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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 - 9. Economic Evaluation of the A.A.A - 10. Social Evaluation of the A.A.A
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Chapter 12. New Blows to Southern Agriculture 267
that it was bound to have important effects, not only on acreage in various
crops, on labor demand, and on the direction of labor demand, but also
on the relative economic advantage of different types of landholdings and
of forms of agricultural enterprises. This is a problem of the size of hold-
ings j
the relation between ownership, management, and labor; and so on.
In the South and to the Negro, it is primarily a problem of whether or not
the plantation system shall be protected and conserved. Johnson, Embree,
and Alexander rightly emphasized that the “organization of the farm
system is basic to reform in other matters.”®^ The pretension of “neutrality”
in this question is logically untenable when such big measures are taken.
In the planning stage of the program and in the continuous modification,
this matter should have been made explicit, a purposeful aim decided upon,
and adequate means selected toward this aim. This was not done, except for
some efforts to favor agricultural cooperation and except for a tendency
as the defeatism deepened in regard to turning the depression into con-
tinued industrialization—to favor self-sufficient farming. These and other
efforts were not clearly conceived of in the framework of the entire eco-
nomic process and of national economic policy as a whole, and they were
never attempted on a scale corresponding to the import of the agricultural
trends and the scope of the A.A.A. interference in these trends. Arthur
Raper, writing in 1936 and not having available the evidence of the 1940
Census, nevertheless saw in his field studies the main facts and formulated
this fundamental criticism:
The New Deal with its cotton restriction program, its relief expenditures, and its
loan services, has temporarily revitalized the Black Belt, has rejuvenated the decay-
ing plantation economy. Those who control the plantations arc now experiencing
relative prosperity. On the other hand landless farmers, though able for the
most fart because of the New Deal to fay their rents and settle their accounts, are
not only failing to escafe their chronic defendence but are actually losing status.
Many tenants are being pushed off the land while many others are being pushed down
the tenure ladder, especially from cropper to wage hand status.®^
The stipulations against the displacement of labor contained in the law
may in some measure have been effective in slowing up the process (at the
same time diminishing the gains of economic efficiency to be reached in this
way). But they also comforted the policy makers and the general public,
and contributed toward keeping off their minds the big unsolved task of
moving labor from over-populated cotton-tenancy districts.®®
10. Social Evaluation of the A.A.A.
This brings us to a discussion of certain other social aspects of the A.A.A.
A primary aim of the program was to bring relief to the rural population
which had experienced a serious economic set-back. This aim was first
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