This dissertation has been 62—4121 microfilmed exactly as received CONRAD, David Eugene, 1928— THE FORGOTTEN FARMERS; THE AAA AND THE SOUTHERN TENANTS, 1933-36. The University of Oklahoma, Ph.D., 1962 History, modern University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan Copyright by DAVID EUDENE CONRAD 1962 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA. GRADUATE COLLEGE THE FORGOTTEN FARMERS: THE AAA AND THE SOUTHERN TENANTS, 1933-36 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY BY DAVID EUGENE CONRAD Norman, Oklahoma 1962 THE FORGOTTEN FARMERS: THE AAA AND THE SOUTHERN TENANTS, 1933-36 DISSERTATION COMMITTEE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author wishes to acknowledge the unceasing encouragement, guidance, and supervision given by his two major professors. Dr. Gilbert C . Fite and Dr. W. Eugene Hollon. He must also thank Chester C. Davis, Cully A. Cobb, Aubrey Williams, Henry Wallace, Alger Hiss, and Mary Connor Myers for their help in giving information and sending materials. He wishes to give special thanks to H. L. Mitchell and Gardner Jackson for their many kindnesses in opening files and giving interviews, and to Dr. Harold T. Pinkett of the National Archives for his assistance. Dr. lone Young has been of great aid in suggesting mechanical and gram­ matical corrections. This study was made possible in part by two grants received by the author from The Southern Fellowships Fund. The author, however, and not The Southern Fellowships Fund, is wholly responsible for the statements made herein and for their publication. Ill TABLE OF CONTENTS . Page LIST OF TABLES .......................................... v Chapter I. THE AMERICAN PEASANTS ............................. 1 II. THE AGRICULTURAL ADJUSTMENT ACT .................... 26 III. THE COTTON PROGRAMS ............................... 58 IV. AAA'S TENANT PROBLEMS ............................. 95 V. THE SOUTHERN TENANT FARMERS' UNION ................. 122 VI. AGRARIANS VS. LIBERALS ............................ 152 VII. AAA'S LANDLORD-TENANT COMMITTEES ................... 1?2 VIII. PURGE IN AAA ..................................... 194 IX. THE REIGN OF TERROR ....... 218 X. THE LAST YEAR OF THE FIRST AAA ................... 250 CONCLUSION ............................................. 286 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....... •.................................... 295 IV LIST OF TABLES Table Page 1. The First Organization of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration .......... 6l 2. Local, State, Regional, and National Structure of AAA .... 71 3 . Hypothetical Incomes (l93^) ........................... 90 L. Reorganization of AAA, February, 1935 .................. 262 THE FORGOTTEN FARMERS: THE AAA AND THE SOUTHERN TENANTS, 1933-36 CHAPTER I THE AMERICAN PEASANTS "Adjustment" to a sick and insane environment is of itself not "health" but sickness and insanity.— James Agee One of the most abiding problems of men on earth has been the struggle over the control and use of land. Since ancient times, slav­ ery and tenancy have been the means of oppressing those who till the soil. In the United States, despite the large amount of land and the relative ease of acquisition, slavery and tenancy fastened themselves on the agricultural system, especially in the South. By 1930; more than half of all Southern farmers did not own the land they farmed, and nearly three out of four cotton farms were operated with tenant labor. More­ over, cotton farms accounted for one-fourth of all farms in the country and half of Southern farms.^ There were 1,831;^70 tenant farmers in the South in 1935; about 63 percent of all tenants in the nation. Tenants produced roughly two out of three bales of cotton in the United States.^ ^W. A. Turner, A Graphic Summary of Farm Tenure, U. S. Department of Agriculture Mise. Pub. No. 26l (Washington: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1936); pp. I-3 . S., Bureau of Census, United States Census of Agriculture: 1925 . The Southern States, II, lOBl ■ 2 Tenancy had been on the rise in the South and the nation since 1900. The national tenancy rate increased from 35 percent in 19OÜ to ^2 percent in 1935" It ranged from 70 percent in Mississippi to 6 per­ cent in Massachusetts. In I9OO the part of American farm land operated by tenants was less than one-third of all cultivated land, but by 1935 it was 45 percent. Nor was tenancy confined to Negroes, as was often supposed. The rate of white tenancy rose alarmingly after 19OO to the point that k6 percent of all white farmers in the country were tenants in 1935" Among Negro farmers, 77 percent were tenants, but this figure had been fairly constant since I9OO. About half of all Negro tenant farmers were at the lowest level of tenancy, sharecropping, and 29 per­ cent of white tenants were croppers. Other statistics indicate that it was becoming increasingly difficult to climb out of tenancy,^ that farms were changing hands with amazing rapidity, that more and more land was being mortgaged, and that farmers as a class were gradually losing con- trol of the land.