The University of North Carolina Social Study Series; Human Factors in Cotton Culture; A Study in the Social Geography of the American South

The settlement of America, from a social geographer's point of view, involved the adaptation of pre-existing cultures to environmental factors such as topography, climate, and plant and animal communities. At the beginning of its development, the South was driven by the needs of the cotton mill. Without accepting geographical determinism, it should be recognized that much of what is characteristic of southern culture, its plantation system, its sectionalism, its agricultural life and its rural practices, has developed as a kind of complex around cotton. Without taking this thesis to any unreasonable limitation, the present study grew out of an attempt to assess the human factor in cotton growing. The warmth of emotional interest in the South was tempered as much as possible by an appeal to cold and impartial fact. However, it must be admitted that the great human connection that surrounds the cotton crop is too complex to be adequately described by statistics and cases. The primitive, invincible data of society always turn out to be higher than conventional human ideas. Thus, such a study is likely to generate a sense of failure - a feeling that the cotton complex exists but is not written down on paper. Nevertheless, although the picture is incomplete, the writer hopes that it is not misleading. This volume is planned as part of a series of studies on the South by the Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North Carolina. Taking the southern regional field as a common subject, they try to describe the culture characteristic of the American South in terms of its environmental conditioning.