From Crop Lien to Contract Farming: The Roots of Agribusiness in the American

South, 1929-1939
Author(s): Monica Richmond Gisolfi
Source: Agricultural History , Spring, 2006, Vol. 80, No. 2 (Spring, 2006), pp. 167-189
Published by: Agricultural History Society

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From Crop Lien to Contract Farming
The Roots of Agribusiness in the American South,
1929-1939

MONICA RICHMOND GISOLFI

In 1929 rural sociologist Rupert Vance surveyed the southern la

ing no end in sight to the cotton production that impoverished
search of ways for cotton farmers to diversify, Vance noted that
uitable or not, a system of division oftheproduct by shares bet
and tenant has been worked out by custom and lawfor cotton."
was a credit system in place that facilitated cotton production,
dated back to Reconstruction. Lamenting that "no generally acc
ofshare cropping has been worked out for more complex forms
Vance could notforesee that soon furnishing merchants would
crop lien to facilitate poultry production. For some time, politi
and a host of rural reformers waged an unsuccessful war aga
lien, and its close relatives sharecropping and tenancy, which th
to be the basis of southern problems. The poultry industry?tod
for contract farming and a multi-million-dollar business?gre
crop lien system, an institution thought to be the root of souther

As the country entered the Great Depression, few Upc

gians could imagine an end to cotton farming. Cotton dictat
of their lives and had dominated the Upcountry since the en
War, but this would soon change. Over the course of th

MONICA GISOLFI is a doctoral candidate in United States history at

sity. Her dissertation, titled "From Cotton Farmers to Poultry Growers
trial Agriculture in North Georgia, 1914-1975" examines the shift from s
dustrial corporate agriculture in the American South.

Agricultural History, Vol. 80, Issue 2, pp. 167-189, ISSN 0002-1482; electro
? 2006 by Agricultural History Society. All rights reserved. Please direct all
sion to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of Cal
and Permissions website, at http://www. ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm.

167

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 168 / Agricultural History

farmers in Georgia's Upcountry began trading cotton production for poul?

try growing and planted the seeds of a multi-million-dollar industry. Pro-
prietors of country stores adapted the crop lien system, the farm credit
system that had facilitated cotton production since the end of the Civil
War, to poultry growing. Soon spring chickens or "fryers" that once ran
about yards and were considered a seasonal crop were renamed "broilers"
and were grown year-round in enclosed houses under tightly regulated
conditions. What had been once the domain of women and children?who

patched together makeshift chicken coops, read up on artificially heated

incubators or "wooden hens," and became devotees of the county agent
and home demonstration service?became the domain of hatchery-men,
feed-dealers, poultry growers, poultry processing plants, poultry integrators,
poultry scientists, and national corporations.2
Over the course of the twentieth century, in the Upcountry and be?
yond, farmers shifted from labor-intensive to capital-intensive production
and came to depend on a host of costly products: pesticides, machinery,
and other technological innovations in breeding, feeding, and disease con?
trol. The shift to capital-intensive production led to increasing depen-
dence on crop liens and, later, contract farming. The movement toward
contract farming started in the 1930s, when merchants began to extend
credit for poultry growing to cotton farmers. They advanced chicks and
feed to farmers, much in the same way that they had loaned seed and fer-
tilizer to cotton farmers. By the time the United States entered World War
II, merchants had laid the foundation of contract farming. With credit
identified as the most important factor in its growth, the Georgia poultry
industry after World War II was characterized as the quintessential agri-
business and economists recommended that other agricultural enterprises
follow the lead of Upcountry Georgia. By the 1950s poultry, once a side-
line activity that buffered farmers against the whims of the cotton market,
had become Georgia's most important farm product. Georgians came to
depend on chicken in the way that they and their ancestors had depended
upon cotton, a dependence that begot poverty and indebtedness.3
Cotton farming and the crop lien system had not always dominated
Upcountry Georgia. Prior to the Civil War, Upcountry farmers produced
little to no cotton on diversified farms. These farmers constituted 25 per?
cent of Georgia's white population and produced less than 10 percent of
the state's cotton before the Civil War. In this area characterized by white

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 From Crop Lien to Contract Farming / 169

landowning farmers and small farms, farmers generally grew enough grain
and meat to feed their families and rarely relied on country stores for es-
sential food supplies. Until the Civil War, these farmers, in the words of his-
torian Steven Hahn, "remained on the periphery of the export economy."4
The Civil War, however, devastated the Upcountry. When troops re-
turned home they found weed-filled fields, broken fences, and empty
storehouses. Confederate soldiers seeking provisions, followed by Gen?
eral William Tecumseh Sherman's troops, wreaked havoc across the re?
gion as they stole livestock and destroyed crops. These conditions chipped
away at the self sufficiency that had once characterized life in the Up?
country. Farmers increasingly turned to country merchants for credit for
the supplies needed to plant crops. Merchants soon demanded a lien or a
mortgage on the crop in exchange for credit and required that farmers
grow cotton, a crop that could be sold in northern markets. The cotton
crop served as security for the credit the merchant extended to the farmer.
Since farmers were forced to produce cotton to secure credit, they reduced
acreage planted in corn, wheat, and other foodstuffs, increasingly relying
on merchants not only for fertilizer and cottonseed but also for bacon,
corn, and other necessities. Hahn explains that this "new and exploitative
credit system . . . tied smallholders firmly to staple agriculture," and by
1890 "the Upcountry stood fully transformed, wrenched from the margin
into the mainstream of the cotton market."5

