants in Northeast Arkansas and the South who generally rented because they had

no other choice when starting out.110

109 Charles L. and W. J. Spillman Stewart, B. H. Hibbard, "Land Tenure and Public Policy Discussion," American Economic Association, Supplement, Papers and Proceedings of the Thirty-first Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association 9, no. 1 (March 1919): p230.

The Farm Journal Magazine was and still is one of the magazines that farmers turn to for information on agricultural production, crops, technology, and government policies. The magazine has been in publication for over 130 years.

11°Cooper and Terrill, The American South, 562. 86

In fact, during the early part of the twentieth century in Northeast Arkansas the percentage of farms operated by tenants increased at the same time as the size of farms decreased. Meanwhile the price paid for a bale of cotton fell even though the price for an acre of land rose. These clashing factors ultimately resulted in few or no opportunities for tenants to move up the agricultural ladder, keeping them dependent on landowners. These mounting economic challenges directly caused decreased opportunities for land ownership, which trapped local tenants into a position of tenancy. Eventually, as they faced the prospect of permanent tenancy, these tenant farmers rose as members of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union.

Using numbers and graphs, this chapter focuses on economic and social conditions in two adjoining counties in Northeast Arkansas: Poinsett County, at the

heart and forefront of the Southern Tenant Farmers movement, and its bordering county and neighbor to the north, Craighead County. It will present data to illustrate the changes occurring in Northeast Arkansas from 1900 to 1930. 87

Figure 1- Map of Arkansas with County Level showing the locations of Craighead and Poinsett Counties. This map should be used in connection with all the charts and tables that follow to determine the name or location of a county. Source: http://www.google.com/images 111

111 Map of Arkansas image, jpeg http://www.google.com/images/ (accessed February 12, 2011). 88

THE CONCENTRATION OF LAND OWNERSHIP

Even before the 1904 World's Fair, a few men already owned and controlled

much of the land in Northeast Arkansas. Businessmen Ernest Ritter from Iowa,

brothers E.R. and W. B Chapman, Kansas City investors and W. C. Dewey from

Missouri owned large tracts of land in Poinsett County and eventually ran successful

local businesses including a lumber company and sawmill. 112 Ernest Ritter's brother

Louis and a few other prominent men controlled much of the financial network in the area, sitting as officers on the Boards of the local banks. Also by 1904,

speculators and corporations purchased large tracts of land in the area. In 1893

Chapman Dewey Lumber Company already held over thirty thousand acres of land in

Poinsett County's Delta region; by 1902, the company was the largest landholder in

Poinsett County. By 1904, Ernest Ritter who originally homesteaded 160 acres in

1889 was already on his way to establishing his enterprise E. Ritter & Co., which

included an ice plant, housing developments for Chapman & Dewey sawmill workers

and plantations. Ritter owned almost 2000 acres by 1910.113 The Iron Age Journal

dated May 8, 1913 lists the Tschudy Hardwood Company from Kansas City and the

Ozark Cooperage Company from St. Louis as jointly purchasing timberland in

112 Whayne, "Creation of a Plantation System in the Arkansas Delta in the Twentieth Century," 63-68.

113 Whayne, A New Plantation South, 23-24, 30. 89

Poinsett County for the development of lumber and stave mills in addition to a standard gauge railway. 114 After the timber was cleared the rich cutover land was converted to farmland; such that, by 1920, land promoted at $3.00 an acre at the

1904 St. louis World's fair was valued at over $60 an acre, allowing the few large landowners to control large tracts of land and businesses. (See Figures 2 and 3)

114 "The Machinery Market," The Iron Age 91, no. 19 (May 8, 1913): 1155. 90

Average Price per Acre (Land Only) $80.00 $69.67 $70.00 $60.00 $50.00 47.95 $40.00 $30.00 ..,._Poinsett $20.00 $10.00 $- 1900 1910 1920 1930

Figure 2 -Average Price per Acre of Land (Land Only) Source: calculated from U.S. Department of Commerce- Bureau of the Census, 1900, 1910, 1920 and 1930 Census, Agricultural Census, State of Arkansas, County, Tables I, II and Ill

Average Price per Acre (Land & Buildings) $90.00 $80.00 $70.00 $61.42 $60.00 $50.00 $40.00 -Craighead $30.00 -+-Poinsett $20.00 $10.00 $- 1900 1910 1920 1930

Figure 3- Average Price of Acre of Land (includes land and buildings only) Source: calculated from U.S. Department of Commerce- Bureau of the Census, 1900, 1910, 1920 and 1930 Census, Agricultural Census, State of Arkansas, County, Tables I, II and Ill 91

Thus, even though landless farmers may have come to Poinsett County

hoping to become independent, by the 1930s, opportunities for landownership had

been severely limited. Insurance companies and corporations owned much larger tracts of land and of course absorbed land depreciation into their corporate

finances. After the Depression, foreclosed and smaller farms continued to be

absorbed into those larger tracts of land. Even if limited land was available, at $60

an acre, the annual loan payments for a self-sufficient forty-acre plot, at the locally

advertised 8% loan rate, would have been more than the average tenant could earn

in the year. Even though the value of farms and land prices fell somewhat between

1920 and 1930, the monies tenants earned from cotton declined substantially during

the same period, leaving tenants still dependent on planters and unable to purchase

their own farms. Had government loan programs existed in the early 1900s, as they

did in the later New Deal era with the passage ofthe Bankhead Jones Tenant Act,

such programs most likely would have had limited monies and restrictions. As

demonstrated in the section that follows, the value of farms is significant because it

demonstrates how the availability and cost of land severely limited tenants' land

buying options. 92

COST OF LAND INCREASES CONSIDERABLY

Census figures for the 11Value of farms" are conducive to determine the approximate cost of farms in these counties. Even though new barns, home improvements, or outbuildings might increase land values, it would seem that the cost of buying a farm would parallel the value of farms. 115 In 1930, the total value of the 260,148 acres farmland and buildings in Craighead County were valued at

$15,977,233.00 and the 182,671 acres of farmland and buildings in Poinsett County valued at $10,255,995.116 During the first three decades ofthe twentieth century, the value of farmland in Craighead County at its peak rose to $61 per acre; by 1930,

because ofthe Depression, it had fallen to about $47 per acre. Poinsett County followed the same pattern with a high of around $70 per acre in 1920 sinking to $47

in 1930 during the Depression. Cotton prices reveal a similar pattern, which is

examined later in this study. Figures 4 and 5 provide the total value of farmland in

Craighead and Poinsett Counties in 1900 and 1930, respectively.

115 Charles, Census Information, e-mail message to Patricia Manley, December 21, 2011.

116 U. S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Agricultural Census (1930) (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1930). 93

Craighead County Value of Farmland 175,767 acres

Figure 4- 1900 Total Value of Farmland and Improvements (Except Buildings) Map Source: http://mapserver.lib.virginia.edu/php/county.php

Legend 1 - 1900 Value of Farmland in dollars

0 339599 - 1565-489 • 1565460 - 2800430 • 2800430 - 4835380 • 4935380 - 5270330 D Hissing Data 94

Craighead County Value of Farmland 260,148 acres

[D 1317863 - 7767597 • 7767597 - 1.4217331. • 14217331 - 28667865 • 20667065 - 27116798 D Hissing Data

Figure 5- 1930 Total Value of Farm Land Arkansas- County Level in dollars117 Map Source: http://mapserver.lib.virginia.edu/php/county.php

117 University of Virginia Library Historical Census Browser, "1930 Census Arkansas State County Level," http://mapserver.lib.virginia.edu/php/countyphp/ (accessed February 13, 2011}. 95

Between 1900 and 1930, the value of land in Craighead and Poinsett

Counties increased 428% and 620% respectively. Unfortunately, even though the value of land in 1930 was well below 1920s figures, lower cotton prices restricted tenants' chances of purchasing land. Like land, the price for a pound of cotton was at an all time high at 35 cents in 1919 before a severe drop followed, forcing the value to 5 cents in 1931 because of the Depression. In contrast, while land values increased considerably from 1900 to 1930, the price for cotton in 1930 at 9.5 cents nearly returned to almost its 1900s price of 9.2 cents per pound. A letter to the editor in the New York Times in May 1918 allows scholars to see cotton price fluctuations through the eyes of the farmers and businessmen in Arkansas.

Concerned about the suggestion that Southern farmers were making big returns on cotton at 30 cents per pound, the President of the Business Men's League in Helena,

Arkansas, argued that even at the 1917-1918 price of 30 cents per pound given the average cost of production at 24.78 cents per pound, farmers earned about 5.2 cents profit per pound.118 On a tenancy farm, the tenant and landowner shared the

5.2 cents per pound profit, which made it practically impossible for a tenant to earn enough money to buy land. The total profit from the crop varied from farm to farm and depended on the total acreage the tenant worked that year. If, for example a

118 E.M Allen, "The Price of Cotton- A Southern View That It Isn't Too High and Shouldn't Be Fixed," New York Times, May 14, 1918, sec. Editorial. 96 tenant worked a forty acre farm the tenant would be able to produce somewhere

between 40 and 80 bales of cotton or between 20,000 and 40,000 pounds of cotton.