^ As early as 1917, Former President Theodore Roosevelt showed concern about developments in land tenure when he wrote an article in the Ohio Farmer entitled "Will Our Farmers Become a Tenant Class? The statistics indicate an affirmative answer and also that the Great % . S., Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the U. S., 19^1 (Washington: U. S. Government Printing Office, 19^2), pp. ^81-68$. E. Ejalmar Bjomsen, "Farm Debt and Farm Foreclosures," Bureau of Agricultural Economics, The Agricultural Situation, Vol. 2k, No. 2, February, 19^0 (Washington: U. S. Government Printing Office, 19^0), pp. 18-2 1 . ^Turner, A Graphic Summary of Farm Tenure, p. 1. ^Theodore Roosevelt, "Will Our Farmers Become a Tenant Class?" Ohio Farmer, CIV (October 13, 1917), 31^* 3 Depression was hastening the process. Wliat happened to the ideal of farm oiraership? Thomas Jefferson dreamed of an intelligent, independent electorate made up mostly of free- holding farmers. That dream became American dogma, but it was lost some­ where in the 20th century. Forty-two percent of farm families owned no land in Ig^O, and every year h0,000 more joined their ranks. National land policy during the 19th and 20 th centuries was dedicated to indi- vidual ownership of family-size farms, and yet in 193Ô President Frank­ lin D . Roosevelt was forced to admit that, "we have fallen far short of 8 achieving that ideal." The President's pronouncement came only after careful study of farm tenancy by several government agencies and a special committee. For years,.many of the key men in the federal government concerned with land problems had been gravitating toward the conclusion that something was basically wrong with the national Isuad tenure system. They did not come • out and say it, but they implied in their writings that a change was needed. What they had in mind was not clear--perhaps communal ownership for some groups, perhaps guaranteed tenure, perhaps governmental limita­ tions on the freedom of farmers to mortgage and sell their land. One official blamed "freedom of disposition," or the unlimited right of the landowner to sell the land, even if it was not in his own best interest, 7 Paul V. Maris, "Farm Tenancy," Yearbook of Agriculture, 1940. U. S. Depeirtment of Agriculture, 76th Cong., 3rd Bess., House Doc. 695 (Washington: U. S. Government Printing Office, 19^0), pp. 887-888. Q Franklin Roosevelt, Farm Tenancy, tfessage from the President Transmitting the Report of the Special Committee on Farm Tenancy, 75'th Cong., 1st Sess., House Doc. No. 1^9 (Washington: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1937), P- 1- for much of the trouble. He felt that it led to land speculation and tenancy. 9 Fscrm tenancy existed in all parts of the United States during the 1930's, but it was worst in the Southern states, especially in cotton areas. Cotton farms were mostly small and low in value, averaging less than half the size and a third the worth of other types of farms in the nation. Three out of four cotton farmers were tenants, chiefly because cotton lent itself to tenancy better than any other American crop.^^ Cotton is a tropical plant which was adapted to the mildly trop­ ical parts of the United States. It thrives on hot weather and moderate, timely moisture. Since frost is deadly to cotton and the growing season is long, it cannot be grown profitably north of the line where there are fewer than 200 frost-free days each year. Thus, in the 1930's the "Cotton Belt" covered most of Texas, southern Oklahoma, Arkansas, Lou­ isiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, western Tennessee, and northern Florida.Since it was the big money crop of the South, cotton monopolized the richest land— the alluvial soils of the numerous river valleys and the fertile prairies of Texas and Oklahoma. Yet it was also the crop of the small upland farmer who scratched out an existence on marginal and sub-marginal land. 1 ? ^L. C. Gray, "Our Major Land Use Problems and Suggested Lines of Action," Yearbook of Agriculture, 19^0, pp. 404-409. ^'^Turner, A Graphic Summary of Farm Tenure, pp. 1-3- ^^Rupert Vance, Human Factors in Cotton Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, I929), pp. i and iL. ^^Ibid., pp. 14 -2 3 . 5 • ■ Where cotton culture was the most intensive, tenancy was the greatest. ' The Mississippi Delta, the Black Belt of northern Mississippi and Alabama, and the Piedmont Plateau of South Carolina were areas where tenant farmers far outnumbered landowners, and these were also the cen­ ters of cotton production. There were 69O counties in the country, mostly in the South, where there were more tenants than landowners. Texas had the most tenants, but Mississippi had the worst tenancy. In Mississippi, there were more than twice as many tenants as owners. More than half of the tenants were Negroes, but they had one million less acres of land than white tenants.