From the end of the Civil War through the Great Depression, farmers
in Upcountry Georgia grew record amounts of cotton, and little else, on
infertile land. In the first decades of the twentieth century, cotton produc?
tion expanded and conditions among farmers worsened, as they lost their
land and slipped into the ranks of tenants and sharecroppers. A region
once inhabited by small landowning farmers became a land dominated by
furnishing merchants and cotton farming, plagued by soil erosion, ten-
ancy, and sharecropping.6
Cotton production obstructed diversification and impoverished Geor?
gia farmers. In 1914 a Georgia businessman painted a bleak portrait of
farmers' heavy reliance on cotton cultivation. A man could "ride a hun?
dred miles without seeing a herd of livestock," he observed, adding, "When
you do see cattle they are little tick infested creatures that no more resem-
ble real cows than a tubercular cotton factory operator resembles an ath-
lete. . . . There is no grain, no hay, no poultry, no vegetable gardens, no

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 170 / Agricultural History

orchards?except the peach orchards belonging to non-resident corpora-

tions?nothing that goes to make up a real farmer's home." A Georgia
farmer reiterated the same concerns and insisted that "what is hurting
poor people here the worst of anything is trying to raise cotton to buy sup-
plies with." If farmers diversified and produced a range of food crops in
addition to cotton, this farmer reasoned, Georgia farmers and their fami?
lies would be "the happiest people in the world," but the credit system
tethered Upcountry farmers to cotton and prevented them from growing
a variety of crops.7
Writing in 1929 rural sociologist Rupert Vance criticized the South's
one-crop system and argued that "financial interests," not "agricultural in?
terests," were to blame for the South's reliance on cotton. Farmers did not
choose to grow cotton year after year; rather their creditors required
them to do so. Furnishing merchants advanced farmers seed, fertilizer,
and necessities on credit and refused to loan credit on any crop but cot?
ton. Likewise, landed farmers often owned commissary stores where they
sold foodstuffs to their tenants and sharecroppers and earned handsome
profits. Country stores depended upon the sale of foodstuffs to farmers
and therefore had little to gain and much to lose if farmers could produce
food for themselves. The interests of farmers directly competed against
the interests of creditors. Vance argued that "there exists a fundamental
conflict between the public needs of the region and the vested interests of
those engaged in supplying the various forms of cotton credit."8
Cotton farmers could not change the system. They could neither opt to
plant sweet potatoes and corn nor expand their flock of laying hens and
spring chickens and expect to receive goods on credit. Change, Vance ar?
gued, "will have to be engineered from above by bankers, landlords, and
supply merchants." Those in power would have to undergo "a social crisis
such as a continued depression in the cotton market." Only after a period
of "continued loss," he reasoned, would bankers, merchants, and land?
lords allow farmers to cease cultivating cotton.9
The period of continued loss that Vance predicted began in 1920 when
cotton prices plummeted. During the roaring 1920s Georgia farmers, and
southern farmers more generally, slipped deeper and deeper into debt. In
1919 cotton sold for thirty-five cents a pound and cottonseed sold for sev?
enty dollars a ton. The following year, in 1920, the price of cotton dropped
to sixteen cents a pound, and cottonseed sold for thirty-one dollars a ton.

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 From Crop Lien to Contract Farming / 171

Even though cotton prices reached a record high during World War I, a
1918 survey determined that 44 percent of farms lost money on cotton de?
spite high prices. Surveys conducted during the 1920s concluded that the
situation continued to worsen. A 1925 study reported that the average
Georgia cotton farmer lost $4.80 per acre. Eventually merchants, bankers,
and large landowners began to fall into poverty as well.10
A plague of insects and the adoption of new technology compounded
rural poverty in the Upcountry. The boll weevil brought devastation in the
mid-1920s. Between 1921 and 1923 the Georgia cotton yield dropped from
two hundred pounds to eighty pounds per acre. Just south of the Upcoun?
try, in Georgia's Greene County, farmers who routinely produced nearly
20,000 bales a year harvested a paltry 333 bales in 1922. The agricultural
depression and drops in crop yields devastated farmers, who began to
leave the land. Between 1920 and 1925 roughly 3.5 million acres of arable
land were removed from production in Georgia. One government study
found that Georgia and South Carolina led the way in the decline in crop
acreage.11
As Georgia cotton farmers decreased the amount of land in produc?
tion, Oklahoma and Texas farmers forged ahead in acres planted. Be?
tween 1919 and 1926 Texas farmers increased acreage under cotton culti?
vation from over ten million acres to more than eighteen million acres.
The high altitudes and dry climates of the southern plains prevented boll
weevil infestation. Moreover, Oklahoma and Texas cotton farmers worked
flat, large plots of land and relied on the use of tractors and cotton-picking
machinery. With their increased production and low overhead costs, west?
ern cotton farmers drove down cotton prices, placing Upcountry cotton
farmers at a crippling disadvantage.12
With the agricultural depression, the demographic composition of Up?
country Georgia changed dramatically. Abandoned farms began to dot
the hills where the farm population dropped precipitously. The president
of the Georgia State College of Agriculture estimated that one hundred
thousand of the farm population left Georgia in the first six months of
1922, and county agents found that eleven thousand farms were aban?
doned in that same period. The Agricultural Census of 1930 confirmed
these estimates, showing that since 1920 Georgia had lost fifty-five thou?
sand farms, 3,400,000 acres of farmland were laid fallow, and 266,000 of
the rural population had left the countryside. With the stock market crash