The shared profit for that cotton at 5.2 cents per pound would total around $1,040 to $2,080. Of course, tenants, who typically did not have written contracts, received varying shares of the profit, depending on the landowner. Additionally, any charges the landowner might deduct for furnishings he provided would reduce the tenants' share as well. Tenants generally received pennies on the dollar for their share of the crops. A detailed discussion on the actual cost of producing cotton compared to the average price per pound follows. 97

Craighead County Poinsett County

Figure 6- Arkansas Counties in 1900: Total Acres of Land in Farms Map Source: http://mapserver.lib.virginia.edu/php/county.php 98

Figure 7- Arkansas Counties in 1930: Total Acres of Land in Farms Map Source: http://mapserver.lib.virginia.edu/php/county.php 99

IMPROVED LAND CREATES A RISE IN THE NUMBER OF FARMS

As the value of land increased, even fewer individuals had the opportunity to own land. Yet, we find that, in the period under discussion, both Craighead and

Poinsett Counties, experienced a significant increase in the total numbers of farms due to newly developed land made available for farming. (Figures 6 and 7) The data shows that in 1900 there were 175,767 and 91,365 acres of farmland in

Craighead and Poinsett Counties respectively. The increase in farms was due largely to the increase in improved land as reflected on the 1930 agricultural census.

Craighead County added an additional 84,381 acres of improved land in farms, an increase of almost 50%. Poinsett County added 91,396 acres, an increase of nearly

100% in farmland. In Poinsett County, the large increase in improved land was due to deforestation and drainage projects in the eastern part of the county. According to historian Jeannie Whayne, draining the swamplands benefited speculators and businessmen-planters, not the small planters, because of increased land costs.

Opportunists who wanted to take advantage of the high cotton prices during the war years purchased the fertile swampland.119 Speculators could buy land and sell it

119 Whayne, "Creation of a Plantation System in the Arkansas Delta in the Twentieth Century," 114-116. ------

100

at a profit and the newly drained swampland was also profitable for "agriculturalists who wanted to take advantage of the high price of cotton."120

120 Whayne, A New Plantation South, 23-24, 116. 101

Rise in Number of Farms 6,000 5,303 5,000

4,000 •Craighead 3,000 County

2,000 • Poinsett 1,000 County

1900 1910 1920 1930 1935

Figure 8- Number of Farms, 1900-1935 Source: calculated from U.S. Department of Commerce- Bureau of the Census, Agricultural Censuses, State of Arkansas

The US Census data confirms that the combined total of farms in Poinsett

and Craighead Counties rose from just under three thousand in 1900 to over nine

thousand by 1935 (Figure 8 ). Even though the area experienced an increase in

farms, those farms did not become owner-operated farms. In fact, many of the

farms that already existed in 1900 moved to tenancy farms as shown in Figures 9

through 14. Of the six thousand additional farms in both counties together, only

twelve hundred of them became owner-operated farms, with the remaining five

thousand farms becoming tenant operated. 102

NEW FARMLAND LEADS TO INCREASE IN TENANTS

1910 Poinsett Farmland In Acres by Operator

380,0% • Acres Operated by Tenants

• Acres Operated by Owners

• Acres Operated by managers

Figure 9- 1910 Poinsett County, Total land in farms- 101,370 acres (Owners=full and part owners, Tenants =all forms of tenancy) Source: calculated from U.S. Department of Commerce- Bureau of the Census, 1910 Census, Agricultural Census, State of Arkansas

1920 Poinsett County Farmland In Acres by Operator

• Acres Operated by Tenants

• Acres Operated by Owners

• Acres Operated by managers

Figure 10- 1920 Poinsett County, Total land in farms- 127,124 acres (Owners=full and part owners, Tenants =all forms of tenancy) Source: calculated from U.S. Department of Commerce- Bureau of the Census, 1920 Census, Agricultural Census, State of Arkansas 103

1930 Poinsett County Farmland in Acres by Operator

11 Acres Operated by Tenants

11 Acres Operated by Owners II Acres Operated by managers

Figure 11 - 1930 Poinsett County, Total land in farms- 182,671 acres (Owners=full and part owners, Tenants =all forms of tenancy) Source: calculated from U.S. Department of Commerce- Bureau of the Census, 1930 Census, Agricultural Census, State of Arkansas

1910 Craighead County Farmland in Acres by Operator

60,0% 11 Operated by tenants

11 Operated by Owners

11 Acres Operated by Managers

Figure 12- 1910 Craighead County, Total Land in Farms 192,005 (Owners=full and part owners, Tenants =all forms of tenancy), Managers (<1% of total acres) Source: calculated from U.S. Department of Commerce- Bureau of the Census, 1910 Census, Agricultural Census, State of Arkansas 104

1920 Craighead County Farmland in Acres by Operator

• Operated by tenants

• Operated by Owners

• Acres Operated by Managers

Figure 13- 1920 Craighead County, Total Land in Farms 204,899 (Owners=full and part owners, Tenants =all forms of tenancy) Source: calculated from U.S. Department of Commerce- Bureau of the Census, 1920 Census, Agricultural Census, State of Arkansas

1930 Craighead County Farmland in Acres by Operator

• Operated by tenants

• Operated by Owners

• Acres Operated by Managers

Figure 14- 1930 Craighead County, Total Land in Farms 260,148 (Owners=full and part owners, Tenants =all forms of tenancy) Source: calculated from Department of Commerce- Bureau of the Census, 1930 Census, Agricultural Census, State of Arkansas 105

In 1900, tenants operated about forty percent of all the farms in Craighead and Poinsett Counties. By 1935, as shown in Figures 15 and 16, there was a considerable increase not only in the number of farms in both counties, but more importantly a significant increase in the percentage of farms operated by tenants.

Of Poinsett County's thirty eight hundred farms in 1935, tenants operated nearly eighty percent, double the percentage of farms operated by tenants just thirty years earlier. The statistics for Craighead County reflect a similar pattern but are somewhat less pronounced than Poinsett County. By 1900, there were approximately twenty-one hundred farms in Craighead County with the proportion of tenants operating farms at approximately forty-four percent. By 1935, the

number of farms increased two fold to five thousand three hundred and the proportion of tenants operating farms rose from forty-four percent to sixty-three

percent. 106

NUMBERS OF FARMS BY TENURE OF OPERATOR

Poinsett County Farms Operated by Owners & Tenants 3,500 3,004 2,935 ..... E...."' 3,000 Ill u.. 2,500 L -....0 QJ -&-Own~ .J:2 2,000 rr / E :I ~Tenants z 1,500 7 I I iii .. 96.v 848 0 7~4 1- 1,000 OUL 500 ~72 """- 500 - 32,. - 1900 1910 1920 1930 1935

Figure 15- Poinsett County Farms Operated by Owners & Tenants (1900-1935) Source: calculated from U.S. Department of Commerce- Bureau of the Census, Agricultural Censuses, State of Arkansas ~------, Craighead County Farms Operated by Owners & Tenants 4,000 3,500 "' 3,369 ....E 3,000 Ill u.. ~Owners 0 2,500 .... -QJ .J:2 2,000 E z:I 1,500 iii.. 1,000 ~ 500

1900 1910 1920 1930 1935

Figure 16- Craighead County Farms Operated by Owners & Tenants (1900-1935) Source: calculated from U.S. Department of Commerce- Bureau of the Census, Agricultural Censuses, State of Arkansas 107

FARM SIZES CUT IN HALF

A third question concerns the size of farms. By graphing, the change in size offarms, (Figure 17) and growth in the number offarms by size (Figure 18), the data

illustrates a significant change over time. In 1900, an average farm in Poinsett

County was approximately one hundred ten acres. Just thirty years later, in 1930, the size of an average farm fell to less than half that amount at just under fifty acres.

Studying Craighead County, we find a similar pattern with the size of farms also

decreasing by forty percent from eighty-three acres in 1900 to about fifty acres in

1930.

The size of the farm is significant to this study because it helps us to

understand the farmers' frustration and concern over landownership. Not only was the opportunity to own land diminishing but the average size of available farms was

changing as well. Smaller sized farms resulted in a reduction in the number of acres

a landowner might make available to tenants for farming. The smaller size farms, of

course, decreased the land available for crops, which in turn naturally affected a

tenant's earned income. Additionally, should the landowner choose to keep a

section of his land for family crops, gardens or farm animals, the number of available

acreage for tenants was limited further still. For tenants, at least in the short term,

less land equaled less income. Limited space for a tenant's family garden or farm

animals also required tenants to purchase fresh foods from stores, putting them 108 further in debt to the landowners who owned those stores. The long-term effect was that labor on smaller farms lengthened the time tenants needed to work in order to acquire enough monies to purchase sufficient equipment and implements, in order to earn enough money to buy land, in order to become independent. The change in size of farms over time made it just about impossible for tenants to advance on the agricultural ladder. 109

Change in Average Size of Farm (in acreage) 150 .------• Craighead County 125

100

75 so

25

0 1900 1910 1920 1925 1930 1935 Figure 17- Change in Average Size of Farms (in acreage) 1900-1935 Source: calculated from U.S. Department of Commerce- Bureau of the Census, Agricultural Census, State of Arkansas

•1900 Poinsett Growth In Numbers of Farms • 1910 Poinsett • 1920 Poinsett By Size in Acres - Poinsett County •1930 Poinsett 2500 .------2250 2000 1750 1500 1250 1000 750 500 250 0

Figure 18- Growth in Number of Farms by Size in Acres (1900-1930) Source: calculated from U.S. Department of Commerce- Bureau of the Census, Agricultural Census, State of Arkansas 110

POPULATION UPSURGE

Even as farm ownership was becoming less available to tenants, the population in these relatively rural areas was exploding, a significant factor in changing patterns of land ownership. In Poinsett County, the population swelled from 7,000 residents to 30,000 residents in the first thirty years of the twentieth century. Nearby in Craighead County, the population more than doubled from

20,000 to 45,000. (Figure 19)

Change in Population 50,000 .,..------45,000 +------40,000 +------35,000 +------30,000 +------25,000 +------• Craighead * 20,000 • Poinsett* 15,000 10,000 5,000 0 1900 1910 1920 1930

Figure 19- Change in Population 1900-1930 Source: calculated from U.S. Department of Commerce- Bureau of the Census, Twelfth- Fifteenth Censuses, Population Census, State of Arkansas, County Level

In the 1920s, the Depression and uncertain economic conditions pulled people back to rural areas, a shift in population that scholars describe as "Back to 111 the Farm."121 The result of the phenomenon was an increase in the number of

laborers channeling into tenancy. The geographic distribution of rural population is

particularly worthy of note. In Craighead County, the rural population by 1920

increased 100% from approximately fifteen thousand to almost thirty thousand. By

1930, there were 27,828 people living in rural areas on farms in Craighead County.

