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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Economics - 12. New Blows to Southern Agriculture During the ’Thirties: Trends and Policies - 2. The Disappearing Sharecropper - 3. The Role of the A.A.A. in Regard to Cotton
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Chapter 12. New Blows to Southern Agriculture 255
ment. But hundreds of thousands of them did not get any protection at all.
They were pushed off the land, and, if anything, the A.A.A. hastened their
elimination.
3. The Role of the A.A.A. in Regard to Cotton
In order to understand this, it is necessary to recall what the A.A.A.
program is all about and how it works.® Its fundamental objective is to
raise and stabilize farm income. This objective is sought along four princi-
pal lines: (i) limitation of cash crop acreages; (2) removal of price-
depressing surpluses from regular markets; (3) payment of direct subsidies
to farmers; (4) and encouragement of conservation practices. There is an
intimate relationship between all four main aspects of the program. The
first two are aimed at restricting the supply brought on the ordinary
market. The cash crop limitations make greater emphasis on soil-building
crops and practices possible. Subsidies are paid as a remuneration for
carrying out acreage restrictions and conservation work; their function is not
only to let the farmers have a direct bounty, but also to encourage them
to participate in the program, which is not compulsory but voluntary. The
voluntary character of the participation, however, seems to be something
of a fiction. There is, for instance, a ginning tax on cotton and a market-
ing tax on tobacco, whereby the nonparticipant is penalized if he markets
in excess of what he normally produces on what should be his acreage allot-
ment. The fact that those taxes have to be approved by referendum does
not make the participation much more voluntary for the individual opera-
tors who would be against it.
The cut in cotton acreage has been drastic.^^* Owing to a tendency to
intensify the cultivation and to retain the best land in cotton and, perhaps,
to make some improvements in cultivating technique, the production has not
decreased to the same extent.^® Since the acreage cuts were not made
large enough to offset the effect of the increased acreage yields, the over-
production problem obviously has not been solved in this way.^^
The A.A.A. policy of keeping up the level of cotton prices by crop reduc-
tion and removal of price-depressing surpluses from the market, of course,
helped the United States to lose its foreign market to competing countries.
The volume of American cotton export hit a low during the crop year 1938-
1939.^® On the whole, it seems that ‘^of all our crops, cotton has given the
•The following short description of how the A.A.A, program has affected the Negro
is based largely on an unpublished manuscript prepared for this study by Gunnar Lange
(^^Agricultural Adjustment Programs and the Negro” [January, 1942]). Several significant
details and qualifications, as well as certain characteristics of the program during the first
years of its operation, are intentionally overlooked in the summary given in the text.
Main emphasis is put on those points which facilitate the understanding of how the program
has affected the Negro.
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