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 172 / Agricultural History

of 1929, the nation entered the Great Depression, which further shocked
an already impoverished rural South. Cotton prices continued to tumble,
and Upcountry farmers fell deeper into poverty. In Georgia, the gross in-
come for farmers dropped from two hundred six dollars in 1929 to eighty-
three dollars in 1932. In that same year, cotton prices reached an all-time
low of 4.6 cents per pound.13
As lean year followed lean year with no end in sight, merchants, bank?
ers, and large landowners in the South were no longer immune to the pov?
erty that surrounded them. Furnishing merchants went bankrupt, and
banks failed as low cotton prices prevented clients from paying bills. One
study of the credit system in Georgia explained that increasingly growers
were unable to pay debts in unrelentingly poor crop years. The logic of the
lien entailed that a year of loss would be followed by a profitable year,
allowing creditors to collect old debts. However, in the 1920s, creditors
found it increasingly difficult to collect debts and watched their clientele
shrink, as farmers left the land. This inability to collect, in the words of
one survey, impaired "the lending power of local banks and credit mer?
chants" leading to "a general restriction of credit."14
In the late summer of 1933, at the behest of the newly formed Agricul?
ture Adjustment Administration (AAA), landowners measured their crops
and plowed up a third of their cotton, directing tenants and sharecroppers
to do the same. In the years that followed, cotton farmers took acreage
out of production and required smaller amounts of cottonseed and fertil-
izer than in years past. Rupert Vance's prediction?that cotton cultivation
in the South would decline only when merchants and landlords had un-
dergone a period of "continued loss" that was "painful and of long dura-
tion"?was fast becoming a reality. In Georgia alone, ninety-seven thou?
sand farmers plowed up seven hundred thousand acres of cotton for which
the government paid them roughly eight million dollars. This cut produc?
tion by roughly 360,000 bales. Seeking to control crop surpluses that were
glutting markets and driving down prices, the government used allot-
ments to control crop production. The government paid farmers to take
land out of production, effectively "renting" land to lay fallow.15
The plow-up of 1933 has been remembered as a dramatic moment that
signaled great change in the South, a moment in which the federal govern?
ment changed the order of things and stepped in to dethrone tyrannical
King Cotton. Throughout the South, farmers and AAA agents exchanged

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 From Crop Lien to Contract Farming / 173

words and sometimes blows over allotments, measurements, and the fact
that the federal government was taking a central role in the lives of farm?
ers. As a young man, president-to-be Jimmy Carter measured cropland
for the AAA to determine if farmers were planting their allotted acreage.
"Meticulous in [his] work," Carter nonetheless found that his calculations
sometimes contradicted those of landowners, a discrepancy that could
erupt in violence. Carter remembered one farmer who stormed into the
Carter family store, grabbed him, and shouted, "Why the hell are you try-
ing to cheat me out of my government payments?" When Carter at-
tempted to explain his calculations, the farmer remained unconvinced,
threw Carter to the ground, and began punching him.16
A New York Times reporter, Charles Puckette, who headed south in
the summer of 1933 to investigate the plow-up, also noted opposition to the
measure. One important group that deserved mention, in the journalist's
view, was an essential part of the South's workforce: mules. The journalist
explained, "the mule has been trained to walk between the rows and not
to tread on the cotton plants." However, New Dealers had "asked this
conservative [the mule] to change his ways, to trample on the rows as he
dragged the destroying plow."17
Farmers balked just as hard at the thought of intentionally destroying
fields of cotton. It just seemed "wrong before God to plow up a crop," ad-
mitted one. A friend of the Carter family remembered that he "couldn't
keep [his] mule up on the row, where she had never been before without
being whipped." He explained, "I had to let her walk near the middle, and
hold the plow way over sidewise to reach the cotton stalks," adding "It
was hard work, and I almost cried." In Georgia's Greene County, sociolo-
gist Arthur Raper overheard tenants discussing the plow-up. One re-
marked, "I ain't never pulled up no cotton stalks befo', and somehow I
don't like the idea." Another tenant proposed the following, "Let's swap
work that day; you plow up mine, and Fll plow up yours." In fact, swap-
ping became common practice throughout the South, where farmers
could not bear the thought of plowing up their own rows of cotton, de?
stroying the fruits of their labor.18
Despite human and animal opposition, federal support of reduced pro?
duction continued. In April 1934 Congress passed the Bankhead Cotton
Control Act to thwart the efforts of farmers who evaded allotments. The

act set marketing quotas, limiting the amount of cotton farmers could sell.

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 174 / Agricultural History

In 1936, when the Supreme Court invalidated key provisions of the AAA,
the Roosevelt administration fired back with the Soil Conservation and

Domestic Allotment Act, which paid farmers for shifting land from cotton
to soil-conserving crops. In Georgia cotton acreage fell precipitously from
3.4 million acres in 1929 to under 2.2 million acres in 1939. As cotton farm?

ers began plowing up portions of their crops in return for government

payments, they bought fewer and fewer sacks of cottonseed and fertilizer,
and furnishing merchants found once-bustling stores as empty as sur-
rounding cotton fields.19
The drama surrounding the plow-up and the subsequent allotment pol?
icy may cloud the fact that New Deal reforms reinforced the power struc-
ture in Georgia and the South. County elite sat on the committees that
oversaw the distribution of AAA allotments, and they administered AAA
policies in a manner that strengthened their power. This meant that pay?
ments intended for tenants and sharecroppers found their way back to
landlords. One report explained the "wholesale neglect of the tenant" by
pointing to the fact that the AAA "organized its program under the direc-
tion of the planters themselves." In his study on two Georgia counties,
Arthur Raper explained "practically all of [AAA money] found its way
into the hands of the landlord. One-half of it belonged to him as rent,
while the other half was used to reduce the tenants' indebtedness to him

for furnishings." It would be wrong to assume that landlords even felt the
need to justify taking their tenants' or croppers' payments. In the early
stages, many tenants and sharecroppers did not know that they were en-
titled to payments, and those who were aware of the program could not
easily demand their checks from their landlords.20
Not only did renters and croppers lose out on government payments,
but small landowners lost as well. County agricultural agent H. A. Maxey
explained the plight of small farmers who, prior to New Deal reforms,
produced "just enough cotton to supply their necessary things of life."
When small farmers were forced to reduce their acreage planted in cot?
ton, Maxey stated, "it dug into their very existence." In contrast, large
farmers reduced acreage, turned profits, and received large allotment
checks from the government. According to Upcountry cotton farmer Guy
Castleberry, large farmers were fine, but small farmers suffered: "the man
like me that just had a few acreage, [sic] he just had to get out of it." For
small farmers, taking land out of production left them with minimal acreage