In Poinsett County, the rural population increased to an even greater degree, rising from around seven thousand in 1900 to just over eighteen thousand in 1920, an

increase of 150%. By 1930, 19,011 individuals lived in the rural areas of Poinsett

County on farms (Figure 20). A study of population redistribution in 1936 found that the poorer areas were often the areas hardest hit by returning migration, where

earlier residents had left because of limited prospects for jobs or moneymaking

opportunities.122 The increase in population from early settlers looking for new land

ownership opportunities in Northeast Arkansas and later those returning to the

farms only added to the problems of tenants and opportunities for land

121 During the Depression, when urban incomes failed FOR's administration encouraged individuals to move to farming communities or return to their previous homes in rural areas commonly known as the "Back to the Farm" movement. The thought was that Cities would be relieved of providing social support for families and that families would be able to be feed themselves living and working on a farm.

122 James H. Street, New Revolution in Cotton Economy {New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1972), 52. T. J. Woofter, "Rural Relief and The Back To The Farm Movement," Social Forces 14, no. 3 (March 1936): 382-388. 112

ownership.123 Individuals who supported the 11 Back to the Farm" or "Back to the

Land" concept generally supported self-sufficiency and home ownership. They used the ~~agricultural ladder" as a model suggesting that the top rung of land ownership

was the end goal most desired by farmers.124

123 T. J. Woofter, "Rural Relief and The Back To The Farm Movement," Social Forces 14, no. 3 (March 1936): 382-388.

124 Street, New Revolution in Cotton Economy, 53. 113

Figure 20 -1930 Arkansas Counties Rural Farm Population Map125 Map Source: http://mapserver.lib.virginia.edu/php/county.php

125 University of Virginia Library Historical Census Browser, "1930 Census Arkansas State County Level," http://mapserver.lib.virginia.edu/php/countyphp/ (accessed February 13, 2011). 114

Living in Arkansas at the beginning of the 20th century, these now unemployed, landless men, such as Seborn Jones, also brought with them an ideology of manhood predicated on the notion of economic independence. These men built their gender identities and future expectations around a belief that land ownership would eventually be their route to independence and dignity.

The increase in population also brought a renewed competition among tenants seeking farms to work. This new competition along with the smaller size of farms kept tenants at the bottom of the agricultural ladder. Smaller farms, and more tenants competing for those farms, extended the time a tenant worked for someone else and kept men on the second or third rung of the agricultural ladder well into their 40s and 50s, as discussed in the following section and shown on

Figure 23. 115

AVERAGE AGE OF TENANT FARMERS ON THE RISE

The ideology that we are "The Land of Opportunity" has been part of

American ideology for centuries. The ethos alleges that with hard work, a man can be successful and success means economic security and independence. Certainly, the men who migrated to Northeast Arkansas in the 1900s in order to achieve landownership believed that they would find that independence. As they learned, however, the unavailability of land and the economic conditions in the area would prompt many men to work as tenants for longer periods than they had anticipated, denying them access to the top rung of the agricultural ladder and keeping older mature men dependent on landowners.

Economic and agricultural researchers have completed several studies on the various stages and movement up or down the agricultural ladder described in

Chapter 1, from general studies to studies that focus primarily on black farmers and others that examine a particular region. 126 In 1919, W. J. Spillman offered one ofthe

126 Several studies were considered including: Benjamin Hibbard, "Farm Tenancy in the United States," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, Country Life 40, (March 1912):29-39. Charles Stewart, W. J. Spillman, B. H. Hibbard, "Land Tenure and Public Policy- Discussion," The American Economic Review 9, no. 1(March 1919):226-232. W. J. Spillman, "The Agricultural Ladder," The American Economic Review 9, no. 1{March 1919):170-179. Marshall Harris, "A New Agricultural Ladder," Land Economics 26, no. 3 (August 1950):258- 267; Erven Long, "The Agricultural Ladder: Its Adequacy as a Model for Farm Tenure Research," Land Economics 26, no. 3 (August 1950):268-273. Carl Wehrwein, "An Analysis of The Agricultural Ladder Research," Land Economics 34, no. 4 (November 1958):329-337. Lee Alston and Kyle Kauffman "Agricultural Chutes and Ladders: 116 earliest studies based on data from the Office of Farm Management.127 Since its publication, Spillman's model has served as the core of many other studies.

Spillman's research is relevant to this study because it is not limited to a particular region but takes into consideration several agricultural states in America's heartland.

At the annual meeting of the American Economic Association in 1919, W. J. Spillman, then the Associate Editor of the Farm Journal, discussed the ~~Agricultural Ladder" providing research on the progression of 2,112 landowners in five Midwestern agricultural states including Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and Minnesota from the time they left their father's farm, to farm ownership. Spillman documented four possible stages to land ownership. The table below shows the average age at which the men left home, the options or stages a man might take in order to move from unpaid laborer to owner, and the length of time spent at each stage. Even for men who spent some time at all four stages, the oldest age at ownership was thirty-six years old. Spillman's model of the agricultural ladder suggests that men could move

New Estimates of Sharecroppers and "True Tenants" in the South, 1900-1920," The Journal of Economic History 57, no. 2 (June 1997}:464-475. Lee Alston and Joseph Ferrie, "Time on the Ladder: Career Mobility in Agriculture, 1890-1938," Journal of Economic History 65, no. 4 (December 2005}:1058-1081.

127 W. J. Spillman, "The Agricultural Ladder/' The American Economic Review 9, no. 1 (March 1919}: 1. 117 from unpaid laborer to hired man, to tenant, and then to landowner by the age of thirty-six.128

In studying the age of tenants for Arkansas as a whole, in contrast with the

Spillman model, we find that by the 1920s more than fifty-six percent of tenants in

Arkansas were over the age of thirty-five. Looking at census data for Craighead and

Poinsett Counties, we find that, at least in Northeast Arkansas, the cultural ideology of the agricultural ladder continued to falter as the age of men who still did not own land rose continually from 1900 to 1930. "Anyone familiar with and appreciative of the realities of agricultural land tenure knows that whether a farmer is a tenant or an owner and how long he has been or was in either status do make a difference to him."129 As one would expect, the effects of spending a long time at any stage on the ladder or being unable to advance up the agricultural ladder, as a man expected, influenced tenants' behaviors in the 1930s.130

128 Spillman, "The Agricultural Ladder," 172.

129 Carl Wehrwein, "An Analysis of Agricultural Ladder Research," Land Economics 34, no. 4 (November 1958): 337.

130 Several studies about the concept of the agricultural ladder were consulted for this discussion; see page 30. 118

Spillman's Agricultural Ladder Model Group F-Years H-Years T-Years Total Years (Age left Family (Years spent as Years spent as (Age at ownership) Farm) hired men) tenant)

FHTO 19 7 10 36

FHO 19 10 29

FTO 23 9 32

FO 26 y, 26 y,

Table 1 -Spillman's Agricultural Ladder Model Source: The American Economic Review, Vol. 9, No 1, Supplement, Papers and Proceedings of the Thirty-First Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association (March 1919}. pp 170-179, The Agricultural Ladder, W. J. Spillman.

Legend: F =unpaid laborer on the home farm, H=hired man, T=tenant, O=owner 119

Since Seborn Jones is our example of a tenant farmer during this period, the discussion and census data on age of tenants is being limited to three specifically selected townships. The first of these is Bolivar Township, where Seborn lived in

1920. Bolivar, according to the Poinsett County Historical Society, was If a typical frontier town with general stores, blacksmith shops, hotels, law and doctors' offices, and saloons."131 As we learned from Seborn's journals, Bolivar also had a

horseracing track which was described by the historical society as "one of the best in the area."132 The second town considered here is the Poinsett County township of

Tyronza, the heart of the STFU. The third, just a few miles down the road is

Gilkerson Township in bordering Craighead County, where Seborn lived in 1910

(Figures 21 and 22}.

131 Clyde Ford, "Poinsett County," Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture, April 8, 2011, http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry­ detail.aspx?search=1&entryiD=799/ (accessed November 1, 2010).

132 Ibid. 120

Figure 21 - Map of Poinsett and Craighead Counties 1915

!! ~ Figure 22- Map of Poinsett and Craighead Counties

133 Heart Stone Legacy Publications, 2011, "Poinsett County," http://www.hearthstonelegacy.com/poinsett.htm. (accessed February 25, 2011). 121

In order to calculate the average age of tenant farmers, using the various censuses, this study examined all male household heads, who identified themselves as renters of farms from each of the three towns. Beginning with Gilkerson

Township, the numbers suggest that in 1910 the average age for a tenant farmer was thirty-five years old. When compared to Spillman's agricultural ladder model, this was already at the high end of the range for expected advancement to land ownership. By 1920, the average age of a tenant farmer had increased two years to

an average age of thirty-seven. In 1930, just four years before the rise of the STFU, the average age of a tenant farmer in Gilkerson had increased to forty years old.