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 From Crop Lien to Contract Farming / 175

on which to grow a cotton crop. One study concluded that ultimately the
AAA served as "merely a subsidy to planters."21
The AAA policies further hurt tenants and sharecroppers, who were
east off the land as landowners removed acreage from production. Some
allowed their tenants to stay, but benefit payments encouraged landown?
ers to demote croppers and tenants to wage hands. Raper observed that
AAA allotments "made it advantageous for the landlord to use wage
hands instead of croppers." Census figures from Upcountry Georgia's Hall
County testify to these practices. In 1930, 924 owners and 1,805 tenants
farmed in Hall County. By 1940 the number of tenants in Hall County had
fallen to 1,351. A handful of these 454 tenants who left the ranks of the
tenant class secured land, but the vast majority became wage laborers or
left the land altogether. Surrounding counties watched their tenant
farmer populations decline as well.22
Landowners voiced ardent opposition to relief measures that provided
croppers and tenants with food and other necessities, purportedly fearing
that government handouts would make tenants and sharecroppers unwilling
to work for their keep. Landlords opposed relief measures because share?
croppers' dependence upon landlords for work made for loyal workers. Re?
lief measures, landlords claimed, would make already lazy tenants and
sharecroppers even more shiftless. One report explained, "There is a con-
siderable feeling among landlords that anything which disturbs this de-
pendent status of the cropper is undesirable." Landlords explained their
opposition to relief in moral terms; they feared the "demoralizing effect"
of relief on farm laborers. After the season was over, however, landlords
conveniently forgot their concern for the morality of their workers and
eagerly supported federal relief measures, largely because they no longer
wished to provide for their workers.23
As landowners east aside tenants and sharecroppers, they began to
purchase automobiles and farm machinery using federal money. "The cot?
ton reduction program and other federal emergency agencies . . . have
caused a kind of boom," Raper observed. With cash in hand, landowners
went out and purchased cars and tractors. Amid the Depression, the num?
ber of automobiles in Georgia climbed. In 1932 there were 310,684 auto?
mobiles in the state. Two years later, after landowners had received their
allotment checks, the number climbed to 397,685.24
Landowners used government payments not only to purchase automo-

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 176 / Agricultural History

biles, but also to improve farm buildings, which would soon house the Up-
country's new cash crop: chickens. Some cotton farmers took their allot-
ments and used them to convert cotton ginning houses to chicken houses,
and others tore down tenant houses, building chicken houses in their
place. When they married in 1933,Tom and Velva Blackstock?both natives
of Hall County, Georgia?tore down a tenant house on Tom Blackstock's
family's property and built a chicken house in its place. Like many farm?
ers who received allotment checks, the Blackstocks used the money to im?
prove farm buildings. It is likely that the tenant house they tore down was
vacated after the Blackstocks east off their tenant farmers when the gov?
ernment began paying farmers to take land out of production.25
As cotton acreage declined in the Upcountry, furnishing merchants,
who in most cases did not receive allotment checks, also found themselves
in a predicament. Their market for cottonseed and fertilizer was steadily
shrinking, and they needed to find another way to earn their keep. New
Deal cotton allotments forced merchants to face the fact that continued

cotton production was quickly becoming untenable. "The collapse of the

regnant cotton culture of the old Southeast" was at hand, declared re-
former Will W. Alexander in 1936. "Cotton farming in this area," he wrote
soberly, "is doomed." Soon merchants realized that poultry could replace
cotton production, and they facilitated the shift from cotton to poultry,
turning poultry, once a sideline activity, into Georgia's new cash crop.26
The stalwart mythology that explains the rise of the Upcountry's poul?
try industry credits divine intervention and human ingenuity. In 1936 a tor-
nado swept through Gainesville, Georgia, the soon-to-be self-proclaimed
capital of the poultry industry. The tornado killed 227 people and left only
the statue of Johnny Reb standing in the town square. Following the tor?
nado, furnishing merchant Jesse Dixon Jewell "surveyed the wrecked pop?
ulation center" and considered the economic plight of the region. Taking
in the battered landscape, Jewell had an idea: he would promote poultry
growing. Soon residents of Gainesville and the surrounding areas followed
Jewell's lead into poultry growing. Bolstering this mythology, one journal-
ist explained that Jewell's "idea changed the course and history of the re?
gion, the state's agriculture and the eating and purchasing habits of the
nation."27
Acts of God and indomitable human ingenuity undoubtedly make a
much better story than government bureaucrats paying cotton farmers