The statistics for Bolivar Township, where Seborn lived in 1920, suggests a similar

pattern. 134 For example, in Figure 23, the data suggests that the average age of thirty-seven for tenant farmers in 1910 in Bolivar Township was already slightly

higher than Gilkerson. By 1930, it had grown to over forty-one years old. The data

illustrates that the average age of tenant farmers in both towns increased on

average by two years, every ten years during this period. In Tyronza Township, the

data suggests a similar pattern with the average in 1910 at 36, rising to 39 by 1930.

134 For example, the 1910 census lists Seborn at age 49 as head of household, renter and a laborer at the local sawmill. He most likely worked only part of the year at a sawmill and also rented a farm and farmed cotton. The 1920 census lists Seborn, age 59, as head of household, renter and a farmer, general farm. 122

Change Over Time Age of Tenants 42 41.3 41 40.2 (II - 40 ~ 40 _,.,- ...,.,.. (II 39 Ql) 3 7.5 ...... ,.,- ...,.,.,- 39 Ill... 38 ~ (II > 37 ~t:' ~ ~h

Figure 23- Average Age ofTenants 1900-1930 Source: calculated from Department of Commerce- Bureau of the Census, Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Censuses of the United States: Population, State of Arkansas, Craighead County, 1910 Enumeration District 0016 Gilkerson Township, 1920 Enumeration District 32 Gilkerson Township, 1930 Enumeration District 13 Gilkerson Township. Poinsett County, Bolivar Township, 1910 Enumeration District 0110 (Bolivar Township excluding Harrisburg town, 1920 Enumeration Districts 196 and 198 Bolivar township excluding Harrisburg town, 1930 Enumeration District 2 Bolivar township excluding Harrisburg Town. 1910 Enumeration District 116 Tyronza Township, 1920 Enumeration District 56-18 Tyronza Township, 1930 Enumeration District 210 Tyronza Township. (Average age calculated using total numbers from the census categories, Head of Households, Farmers and shown as renters). 123

As the average age of tenant farmer household heads increased, there was also a substantial increase in the number of older tenants. The census for Gilkerson

Township in 1910 listed three tenant farmers over the age of 60. Seborn, living in

Gilkerson in 1910, was already 49 years old. By 1930, the number of tenants in

Gilkerson over the age of sixty rose to ten. The following table illustrates that during the early years the numbers of tenant farmers under the age of 35 remained relatively steady with the exception of 1920, when the overall population fell by two percent from 1,010 in 1910 to 990 in 1920. Presumably, these numbers were affected by the number of young men who served or who were killed in World War

I, lessening the numbers of men looking for work as tenant farmers. We find, as stated above, that in all the upper age categories, age thirty-five and above, the percentage of older tenants increased with each census.

For Bolivar Township, the data shows a similar pattern. The number of tenants increased from 151 in 1910 to 248 in 1930, with men over the age of thirty­ five representing seventy-nine percent of the additional ninety-seven tenants. This percentage of increase follows the overall population trend and the increase in

Bolivar Township from 1910 to 1920 of approximately eighty-four percent. Historian

Rupert Vance, using census from 1910 to 1930 and looking at age of farm operators according to tenure, suggests that, "The increasing number of states in which half 124

the farmers over 35 are tenants shows the retardation in the rate of climbing the

tenure ladder."135

Tyronza Township data reflects a similar pattern. The number of tenants

increased from 228 in 1910 to 702 in 1930, with men over the age of thirty-five

representing fifty-nine percent of the additional tenants. Additionally, the census

for Tyronza Township in 1910 listed six tenant farmers over the age of sixty with the

number of tenants on the 1930 census in Tyronza over the age of sixty at an

incredible forty-two. Unlike Gilkerson and Bolivar Townships, the data for Tyronza

Township illustrates that the numbers of tenant farmers under the age of 35 also

rose substantially from 1910 to 1930. This is due in large part to the increased

number of farms in Tyronza in newly developed land that was previously stump

filled cutover land left by the lumber companies.

By 1930, the percentage of the tenants in Gilkerson, Bolivar and Tyronza

Townships over the age of thirty-five was greater than fifty percent (Figures 24, 25

and 26). These trends are representative of our example, Seborn, who in 1920 lived

in Bolivar, at the age of fifty-nine.

135 Rupert B. Vance, All These People, The Nation's Human Resources in the South {Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1945), 222. 125

Gilkerson Township 25 20

+'c 15 IQ c 10 ....~ 0 5 :tl: 0 Over 20-25 26-30 31-35 36-40 41-45 46-50 51-55 56-60 61-65 65 • Gilkerson 1910 15 17 20 8 6 4 6 1 1 2

1111 Gilkerson 1920 10 7 11 14 10 7 4 4 0 3 • Gilkerson 1930 16 17 15 17 10 12 8 4 3 7

Figure 24 -Number of tenants by age category- Gilkerson Township Source: calculated from Department of Commerce- Bureau of the Census, Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Censuses of the United States: Population, State of Arkansas, Craighead County, 1910 Enumeration District 0016 Gilkerson Township, 1920 Enumeration District 32 Gilkerson Township, 1930 Enumeration District 13 Gilkerson Township. (Using Head of Households, Only Farmers and shown as renters).

Bolivar Township 40 +'c 35 IQ 30 c 25 Cll 1- 20 .... 15 0 10 :tl: 5 0 20- 26- 31- 36- 41- 46- 51- 56- 61- Over 25 30 35 40 45 so 55 60 65 65 Bolivar 1910 27 33 16 14 17 21 9 7 6 1 • Bolivar 1920 29 29 23 31 18 32 15 10 6 7 • Bolivar 1930 35 25 35 33 33 25 21 17 13 11

Figure 25- Number of tenants by age category- Bolivar Township Source: calculated from Department of Commerce- Bureau of the Census, Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Censuses of the United States: Population, State of Arkansas, Poinsett County, Bolivar Township, 1910 Enumeration District 0110 (Bolivar Township excluding Harrisburg town, 1920 Enumeration Districts 196 and 198 Bolivar township excluding Harrisburg town, 1930 Enumeration District 2 Bolivar township excluding Harrisburg Town. 126

Tyronza Township 160 140 Ill 120 +"s:: Ill 100 s:: 80 ~ .... 60 0 =1:1: 40 20 0 Over 20-25 26-30 31-35 36-40 41-45 46-50 51-55 56-60 61-65 65 1910 36 47 44 31 23 27 9 5 4 2 •1920 89 76 78 82 59 81 34 36 16 10 •1930 140 106 72 85 79 81 51 46 22 20

Figure 26- Number of tenants by age category- Tyronza Township Source: calculated from Department of Commerce- Bureau of the Census, Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Censuses of the United States: Population, State of Arkansas, Poinsett County, Bolivar Township, 1910 Enumeration District 116 Tyronza Township, 1920 Enumeration District 56-18 Tyronza Township, 1930 Enumeration District 210 Tyronza Township. (Average age calculated using total numbers from the census categories, Head of Households, Farmers and shown as renters).

• 127

KING COTTON WEAKENS

We have looked at the size of farms, the number of farms, and the operators

of those farms. However, we also need to consider the fluctuation in price of the

chief crop, cotton. Cotton yields were different per farm and even each season but generally, a farmer could produce on average one to two bales of cotton per acre, with each bale weighing about four hundred fifty to five hundred pounds. In a typical ginning arrangement, ginners received the seed as payment for separating the cotton, while the cotton lint belonged to either the landowner or tenant

depending on their arrangement. During the war years, the price of cotton rose to

by thirty-five cents a pound, largely due to the limited availability of European

cotton. For example, in January 1919, Seborn picked approximately 1,000 pounds of

cotton and the cotton's value was somewhere between $280 and $350, based on

the USDA National Agricultural Statistics as shown on Figure 27. However, Seborn in

his journal writes that he received a paltry $13.01 for 294 pounds of cotton, less

than 4.5 cents per pound. Using those numbers, for 1,000 pounds Seborn would

have only received $45. This evidence supports the findings of many historians that

tenants often received substantially less for their cotton than planters. Typically, the

landlord took at least fifty percent of the profit. In February 1909, Cosmopolitan 128

Magazine published an article written by one of cotton's own, Daniel Sully, in an

effort to stir cotton production and value in America. Sully wrote about southern farmers' efforts to keep the price of cotton down. He recognized that southern tenants were in a difficult situation and argued, " ... the landowner knows that high

prices mean ability on the part of the tenant to get out from under the yoke and

become independent, this the landowner does not wish."136 Without the option to

hold cotton for extended periods, tenants often accepted the daily price paid for

cotton, unlike planters and landowners who usually had other financial resources that allowed them to hold out for higher pricing.

During the Depression, cotton prices fell to five cents per pound leaving

tenants with just about nothing. Prices for cotton in 1931 and 1932 just a few years

before the rise of the STFU hit a thirty-year low at 5. 7 cents and 6.5 cents

respectively. These were some of the lowest prices received for cotton since 1876,

according to the Department of Agriculture statistics.137 Only two years, 1894 at 4.6

cents and 1898 at 5.7 cents, recorded numbers lower than 1931-1932. By the time

tenants in Northeast Arkansas, who were practically broke, joined the Southern

136 Daniel J. Sully, "King Cotton's Impoverished Retinue," Cosmopolitan, February XLVI, No 3, 1909, 261.

137 National Agriculture Statistics Service, "National Totals, Cotton, Price Received," United States Department of Agriculture, http://quickstats.nass.usda.gov/results/75723220-AA21-3D23-9CB3-F058BF36B201/ (accessed December 1, 2010). 129

Tenant Farmers Union a few years later in 1934, the national average for cotton was just under twelve cents per pound, still well below their wartime prices. Even at twelve cents per pound, farming costs left few profits for tenants and landowners.

Research conducted in 1929 at the Clemens College in South Carolina reported that the cost to produce cotton on tractor-operated farms was approximately 9.61 cents per pound. The study concluded that on a farm using mules, with cotton prices at

14 cents, the net return for a bale of cotton would be somewhere around $18.45 per bale or approximately 3.5 cents profit per pound.138

What farmers did not experience was the same percentage drop in the prices of other goods when the cotton prices fell. As one farmer from Arkansas was quick to point out in a 1918 New York Times story about rising cotton prices, the cost of lumber, the cost of turning plows, feed for the mules and other needed farming goods grew in proportion to the rising cotton prices.139

Obviously, men who worked alone or with a mule- as did most tenants in

Poinsett and Craighead counties- could not compete with farmers with tractors. As discussed in Chapter 1, in 1927 a newly married H.L. Mitchell, who eventually became one of the founders of the STFU, was encouraged by his father to come to

138 P. H. Stephens, "Mechanization of Cotton Farms," Journal of Farm Economics XIII, no. 1 (January 1931): 34.

139 E.M. Allen, "The Price of Cotton- A Southern View That It Isn't Too High and Shouldn't Be Fixed," New York Times, May 141918, sec. Editorial. 130

Northeast Arkansas: "Here the land is rich. One can make two bales of cotton to the acre."140 Mitchell, living in Tennessee, had only been able to grow just about a bale per acre. He arrived with the expectation of making a decent living but only managed to earn a total of $185 in 1927, even with an increase in cotton price from

12 cents per pound in 1926 to 20 cents per pound in 1927. Mitchell earned part of the $185 picking strawberries in the spring.141

In 1926 the year before Mitchell carne to Arkansas, cotton was selling at 12 cents per pound and nationally farmers complained that the minimum price they could accept was 15 cents per pound in order to make any profit.142 By 1931, cotton was down to 6.5 cents per pound, which left landowners and tenants in Arkansas with nothing. Large plantation landholders such as E. Ritter & Co. and absentee landlords including corporations or insurance companies who owned land in

Northeast Arkansas could theoretically absorb losses for a particular year within the finances of the larger corporation. On the other hand, tenants who did not have access to loans from banks at a predetermined price per pound, which landowners were able to secure at the beginning of the season, had to absorb any losses during

140 H. L. Mitchell, Mean Things Happening in This Land (Montclair: Allanheld, Osmun & Co Publishers, Inc, 1979), 17.

141 Mitchell, Mean Things Happening in This Land, 17.

142 "May Hold Cotton for Higher Price," The New York Times, October 3 1926, sec. E. 131 the year they occurred. Costs of production varied by farm and were dependent on the number of mules and individuals used to work the land but typically rose with the inflation of currency and other goods. Based on the table from the New York

Times article, we can infer that at an average price per pound of 19 cents and an average cost of production of 13 cents from 1916-1917 when cotton prices were relatively stable to figure profit, the landowner made about 6 cents per pound profit to share with the tenant.143 Sizes of tenant farms varied but according to a 1901

Industrial Commission Report, the average tenant worked 20 acres. 144 If the tenant worked twenty acres, he might earn $600 for a year of his family's hard work. His profit depended on the size of farm and the size of the crop yielded, which could vary from one or two bales per acre. However, as discussed earlier, the historical records of Seborn Jones and Southern Tenant Farmer Union Secretary H.L Mitchell indicate that these figures do not accurately reflect the experience of all tenant farmers; in fact, tenants typically earned pennies on the dollar.

143 E.M Allen, "The Price of Cotton- A Southern View That It Isn't Too High and Shouldn't Be Fixed," New York Times, May 141918, sec. Editorial.

144 Jeannie Whayne, "Reshaping The Rural South: Land, Labor and Federal Policy, Poinsett County, Arkansas 1900-1940" (PhD diss., University of California, San Diego, San Diego, CA, 1989), 109. 132

Change in Cotton Price $0.40 $0.35 $0.30 $0.25 $0.20 $0.15 $0.10 -Price per lb. $0.05 $0.00

USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service

Figure 27- Change in Price of Cotton 1900-1940 Source: United States Department of Agriculture, National Agriculture Statistics Service, National Totals, Cotton, Price Received- measured in $/per lb. (http://quickstats.nass.usda.gov/results/75723220-AA21-3D23-9CB3- F058BF36B201)145

Figure 28- Cotton Farmer Cost of Production/Profit Source: New York Times May 14, 1918

145 The highest price paid for cotton in 1919 was thirty-five cents per pound. As stated earlier, even though cotton prices were between thirty-five and fifteen cents in 1919 and 1920 respectively. Seborn like other tenants, as a rule received less than the actual value of cotton for their shares of the profit. 133

CONCLUSIONS

The evidence presented in this chapter shows that tenants in Craighead and

Poinsett Counties in the first few decades of the twentieth century were unable to

make any amount of money that would give them the chance to live comfortably, let alone purchase a sizeable farm that would allow them to become self-sufficient and

independent. The planters further limited tenants' opportunities because, in

addition to the farmland itself, the planters also controlled the gins, the markets and the local banks. The percentage of farms operated by tenants increased, while the

size of farms decreased. Meanwhile the price received for a bale of cotton fell, as

land costs rose. A few operators controlled the majority of the land and credit.

These clashing economic and social forces caused an increased supply of prospective

landowners and tenants, increased demand for land, and diminishing opportunities

for independent land ownership. Tenants in Northeast Arkansas failed to reach the

top rung as retardation in the agricultural ladder continued.

Given the expectations that most landless farmers had had when they

entered farming, this group of men's failure to climb the agricultural ladder must

have led to disappointment and despair. Like Seborn Jones, they would not have

been able to provide adequately for their families, and would have experienced not

only the anxiety and hopelessness of poverty but also the anger and frustration 134 caused by their loss of authority at home. The next chapter explores their collective response, beginning in 1934 with the formation of the Southern Tenant Farmers

Union. 135

CHAPTER THREE

THE RESPONSE OF THE SOUTHERN TENANTS

"Land for the Landless"

Economic and social changes discussed in Chapter 2 hit tenant farmers in

Northeast Arkansas particularly hard. Whether tenants or sharecroppers, whether white or black, the landless had little opportunity for mobility. With nowhere to turn, many struggling tenants responded to those changes by joining together.

Seeking fairness for what they believed were injustices at the hands of the landowners, including absentee landlords such as insurance companies and corporations, and even at the hands of federal, state and local governments, tenants pushed to the brink came together as one cohesive organization, the Southern

Tenant Farmers Union or STFU.

In its first year, approximately 2000 farmers joined the Union with the majority of the members residing in Poinsett County, the home county of the

Union.146 While the Union pushed forward to meet the immediate needs of tenants, it had one fundamental goal, which was that its members would become independent landowners. Tenants who had sought independence and security from the beginning realized that they could only achieve that independence and security

146 Mitchell, Mean Things Happening in This Land, 125. ------~

136 through some form of landownership. This goal was what compelled the Union's activities and was continually in the forefront, because it was the ideology of landed independence that had motivated Union men to enter farming in the first place.

Living in an area well-known for agrarian movements such as the Agricultural

Wheel, the Farmers Alliance and Populism, and brought up with the conviction that landownership and property rights were the basis of independence, tenants in

Poinsett County believed, perhaps naively, that they had some form of independence and saw themselves almost as partners with the planters.147 This ideology was apparent as tenants frequently tried to work with planters and landowners to negotiate together as equals. 148 This understanding changed as tenants in Northeast Arkansas became more and more dependent on planters due to increased land costs, low cotton prices, unobtainable credit, and declining profits.

This realization of their dependence affronted their image of themselves as men.

Tenants therefore fought to regain their independence. Since a large portion of the farmland in Poinsett County was newly developed (less than half a century) and did not have a long established planter class, as in other areas of the South, local

147 Jeannie Whayne, A New Plantation South: Land, Labor, and Federal Favor in Twentieth-Century Arkansas (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1996):6- 8. Stephanie McCurry, Masters of Small Worlds (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).

148 "Tenant Farmers Asked to Strike Against Farm Owners," The Modern News, March 13, 1935. 137 tenants who believed in the concept of the agricultural ladder as an opportunity for

upward mobility, and who held the "traditional characteristics of the southern male" were more likely to protest their worsening situation?49

The best available sources of evidence for understanding how the Union

supported tenants are found in a collection of tenant farmers' letters, early STFU

papers, and newspaper articles saved by H.L. Mitchell, the Union secretary and one

of its founding members. These documents help scholars begin to define the

reasons why tenants joined the Union and what they hoped to gain by associating

with a Union that was so violently opposed by landowners, local politicians and

businessmen.

From the beginning, the Union "aimed to win 'land for the landless."'150

"Land to the landless- The land is the common heridge OF THE PEOPLE" became a

common Union slogan and was frequently displayed at the organization events and

annual conventions.151 "Land to the Landless" also became a familiar line in

newspaper articles and Union publications. The song Hungry Hungry Are We,

written by John Handcox, who Mitchell called "one ofthe great voices ofthe

149 Mark Fannin, Labor's Promised Land (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2003L 168.

150 "STFU Urges Federal Legislation," Southern Tenant Farmers News, March 21, 1939, p. 2.

151 Mitchell, Mean Things Happening in This Land, 336. 138 disinherited" truly painted the tenants' plight from landlessness in a few words.

Charles Seeger, Pete Seeger's father, recorded some of Handcox's songs and eventually they were stored in the Folk Song Collection at the Library of Congress.

The selection below is the last verse from Hungry Hungry Are We. 152

landless, landless are we Just as landless as landless can be We don't get nothin for our labor, So landless, landless are we.