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 From Crop Lien to Contract Farming / 177

not to plant cotton. This version of the poultry industry's beginnings omits
AAA policy and its impact on furnishing merchants like Jewell. The tor-
nado and Jewell's entrepreneurial talents were powerful forces that
shaped the region. However, they coincided with the advent of cotton al?
lotments that left furnishing merchants like Jewell with limited options.
Merchants could develop new markets for products or go bankrupt. Fur?
nishing merchants adapted the credit system used to finance cotton farm?
ing to poultry growing and introduced the region's new cash crop. "The
extensive use of credit," a government report later declared, "has been re-
sponsible for the continued expansion of the [poultry] industry."28
By the time Jewell and other merchants began to promote poultry
growing, Upcountry Georgians already had extensive knowledge of rais?
ing chickens. For generations, chicken and egg raising had been the do-
main of farm women and children, who tended yard flocks on farms
throughout the South and traded eggs and chickens to supply their fami?
lies' needs. Jimmy Carter recalled that his family "always had a yard full of
chickens." A couple of times a year, Carter's father ordered hundreds of
baby chicks from Sears and Roebuck, which the family ate and used for
trading. While tenants and sharecroppers could not afford to purchase
biddies in such bulk, they too had yard flocks. Ruby Faye Smith, the child
of tenant farmers, reminisced that her family "always had a yard flock,"
adding, chickens were "a part of life all the way."29
As long as general stores had existed in the Upcountry, farmers used
chickens and eggs to barter for goods. "There wasn't any money along there
from the late twenties on till about the late thirties," Upcountry farmer
Spurgeon Welborn recalled, so his family, like many others swapped chick?
ens and eggs for sugar, coffee, and flour. "Chicken eggs were a readily ac?
cepted form of currency," Jimmy Carter remembered, adding, "it was a
matter of honor for a seller to assure their freshness, and there was an auto-
matic replacement guarantee." Ruby Faye Smith's mother traded eggs and
chickens for soap and coffee. Smith rebuffed the notion that the egg money
belonged solely to her mother and was her "pin money." "There wasn't no
'my money and your money' It was just lucky if we had money," she said.30
Many people considered poultry raising the domain of farm women.
Women, often with the help of their children, had raised chickens and
eggs to supplement the family income, and in the mid-1930s women began
to watch incomes rise. Describing herself as "not the clinging vine type,"

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 178 / Agricultural History

Mrs. O. H. Cooper expanded her flock and started raising broilers in 1930.
"I get tired and discouraged, sure. No, everything don't run smoothly all
the time by no means," she admitted in 1937, "but the joy and happiness of
being the means of saving our home which we surely would have lost
without my help, and my family having a decent living in the meantime,
pays for all the discouragement." However, the division of labor on the
farm challenged the neat categories of men's work and women's work and
the notion of separate spheres.31
In the mid-1930s Jewell and an army of other furnishing merchants se-
cured credit from feed companies and local bankers to purchase feed and
baby chicks. Using connections to northern seed and fertilizer companies,
they sought the backing of northern feed mills and promised to create a
wholly new market for animal feed. Credit flooded into the Upcountry.
Lines of credit extended from northern feed companies such as Ralston-
Purina and Quaker Oats Company down to local stores such as Martin
Feed & Poultry Company and Hall Brothers Hatchery. The University of
Georgia's Experiment Station studied the origins of the industry, and re-
searchers discovered that "feed mills were particularly generous in ex-
tending credit to feed dealers." In interviews, feed dealers added that in
some cases, "feed mills started dealers in business, with no capital being
furnished by the dealer."32
With customers who had little capital, furnishing merchants advanced
farmers baby chicks and feed on credit, much in the same way that they
had advanced farmers cottonseed, fertilizer, and other farm supplies.
Farmers settled their accounts, paying merchants for the chicks and feed,
when the merchant or another distributor purchased the grown broilers.
Farmers housed, fed, and cared for the chickens for twelve to sixteen
weeks; this became known as the "grow-out period," and the farmers who
cared for the poultry became known as "poultry growers." Before formal
contracts were introduced in the 1940s, farmers sold their broilers in mar?
kets of their choosing. For example, a grower could receive birds and feed
from Jewell, but then sell the grown broilers to another distributor who
might offer a higher price than Jewell. Upcountry farmer Arthur Flem-
ming recalled that he chose when and where to market his broilers. While
his furnishing merchant supplied him with chicks, feed, and medication,
Flemming was not required to market his broilers through his dealer.33
When furnishing merchants began encouraging farmers to raise poul-

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 From Crop Lien to Contract Farming / 179

try for sale, many families initially expended very little money to enter the
business. They drew upon knowledge of poultry raising accrued over gen-
erations and expanded their current chicken coops, using materials found
on the farm to build chicken houses. Some landed farmers tore down va-

cant tenant houses, reusing the materials to build chicken houses. Other
farmers used whatever materials were available. One young boy gathered
bricks in his pockets, "picking them up where he could find them dis-
carded" and built a brooder from these found materials. In the mid-1930s

farmers mixed their own feed. There was "no science" to it, one farmer re?
called. He fed his chickens a mixture of corn, wheat, and salt. Flemming
reminisced that his family made their own feeders out of lumber found on
the farm, built their own coal brooders, and mixed their own feed. His
grandparents purchased a drinker, and he recalled how this eased his
workload a bit. The drinker "held five gallons of water," and Flemming
thought his family "had it made when we got that five gallon of water in
place of going in there and filling up them little, old can and things."34
Family members divided their time between row crops and their grow?
ing chicken flocks and finally watched incomes rise. "Pretty soon that
jingle of money down the streets of Gainesville got others interested" in
poultry, Jewell recalled. Sanford Byers recollected the first time his feed
dealer came by to gather the first batch of grown broilers.The feed dealer
drove a Ford truck, a symbol of wealth and portent of good things to come,
and sold the chickens in Atlanta. His feed dealer returned from Atlanta

and wrote Byers a check for $165. "That was the most money Fd ever seen
in my life." Byers quickly reinvested it in expanding his chicken houses. In
1936 Ruby Faye Smith's father, an Upcountry tenant farmer, entered poul?
try growing at the encouragement of his landlord and furnishing merchant.
To Smith, the benefits of poultry growing seemed numerous: "when we got
to raising chickens and got feed sacks, our problems were solved." Smith's
mother used the feed sacks to make "panties, and slips, shirts, table cloths,
sheets, pillow cases, dish towels." Her family was one of the lucky few that
made the transition from tenants to landowners, at a time when many ten?
ant families were leaving farming altogether. Poultry offered a way for
farmers to stay on the land, and the number of poultry growers grew.35
As broilers became the main source of family income, pushing aside
cotton, women ceased being the lords of their flocks, but they by no means
ceased working with broilers. As the industry grew, poultry did not shift

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 180 / Agricultural History

from women's work to men's work, rather men took control of decision
making, and while women and children continued to work alongside their
husbands, fathers, and brothers. "This poultry business got big," Spurgeon
Welborn explained, and men, in his estimation, did the majority of the
work, but the work of women and children remained indispensable. Fam?
ily labor was so essential that Ruby Byers remembered the height of the
industry as "the egg years," a stretch of years in which the poultry business
so consumed her and her family's time that she could neither attend
church nor visit extended family. Women remained vital to the industry,
although they lost control of their flocks. Historian Lu Ann Jones notes
"Women's loss of autonomy prefigured the erosion of independence that
their men folks, in turn, would experience when they began growing broil?
ers on contract."36

As the 1930s wore on, husbands cut cotton acreage, expanded chicken
houses, built new ones, and began investing in feeding, watering, and
brooding devices. As early as 1927, Georgia State College of Agriculture
Professor J. H. Wood argued that the poultry industry "is destined to be?
come one of the state's main industries at an early date." After all, he wrote,
poultry "offers the most desirable avenues for investment and hence pro?
vides an opportunity for diversification which should not be overlooked
or neglected any longer by our people." However, contract poultry farm?
ing was not the route to diversification that Wood envisioned.37
"We depend a lot on our chickens," Cora Tull announces toward the
beginning of William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, reiterating the senti-
ments of Ruby Byers?the daughter of tenant farmers?who recalled that
"eggs was a precious commodity," explaining that "as long as the old hen
laid you could kinda count on falling back on that." By the end of the
1930s, many farm men and women might have uttered the same words as
Faulkner's Cora Tull, but their meaning would have been entirely differ?
ent. Farmers were no longer dependent upon their yard flocks for supple-
mental income; indeed, increasingly integrators barred poultry growers
from keeping yard flocks, fearing that they might infect the commercial
flock. At the end of the decade, many Upcountry Georgians had traded
cotton farming for poultry growing, but this shift neither amounted to di-
versified farming nor guaranteed an end to the problems that accompanied
cotton production and the crop lien. Indeed, poultry growing began to rein-
force and even heighten the problems of a one-crop economy. Upcountry

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 From Crop Lien to Contract Farming / 181

Homesteader's Wife With Chickens, Scioto Farms, Ohio. Photographed by Arthur Rothstein,
1938. Farm Security Administration?Office of War Information Photograph Collection,
Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, reproduction number, LC-USF33-
002735-M3.

Georgians increased their poultry production but could not imagine t

shape and degree of dependence and indebtedness that lay ahead.38
By the early 1940s successful furnishing merchants had begun to pur?
chase hatcheries, distribution facilities, and processing plants. Soon th
owned every stage of the process, except the poultry houses in which the
broilers were raised, which were fast becoming the most expensive a
most risky part of the business. Essentially, furnishing merchants verti-
cally integrated the industry, becoming known as "poultry integrator
They began to enter into fixed contracts with poultry growers. Integrato
began retaining title to the birds and paid poultry growers based on h
efficiently they produced broilers; the dominant model became known as
the "feed-conversion plan." Integrators furnished the chicks and the feed
and growers supplied broiler houses, all equipment, all labor, heat, an
the litter that lined the houses. By the mid-1950s the vast majority
growers grew broilers under contract, and Jewell boasted that his opera-
tion was "practically 90,95, maybe 100 percent" contracts. Informal arran
ments and independent poultry growers became a thing of the past.39

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 182 / Agricultural History

Under the feed-conversion model, integrators paid growers based on

how efficiently they turned chicken feed into broiler meat, and poultry
growers began to invest in mass-produced equipment and housing to in-
sure the greatest efficiency and output. Jewell explained that integrators
paid growers "according to the number of pounds of chickens they get out
of the number of pounds of feed they use." Integrators not only de-
manded standardized equipment but also began to require that growers
increase their chicken-house capacity, telling growers to abandon newly
built houses deemed too small. Growers who had assembled makeshift

houses, feeding devices, and brooders, were forced to abandon home-

made devices and invest in costly new machinery. The cost of growing
chickens began to rise, but grower autonomy did not.40
As the industry grew, poultry growers reported that they had less and
less independence; among many changes, integrators increasingly dic
tated how to raise the birds and how many flocks each grower would pro?
duce per year. Field agents, employed by integrators, monitored each
grower's progress and reprimanded those who had not followed company
policies. Like cotton farming decades before, poultry growing becam
increasingly expensive. As integrators began to demand that poultry houses
meet exact requirements to maximize efficiency, growers had to invest in
a range of automatic feeding and watering devices to expand their broiler
capacity. Poultry growers began to mortgage their homes and incur large
debts to secure the capital necessary to meet these demands. Increasingly,
growers were subject to the whims of integrators. Under the feed-conversion
model, integrators could refuse to do business with any grower for any
reason at any time, thus leaving poultry growers with large debts incurred
to build broiler houses that could be used for no other purpose than poultry
growing.41
Upcountry farmer Spurgeon Welborn lamented the loss of grower au?
tonomy. He recalled that in the early years the farmer retained a degree of
control, overseeing when and where his broilers were sold. Things began
to change, and these changes did not sit well with Welborn, who recalled
that "if you didn't have a contract and they didn't furnish you feed and
chicken. . . . You couldn't sell your chickens." The feed dealers "put the
chickens in when they wanted them in. They took them out when they
wanted them out." They told the grower what to feed the chickens. Like
many observers of the industry, Welborn feared that poultry growers were