In order to understand the tenants' and Union's drive for landownership, this chapter examines Union and other primary source documents from the first five years of the STFU's history. Only the initial five years are considered because within those first five years, the Union successfully established its /{land for landless" goal and with that policy in place, was able to build up a substantial membership. Over the first five years, the Union continually explored various ways to provide land ownership for tenants, something these men strongly desired.

TENANT IDEOLOGY

Exposed to the same social interpretations of masculinity as other men in the

South, tenants aspired to conform to its standards, even though they did not always have the means to do so. Advertisements from the commercial banking industry

152 Mitchelt Mean Things Happening in This Land, 111. 139 provide a good source for understanding commonly held ideas about manhood for this particular place and time. Advertisements helped shape gender identities, and those targeted to men typically equated manhood with family responsibility, authority and dominance.153 During the Depression, advertisers normally targeted men's fears and their uncertain economic future. For example, in the local newspaper the Harrisburg Modern News in Poinsett County, advertisements placed by local banks, owned by local planters, inundated the community. Some advertised the simplicity of obtaining a home loan or farm loan; others touted the common sense reasons behind opening a savings account, namely that a man needed to care for and to protect his family. The Harrisburg State Bank advertised that a savings account "signifies good habits and ambition ... worthy characteristics."154

Advertisements from the Merchants & Planters Bank & Trust in Harrisburg, Arkansas included the slogan "Your Own Home is Your Castle" and contained the message

"buy some property and take your place as a substantial citizen."155

Farmers who received agricultural publications such as the Farmer's Almanac

(which at the time was sponsored by Ford Motor Company) read the local

153 Bret Carroll, ed., American Masculinities: A Historical Encyclopedia (New York: The Moschovitis Group, 2003), 10-11.

154 "Harrisburg Bank," The Modern News, June 1936.

155 "Merchants & Planters Bank & Trust," The Modern News, June 1936. 140 newspaper, or had over- the- fence discussions with their neighbors, by now understood that with enough money or credit came an opportunity for landownership.

As young men, many had seen local newspapers real estate "land for sale" advertisements promoting farm ownership. One ad in November 1918, for example, that claimed that it was the "Greatest opportunity of a lifetime to own your own home." Advertisements placed by insurance and bonding companies such as the G.

156 C. Smith Agency advertised cutover land in 40-acre tracts for sale ; the Weona

Land Company advertised tracts of cutover land in 40 to 60 acre parcels.157 To the readers of these advertisements, the message was clear: land ownership meant independence expressed in terms of being responsible for yourself and family without any direct supervision from a planter or "boss" and control over your labor and crops. Moreover, given the supposedly abundant opportunities to buy, landownership seemed within reach. In the early 1930s, tenants still carried these beliefs with them into the Southern Tenant Farmers Union.

156 "Cut-Over Land For Sale," The Modern News, November 30 1917.

157 "Over 3000 Acres- Finest Cut-Over Land," The Modern News, September 281917. 141

STFU'S METHODS AND GOAL FOR LANDOWNERSHIP

Throughout the early years of the STFU, one of the ongoing struggles was

how to achieve that land ownership. In 1933, even before the STFU was officially

organized, H. L. Mitchell, Norman Thomas and Howard Kester discussed with others

creating a cooperative farm in western Arkansas near Commonwealth College, where farmers would share the total profits and have ownership in the property.

The group considered purchasing a farm in Hot Springs Arkansas just for that

reason. 158

As the STFU took shape in early 1934, Mitchell and others placed the idea of

buying the farm in Hot Springs on the back burner, but the idea of independence

and land ownership for tenants was never out of sight. On more than one occasion,

in order to support its members, the Union surveyed them in attempts to identify

their immediate needs and their long-term goals. In 1934, seeking to gauge

members' interest in various landownership options including the cooperative

farming idea considered in 1933, the Union surveyed its membership of about 2,000

at that time, asking them to select their first and second choices from four options

shown in Table 1.

Approximately twenty-five percent of the membership responded to this first

survey. By the results shown in the table below, it is evident that a majority of the

158 Mitchell, Mean Things Happening in This Land, 125. 142 members who responded wanted direct landownership, with approximately sixty percent choosing small farm ownership as their first option. Sixty-seven percent of those who responded chose cooperative land ownership as their second choice.

Because the survey was also originally intended to gauge members' interest in cooperative farming, Mitchell and the other Union leaders concluded that since most members previously had little knowledge about cooperative farming, their survey proved that STFU members wanted farming that unmistakably included land ownership in some form. 159

159 Mitchell, Mean Things Happening in This Land, 126. 143

Membership Survey #l Select from Options l-4 1. Small farm ownership with government loans to purchase a farm at low interest rates to be repaid over a period of 40 years 2. Farming with a long term lease on land owned by the federal government 3. Cooperative farming on larger acreages with teams, tools and the land to be owned by groups of farmers and all profits made to be divided at the end of the year 4. To continue farming on the plantations as sharecroppers but with a Union contract

Option #1 Option #2 Option #3 Option #4

First Choice 284 94 72 28

Second Choice 42 118 318 0

Table 2- STFU Membership Survey Results

During its early years, the STFU explored several measures in order to obtain land ownership for its members, including direct land purchase with favorable terms for tenants, land grants and cooperative farming that included individual land ownership. The STFU believed that land ownership, besides giving farmers independence, generally inspired farmers to work harder and take care of the soil better which brought farmers a higher crop yield and in return more monies. 144

Even though the 1934 survey confirmed that the tenants who responded

unequivocally wanted independent landownership, Harry Mitchell and others found the members' second choice, "Cooperative Farming" equally important because in the end it gave farmers ownership in the land. It was one option for achieving land ownership that the STFU and others continued to explore because Union leaders thought it was better for farmers at least to own a share of land than to be working for someone else.

Mitchell stated, "We visualized cooperative farming as the first step on a thousand mile journey to freedom."160 Mitchell's analysis of cooperative farming as

"taking the first step on a thousand mile journey" is akin to climbing up the

agricultural ladder with the end rung representing independence and land

ownership.

On more than one occasion, the STFU, in an effort to secure independence for its members, met with government officials and organizations to discuss

cooperative farming. Representatives of the Union met with the Rural

Rehabilitation office in January 1935 to discuss the development of farm cooperative

in Northeast Arkansas. Later that same year the STFU again tried to develop a

160 Mitchell, Mean Things Happening in This Land, 129. 145 partnership with the co-operative Division of the Resettlement Administration in an effort to secure some form of land ownership for its members.161

The Union's message "land for the landless" was carried across the nation when in February 1936 Norman Thomas, a passionate supporter of the STFU addressed President Roosevelt and farmers across the nation when he spoke on the

NBC Network. Thomas's message naturally called for an end to the violence against tenants and for the President's assistance in getting tenants their fair share of New

Deal monies. What is more important is that it also put the Union's "land for the landless" message into the minds of everyone who heard the broadcast. Thomas urged Roosevelt's administration to keep the President's promise to create cooperatives under the Resettlement Administration program.162

Another example ofthe Union's push for cooperative farming came in

October 1936, when C. T. Carpenter, a local attorney from Northeast Arkansas, and

Union member proposed cooperative farming to The Arkansas Farm Tenancy

161 H. L. Mitchell, Memphis, Tennessee, to Taylor, Carl C, September 7, 1935, Southern Tenant Farmers Union Papers 1934-1970, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC.

162 Norman Thomas, "President Roosevelt and Share Croppers," speech delivered to NBC Network, March 26, 1936, Southern Tenant Farmers Union Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Durham, NC. 146

Commission.163 Carpenter, a lawyer who formally represented the Southern Tenant

Farmers Union, worked with STFU Leader Norman Thomas and knew that a way for tenants to achieve land ownership and security was through cooperative farming. 164

At the meeting, Carpenter, a long time native of Arkansas, "took Jeffersonian

Democracy seriously."165 Carpenter stated that the tenants had "no permanence of home, no security and little hope."166 Union members, first denied entrance, eventually addressed the commission, and suggested that the government establish a farm ownership program. Tenant W.L. Blackstone, who spoke at the meeting, stated, "We would all like to see all who are capable own their own land because that makes better citizens and taxpayers."167 Ultimately, the Commission's report issued in November 1936 urged that "The United States in cooperation with the

163 "Own-Your-Land Program," Memphis Press Scimitar, October 16, 1936, p. 14.

164 "Tenancy Report Hits Arkansas Lawlessness," Sharecroppers Voice, October-November 1936, p. 1.

165 John Herling, "Labor and Industry Field Notes From Arkansas," The Nation, April10, 1935, 419.

166 "Tenant Farmers Demand Justice at Ark. Hearings," Post, September 19, 1936.

167 Ibid. 147 state secure suitable farm lands for sale to tenant famers upon terms which can be met by any reasonably good farmer."168

local Union members also supported the idea of cooperative ownership. In

December 1937, F. R. Betton President of the Colored Farmers Association and STFU member of the Jones Hill local wrote STFU President Butler expressing his interest in not only cooperative buying and selling of goods but also in cooperative land ownership.169 Betton also sent a telegram to the Farm Security Administration asking them to consider purchasing twenty thousand acres in northeast Arkansas to distribute to landless tenants. Betton believed that the FSA could purchase the land, owned by insurance companies and other corporations at a reasonable price.170

Again, in 1938 Union representatives, Mitchell and Kester met with another government official, the Undersecretary of Agriculture Rexford Tugwell, and presented a new proposed resettlement project, which included purchasing approximately 2000 acres in Harrisburg Corners, Poinsett County, for use as a cooperative farm. The project was to include fifty families who would share in the

168 "Ends Silence," The Modern News, November 1936.

169 F. R. Betton to J. R. Butler, December 14, 1937, Southern Tenant Farmers Union Papers, Southern Historical Collection, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC.

17°F. R. Betton, Cotton Plant, Arkansas, to Farm Security Administration, Washington, D. C, December, 1937, Southern Tenant Farmers Union Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC. 148

ownership of the land. Mitchell presented the idea to Tugwell, who was also head

of rural resettlement projects. He asked the government to provide the down

payment and loans to the families while they built their log cabin houses, cleared

land and planted the initial cotton. Tugwell supported Mitchell's idea but knew that

it would take at least two years to get the needed funding and support.171

The Union's consistent fight for landownership and independence for tenants received support from other social activists and groups across the country.

Just before the National Sharecroppers Week in March 1939, the Union received

support for its cooperative farming proposal from Frank Crosswaith. Crosswaith was

an African American activist and columnist from New York. In his editorial column,

Looking Around and Beyond, Crosswaith called for the /len lightened workers" to help

the Southern Tenant Farmers Union.172 He championed the benefits of

cooperatively owned farms where there would be no more /I riding bosses, no race

discrimination, no giving to absentee landowners and speculators the fruits of back-

breaking toil.173

171 Mitchell, Mean Things Happening in This Land, 128.

172 Frank R. Crosswaith, "Looking Around and Beyond," The Guardian, March 111939.

173Crosswaith, "Looking Around and Beyond," 149

Another example ofthe STFU's pursuit of land ownership came in the form of the Union's efforts to obtain land grants or land sales with favorable terms for tenants. In February 1936, at its annual convention the STFU officially adopted its

"Resolution on Land" Resolution I for a new Homestead Law that would "give land to the landless."174 At the conference, Mitchell in collaboration with Dr. Amberson,

Professor at the University of Tennessee and advisor to the STFU, proposed a

national"land collectivization project" that would take over large-scale farming run

by absentee landlords such as banks, insurance companies, and large corporations.

The plan was to create a National Land Authority and redistribute the land. A

progressive congressman, Tom Amlie from Wisconsin, introduced the bill that by then was called "A New Homestead Act." North Dakota Senator Frazier sponsored the bill as well but it never reached a congressional hearing. Mitchell and the other

leaders of the STFU considered it a victory that it was even considered. 175

In a November 1936 open letter to President Roosevelt, H.L. Mitchell

discussed the Union members' overwhelmingly strong desire for land ownership.

Mitchell addressed the various forms of land ownership available to Roosevelt's

administration and the Union members including individually owned land or

174 "Convention Adopts Resolutions Determining Union Policy," The Sharecroppers' Voice, February 11936, p. 4.

175 Mitchell, Mean Things Happening in This Land, 126. 150

cooperative programs where individual farmers own a section ofthe land.176 In the

letter, Mitchell stated that, "A majority of them desire to secure their own farms. A

substantial minority are anxious to attempt cooperative operation of land on large

scale tracts."177 Even though the leaders of the STFU pursued the option of

cooperative farming, the majority of its members saw individual farm ownership as the sought-after ideal.178

BANKHEAD-JONES ACT

An example ofthe Union's work to achieve land ownership was their

continued push for legislation such as The Bankhead-Janes Farm Tenant Act, both in

pleas to government officials and propaganda campaign efforts to bring tenants' troubles to the forefront. By early 1935, Senator Bankhead from Alabama believed that the government needed to take significant steps to move tenants into

landownership. He therefore introduced the Farm Tenants Home Corporation bill,

in his words, to "promote more secure occupancy of farms and farm homes."179 The

176 Fannin, Labor's Promised Land, 121.

177 JR Butler and H.L. Mitchell, "To President Roosevelt- An Open Letter," The Sharecroppers Voice, November 20 1938.

178 Fannin, Labor's Promised Land, 121.

179 F. Raymond Daniell, "AAA Aims At End to Share Cropping," The New York Times, April 22 1935, p. 7. 151 corporation's purpose would have been to provide tenants with low interest, long- term loans to purchase land through the sale of stocks and bonds by the Secretary of the Treasury. landowners in the cotton belt South did not necessarily support the

Bankhead Bill and even the STFU, which fought for just this type of program, thought the bill did not go far enough to abolish the existing plantation system.180 The Union instead endorsed portions of the Bankhead-Jones bill, which would set aside money for loans to tenants for land purchases. 181

The legislation provided a "system of long-term mortgage loans to aid landless rural families in becoming farm owners."182 The Tenant Purchase program of The Bankhead Jones Act was an attempt by the government to provide tenants an opportunity to purchase a farm or farmland with long-term loans of up to 40 years at low interest rates, possibly as low as 3%. 183 Unfortunately, the local banks and farmers still controlled access to the monies; the loans required approval that the farms were self-sustainable and even when they were offered, farmers had little

180 Thomas Fauntleroy, "South is Apathetic to Bankhead Bill," The New York Times, June 30 1935, sec. E, p. 6.

181 "Bills Endorsed," Sharecroppers Voice, 1937.

182 James G. Maddox, "The Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act," Law and Contemporary Problems 4, no. 4 (October 1937), 434, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1189525/ (accessed March 9, 2011).

183 James H. Street, New Revolution in the Cotton Economy (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1957), 56. 152 money saved to make the investment and no guarantee of income to make the payments. Tenants still needed capital to purchase mules, farm implements and seed. Unless they received a decent amount of monies for their crops, it was extremely difficult to purchase those items in anticipation of receiving a farm loan.

Thus although the Bankhead-Jones legislation passed, in the end, it did little to aid tenants in the purchase of farms, as lenders typically "received twenty applications for every one loan grant available" and made fewer than 50,000 loans by 1946.184

After the introduction of the Bankhead Bill, the STFU continued its fight for

land ownership, proposing outright land grants rather than sales of land to tenants

by large corporations. The STFU understood that many tenants would need credit to

purchase the necessary equipment to work the land and would probably have

limited resources to make loan payments, at least initially. In May 1935, STFU

President Butler in a letter addressed to WPA Assistant Administrator Lawrence

Westbrook, stated that the Union members "favored a plan whereby those who

wish to own a home may be given a tract of land."185 Westbrook's response to then

STFU President JR Butler supported the Union's goal of landownership but

Westbrook also tried to persuade the STFU to accept direct land sales as an option

184 Street, New Revolution in the Cotton Economy, 57.

185 Lawrence Westbrook, to J. R. Butler, May 24, 1935, Southern Tenant Farmers Union Papers 1934-1970, Southern Historical Collection, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC. 153

instead of direct land grants. Westbrook expressed his interest in the earlier STFU

proposal, which would have given tenants land under the condition that so long as they /{occupy and use" the land it would be theirs. Westbrook believed that tenants

could still achieve the STFU's objective, which was protection oftenants'

landownership, under direct land purchase as long as there was a caveat in the sale that would prevent the transfer of title for an extended period, possibly up to fifty

years. 186 Prior to his work for the WPA, Westbrook had been a long time supporter

of cooperative landownership. He ran several cooperative housing projects for the

government and eventually became director of the Dyess Colony in Mississippi

County, Arkansas, a government run cooperative farming venture, which officially

opened in 1936.187

The Union also worked with The Arkansas Rural Rehabilitation Corporation,

which under the Federal Resettlement Administration in June 1936 purchased just

over 23,000 acres of undeveloped land in Poinsett County at an unheard of cost of

$34,000, about $1.50 an acre.188 The administration intended to divide it into 40-

acre lots in order to create new homes for rehabilitation clients. The Resettlement

186 Ibid.

187 "Westbrook Cites Cotton Figures," The Sharecroppers Voice, June 1937.

188 "RA Buys 23,000 Acres Near Marked Tree for $34,000," The Modern News, June 12 1936. 154

Administration also provided monies in the form of loans to some of the poorest tenants in order to help them cling to the "lowest rung of the agriculturalladder."189

From 1934 to 1937 the STFU continued to expose tenants' problems and advanced their "land for the landless" goal. Finally, President Roosevelt created a special committee to study farm tenancy.190 Union President Butler and other

members of the STFU attending the President's Farm Tenancy Committee meetings

in January 1937 strongly recommended that the Federal government, in order to solve the tenancy problem and to abolish tenancy altogether, should acquire land and sell it to tenants using long term, low interest rate loans.191 In response to the

STFU's recommendation and former Secretary Tugwell's proposal that the federal government set aside $50,000,000 a year to acquire land for tenants, Chairman of the committee Henry Wallace, who did not support the plan in its entirety, stated,

"Many tenants had never demonstrated desire or capacity to attempt ownership."192 In the end, Wallace's statement did not change the committee's findings.

189 "Problem of Farm Tenancy," Modern news, July 1936.

190 louis Cantor, Prologue To The Protest Movement (Durham: Duke University Press, 1969), 24.

191 "1deas Clash Over Way to End Problems," The Dallas News, 1936.

192 "Wallace Opposes Big Tenancy Grant," New York Times, December 17 1936, sec. Special To the New York Times, p. 9. 155

The committee's recommendation, which was published in February 1937 and supported by the STFU, was to establish an agency independent of the

Department of Agriculture the Farm Security Administration (FSA). The FSA would continue the Resettlement Administration Rehabilitation's loan program to acquire farmlands to be initially financed by government monies and then sold on long-term, low-interest loans to "landless" farmers.193

Harvard economist Jeremy Atack argued that the President's committee established that, "tenant farmers were trapped by the system in an economically and socially undesirable situation and had little chance of escape to the freedom of independent owner-occupancy.194 The 1937 Report of the President's Committee on Farm Tenancy also provided the framework for others to understand that "the plight of the farm tenant cannot be dissociated from the difficulties which confront those above and below him on the agriculturalladder."195

In 1937, at its third annual convention in January at Muskogee, Oklahoma, the Union passed another resolution to advocate for a Farm-Ownership program

193 Felix Belair, "Turnover Tax on Any Farm Held Less Than Three Years Suggested In The Report," The New York Times, February 111937.