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 From Crop Lien to Contract Farming / 183

becoming hired hands. Farmers who sought to retain some independence

were shut out of the industry and often could not find a market for grown
broilers.42

As chicken houses spread across the hillsides, the farmers who built
them imagined that they were securing independence for their families.
Poultry growing allowed farmers to remain on their farms and remain
their own bosses, at least in day-to-day operations. Poultry growing meant
that farmers, for a time, were not reduced to seeking out wage work in fac-
tories. As farmers built the multi-million-dollar poultry industry, they re-
shaped their landscapes, replacing cotton fields with poultry houses and
clearing their land of yard flocks and spring chickens. They ousted cotton,
doing away with fertilizer bills and a cotton market that brought them
meager returns. They imagined that they were restoring depleted soils
with an endless supply of chicken manure, which was silently making its
way into streams, rivers, and lakes and before long would contaminate the
water supply, kill wildlife, and cause illness. By the late 1930s the demands
of industrialized agriculture began to bear down on Upcountry farmers.
They began to realize that they had traded one cash crop for another. In
doing so, farmers had not escaped their creditors nor had they solved the
problems associated with a one-crop system.43
On the eve of World War II, a local newspaper triumphantly an-
nounced, "The fuzzy down of the baby chick has all but ousted the fleecy
lock of the cotton boll from its pedestal as chief money crop of Hall
County." This enthusiasm was especially justified at the end of the war.
Before the war, poultry products in Hall County, the center of Georgia's
poultry industry, valued roughly $120,000, which represented about 14
percent of all the farm products sold from the county that year. Ten years
later, poultry products in Hall County were valued at almost six million
dollars, representing 86 percent of all the farm products sold from the
county that year. In 1935 Georgia farmers produced five hundred thou?
sand broilers. Fifteen years later Georgia farmers produced sixty-three
million broilers, making poultry one of the state's most important farm
products and making Georgia the nation's second largest broiler-producing
state. As the industry grew, American consumption of chicken swelled. In
1930 Americans consumed roughly half a pound of chicken a year; thirty
years later, Americans ate about twenty-four pounds of chicken a year,
and today Americans consume over seventy pounds of chicken a year.44

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 184 / Agricultural History

A tough bargain was reached in the Upcountry. Poultry growers stayed

on their land and to a degree remained independent farmers. Unlike the
pattern of development found on southern neoplantations and in mid?
western and western agribusiness, heads of industry in the Upcountry nei?
ther consolidated land nor forced Georgia farmers into wage work. Poul?
try firms did not strip farmers of their means of production. Indeed, they
took the reverse course and began demanding that farmers invest in poul?
try houses and poultry feeding machinery. As contract farming became
the norm, integrating firms set the precedent that poultry growers would
assume much of the capital investments for the expansion of the industry.
Ironically, poultry growers' dependence became rooted in the very fact
that they owned the means of production.45
Contract farming persists in the poultry industry, and today poultry
integrators?like Tyson and Perdue?require poultry growers to invest in
and maintain poultry houses, which cost roughly $120,000 per house, with
most growers generally owning four houses. One scholar estimates that
"grower investments in fixed capital represent more than half of the total
investment in fixed capital in the industry." Under this business model,
poultry integrators have shifted a substantial portion of the financial risk
to poultry growers. Since the mid-twentieth century the poultry industry
and poultry integrators specifically have benefited from technological ad?
vances, and the industry can be easily characterized as a model of effi?
ciency. The industry's feed conversion rate has rapidly declined since 1940;
the grow-out period has been reduced from twelve to six weeks; and an
average processing plant turns out eight thousand birds per hour. Ad?
vances came at a cost: today, workers in poultry-processing plants experi-
ence high injury rates and receive some of the lowest factory wages in the
country. Most poultry growers invest $150,000 per poultry house, typically
own three houses, and generally earn a return of $12,000 per year.46

NOTES

1. Rupert Bayless Vance, Human Factors in Cotton Culture: A Study in the S

raphy of the American South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
2. On Georgia's Upcountry, see, Steven Hahn, The Roots of Southern Pop
man Farmers and the Transformation ofthe Georgia Upcountry, 1850-1890 (Ne
ford University Press, 1983); Wallace Hugh Warren, "Progress and Its Disc
Transformation of the Georgia Foothills, 1920-1970" (master's thesis, University

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 From Crop Lien to Contract Farming / 185