194 Jeremy Atack, "Tenants and Yeomen in the Nineteenth Century," Agricultural History 62, no. 3 (Summer 1988): 10.

195 D.F.C, "Foreword," Law and Contemporary f?roblems 4, no. 4 (October 1937): 423. 156 requesting "Full Farms Ownership for 'soil-tillers"'196 In keeping with their long-held goal, as part of their closing ceremony, the Union slogan "Land for the Landless" was chanted by the convention delegates who represented over 30,000 members.197 To make their message even clearer to everyone who attended the meeting, on the walls of the building where the meeting took place the Union posted signs with their slogan "Land for the Landless." 198

Lauding the benefits of land ownership, just two months later in March 1937 at the National Sharecroppers Week, sponsored by the STFU, the Union President

J.R. Butler again called for Federal legislation that would allow the government to buy land from large planters and resell it to tenants with long repayment periods.199

The Union was finally getting the support of other organizations including the

National Committee on Rural Social planning. Along with the STFU, the committee

196 "Tenants Ask Full Farms Ownership for 'Soil Tillers'/' Muskogee Daily Phoenix, January 17 1937.

196 "Tenancy meeting Votes Farm-Ownership Program," The Dallas Morning News, January 5 1937, p. 1.

197 "Ceremony of Soil Ends Tenant Meeting," Muskogee Daily Phoenix, January 18 1937.

198 "Land for the Landless Southern Tenant Farmers Cry," Farmers National News, January 29 1937.

199 "Federal Aid Urge for Sharecroppers," The New York Times, March 41937, p. 9. 157 supported a House bill introduced by Representative Boileau of Wisconsin, intended to "bring land to landless farm tenants."200

Members of Local146 did not want to wait for the government to give land to them but wanted the Union to focus on a "concerted effort to secure land for the landless members."201 Local 146 presented a proposal to the Executive Council of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, asking for the enactment of a special tax on members for the purpose of purchasing land for Union members. The proposal called for 50-cent and 1.00 taxes respectively during cotton chopping and cotton picking seasons.

At the Union's fourth annual convention in February 1938, the STFU

Government Programs Committee's agenda again included a discussion on homeownership and federal programs.202 Following the convention, local Union members pushed the STFU to continue to work on land ownership for its members.

In 1938, over almost two hundred Union members, from St. Francis and Woodruff counties in Arkansas, signed a petition sent to Congress requesting the immediate

200 "Farm Tenant Agency Proposed in New Bill," The New York Times, May 5 1937, p. 11.

201 H. L. Mitchell to Mr. O.C. Morgan, Southern Tenant Farmers Union Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Durham, North Carolina.

202 "Fourth Annual Convention Southern Tenant Farmers Union Agenda" (Little Rock: Southern Tenant Farmers Union, 1938, typewritten), 4. 158

ratification of the Bankhead-Jones bill, discussed earlier, that would set aside one

billion dollars to aid tenants for the purchase of land.203

While in Muskogee, the Union members also considered endorsement of the "The Land Act Bill of 1938" proposed by Benjamin Marsh, Executive Secretary of

Dewey's, The People's Lobby. Similar to earlier STFU proposals, the bill proposed that the federal government purchase farmland for lease to farmers' cooperatives. 204 Dewey had also been a fan of Norman Thomas, one ofthe STFU's staunchest supporters and leaders, even voting for Thomas when he ran for

President in 1932 and 1936.205

Still attempting to find land for its members, the Union sent letters to U.S.

Senators in March 1938 that urged Congress to reappropriate $1,200,000,000 of war

203 STFU Locals of St. Francis and Woodruff Counties, "A Petition" (Whitmore: Southern Tenant Farmers Union, 1938).

204 The People's Lobby Benjamin Marsh, Washington, DC, to H. L. Mitchell, Southern Tenant Farmers Union, February 21, 1938, Southern Tenant Farmers Union Papers, Southern Historical Collection, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

205 Edward Bordeau, "John Dewey's Ideas About the Great Depression," Journal of the History of Ideas 32, no. 1 (Jan-March 1971): 68. 159

monies set aside to build war ships. The Union wanted the monies to be used to buy

land for farmers and for establishment of cooperative farm projects.206

By 1938, the idea of "Land for the Landless" was promoted over and over

again by the Union and its supporters including C.T. Carpenter, former attorney for the STFU and former member of the Arkansas Farm Commission. Taking their

message to service organizations, Carpenter spoke to the Rotary Club at Osceola,

Arkansas, promoting the opportunity for landownership for tenants through a

Homestead Law. During that talk, Carpenter stated that a new homestead law would "open the door of opportunity to tenants to raise themselves to a land- owning class" and that the "soil in the South and in agriculture generally was the source of freedom ... " 207

The Union continued to support the opportunity to provide "Land for the

Landless." In 1939, its leaders urged Federal support for legislation introduced by

Senator Josh Lee from Oklahoma, to set aside one billion dollars so that tenants would have the opportunity for land ownership and security.208 By now, the Union

206 H. L. Mitchell, Memphis, TN, to US Senator, March 24, 1938, Southern Tenant Farmers Union, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Durham, North Carolina.

207 "How to Aid Farm Tenant? Homestead Law Advocated to Make Him Land­ Owner," Memphis Press Scimitar, March 17 1938.

208 "Commends New Arkansas Law," The STFU News, March 211939, p. 2. 160 began to see some fruits from its labor and in The STFU News, the Union publication, commended Arkansas Governor Carl Bailey and a 1939 Arkansas law that allowed tenants and sharecroppers to secure state-owned land?09

CONCLUSIONS

From the past studies, we know that tenants in the 1930s, like Seborn Jones in the 1920s, struggled to make a living wage and New Deal programs failed to help them. A Duke University study of tenant farmers' conditions by Dr. Calvin B. Hoover,

Roosevelt's economic advisor, showed that tenants had not received an equal share of government subsidies for acreage reduction.210

Additionally, the planters responded to tenants' organization complaints that planters were keeping tenants' share of federal payments for acreage reduction programs, using violence and evictions to prevent the tenants from collecting their money. From the beginning, the STFU criticized the New Deal's AAA program and argued that many tenants lost their homes because of the AAA's cotton reduction programs.211 Changes to social and economic conditions had left tenants unable to

209 "Commends New Arkansas Law," The STFU News, March 211939, p. 2.

21 °F. Raymond Daniell, "AAA Aims At End to Share Cropping," The New York Times, April 22 1935, p. 7.

211 "Tenant Farmers Assail New Deal," The New York Times, February 28 1935. 161 buy land and with no way to provide for their families. Tenants had become completely dependent on planters.

There is no question that the Union fought to meet tenants' basic needs, including a fair wage for their work, food and clothing, education for their children, and healthcare for their families. However, the many STFU documents Secretary

Mitchell saved support the argument that what the tenants wanted was 11manly" independence and that Union members believed the way to achieve that was through landownership. From the beginning, it was evident that the STFU pushed for independent land ownership for tenants, consistent with their pledge to fight for

11 Land for the Landless." 162

THESIS CONCLUSION

When tenant farmers in Northeast Arkansas banded together in 1934, they were motivated by their desire for landed independence and the dignity and authority that came with it. The economic and social conditions that had existed over the last thirty years had slowly taken away their independence and their identities as Southern men, husbands and fathers. Central to the tenants' discontent was their inability to rise socially and economically, to climb the agricultural ladder in order to achieve the eventual land ownership they expected.

Tenants who joined the Southern Tenants Farmers Union in the 1930s did not fight the long struggle for so long just for a 50-cent pay raise; they did not endure even worse poverty than they already withstood just to gain a guaranteed year lease on a farm. The long held belief of manly independence through landownership still existed for them. From the beginning, it is clear that the STFU pushed for independent land ownership for tenants beginning with the Union's motto, "Land for the Landless." In pursuit of their goal, tenants faced death threats and suffered violence at the hands of the landowners. The Southern Tenant Farmers Union provided a vehicle, a way, for tenants to attempt to regain their lost independence.

Sadly, the Southern Tenant Farmers Union never achieved their goal of "Land for the Landless." Tenants continued to struggle as a result and over the next few 163

years, more lost their temporary homes due to mechanization and the increasing

concentration of landownership. Some tenants continued to farm, others moved

into industrial jobs; some, like Seborn's son Logan, worked in other jobs the growing

cotton industry provided. Because the Union did not keep a complete membership

list, there is no way of knowing if Seborn's sons ever joined the Union. But like the tenants who did, Seborn's sons sought independence. Logan, his oldest son, who

was 39 years old when the STFU began, did not engage in tenant farming but instead

worked for the local cotton gin. Logan married and initially rented land then was

eventually able to purchase land from his wealthier cousin from Wisconsin who had

invested in Arkansas property. Eventually, he built a house and worked his small farm with modest success. Seborn's youngest son, Simon, who was only 21 in 1934

when the STFU began, was the first of Seborn's son to achieve landownership; he was able to buy a small piece of hilly land in Poinsett County. Even though it was not the best place to farm, it was his. Bill the middle son, who was 34 at the start of the

Union, continually struggled like most tenants during that period. Bill never owned

land and constantly moved from farm to farm, just like his father, Seborn.212

212 Viola Horton, interview by Patricia Manley, April17, 2011, transcript. 164

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