1997); Numan V. Bartley, The Creation of Modern Georgia (Athens: University of Georgia
Press, 1983); and Ann Short Chirhart, Torches of Light: Georgia Teachers & the Coming of
the Modern South (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005). On north west Georgia,
which became dominated by the textile industry, see, Douglas Flamming, Creating the Mod?
ern South: Millhands and Managers in Dalton, Georgia, 1884-1984 (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 1992); and Michelle Brattain, The Politics ofWhiteness: Race,
Workers, and Culture in the Modern South (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).
Other relevant studies of Georgia include, Jonathan M. Bryant, How Curious a Land: Con?
flict and Change in Greene County, Georgia, 1850-1885 (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1996) and Mark Schultz, The Rural Face of White Supremacy: Beyond Jim
Crow (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005).
Industry histories, biographies, and autobiographies of the poultry industry include:
Gordon Sawyer, The Agribusiness Poultry Industry: A History ofits Development (New York:
Exposition Press, 1971); Oscar August Hanke, American Poultry History, 1823-1973 (Lafay-
ette, Ind.: American Poultry Historical Society, 1974); Marvin Schwartz, Tyson: From Farm to
Market (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1991); David W. Brooks, D. W Brooks,
Gold Kist, and Seven U.S. Presidents: An Autobiography (Atlanta: D. W. Brooks Family,
1993); Huey Crisp, Lloyd Peterson and Peterson Industries: An American Story (Little Rock:
August House, 1989); Harold H. Martin, A Good Man, A Great Dream: D. W Brooks ofGold
Kist (Atlanta: Gold Kist, Inc, 1982); William H. Williams, Delmarva's Chicken Industry: 75
Years of Progress (Georgetown, Del.: Delmarva Poultry Industry, 1998); Mitzi and Frank Per-
due, Fifty Years of Building on a Solid Foundation: In Celebration of Frank Perdue's 50th
Anniversary with the Company Founded by His Father, Arthur W Perdue (Baltimore: Lucas
Press, 1989); and Stephen F. Strausberg, From Hills and Hollers: Rise ofthe Poultry Industry
in Arkansas (Fayetteville: Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, University of Arkansas,
1995). For a critical assessment of the industry, see, Steve Striffler, Chicken: The Dangerous
Transformation of America's Favorite Food (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005).
3. Walton W. Harper and O. C. Hester, "Influence of Production Practices on Marketing
of Georgia Broilers," University of Georgia College of Agriculture Experiment Stations
(1956): 9. See also, Walton W. Harper, "Marketing Georgia Broilers," University of Georgia
College of Agriculture Experiment Stations, Bulletin 281 (July 1953); O. C. Hester and Wal?
ton W. Harper, "The Function of Feed-Dealer Suppliers in Marketing Georgia Broilers,"
University of Georgia College of Agriculture Experiment Stations, Bulletin 283 (Aug. 1953);
Sawyer, The Agribusiness Poultry Industry, 205.
Regional histories on the industrialization of southern agriculture include, Pete
Daniel, Breaking the Land: The Transformation of Cotton, Tobacco, and Rice Cultures since
1880 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985); Gilbert Fite, Cotton Fields No More:
Southern Agriculture, 1865-1980 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1984); and Jack
Temple Kirby, Rural Worlds Lost: The American South, 1920-1960 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State University Press, 1987). On the growth of pesticide use, see, Pete Daniel, Toxic Drift:
Pesticides and Health in the Post-World War II South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Uni?
versity Press, 2005); Bernard F. Tobin and Henry B. Arthur, Dynamics ofAdjustment in the
Broiler Industry (Boston: Harvard University, Graduate School of Business Administration,
1964). John H. Davis, a professor of agriculture and business at Harvard Business School,
coined the term "agribusiness" in 1955. He believed that a new term was needed describe the
evolution of American agriculture that was taking place. He defined agribusiness as,"the sum
of all farming operations, plus the manufacture and distribution of all farm production sup-

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 186 / Agricultural History

plies provided by business, plus the total of all operations performed in connection with the
handling, storage, processing, and distribution of farm commodities. In brief, agribusiness re-
fers to the sum-total of all operations involved in the production and distribution of food and
fiber." John H. Davis, "Business Responsibility and the Market for Farm Products," speech
given Oct. 17,1955, quoted in Alan E. Fusonie, "John H. Davis: His Contributions to Agri?
cultural Education and Productivity," Agricultural History 60 (Spring 1986): 108-109.
4. Hahn, The Roots of Southern Populism, 9,4.
5. Hahn, The Roots of Southern Populism, 152,166.
6. For growth in cotton production after the Civil War throughout the South, see, Gavin
Wright, Old South, New South: Revolutions in the Southern Economy since the Civil War
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996) and Harold D. Woodman, King Cot?
ton and His Retainers: Financing and Marketing the Cotton Crop of the South, 1800-1925
(Washington, DC: Beard Books, 2000); Warren, "Progress and its Discontents"; David F.
Weiman, "Farmers and the Market in Antebellum America: A View from the Georgia Up?
country," Journal of Economic History 47 (Sept. 1987): 627-47; and Willard Range, A Cen?
tury of Georgia Agriculture, 1850-1950 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1954), 90-166.
7. J. T. Holleman, "Is the South in the Grip of a Cotton Oligarchy?" 9-10, pamphlet,
quoted in Vance, Human Factors in Cotton Culture, 188; G. W. Wharton, Economic Needs of
Farm Women (Washington, DC: USDA, Office of Information, 1915), 50.
8. Vance, Human Factors in Cotton Culture, 187, 189, 190. See also, Rupert Bayless
Vance, Human Geography of the South: A Study in Regional Resources and Human Ade-
quacy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1932). On the credit system, see,
Woodman, King Cotton and His Retainers and Wright, Old South, New South.
9. Vance, Human Factors in Cotton Culture, 190.
10. Range, A Century of Georgia Agriculture, 267-68,175.
11. Arthur F. Raper, Preface to Peasantry.A Tale ofTwo Black Belt Counties (New York:
Atheneum, 1936), 202-203. Rural sociologist Arthur F. Raper's Preface to Peasantry is a
study of Greene and Macon Counties in Georgia. For the study, Raper gathered data in
these counties between 1927 and 1934. Greene and Macon Counties lie south of the Up?
country; Range, A Century of Georgia Agriculture, 174.
12. US Bureau of the Census, "Special Cotton Report," in Sixteenth Census of the
United States, 1940 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1943); Arthur N. Moore, J. K. Giles, and Roy C.
Campbell, "Credit Problems of Georgia Cotton Farmers," Georgia Experiment Station,
Bulletin 153 (June 1929): 4; Vance, Human Factors in Cotton Culture, 128-30,132; Charles S.
Johnson, Edwin R. Embree, and Will W. Alexander, The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy: Sum-
mary of Field Studies & Statistical Surveys, 1933-1935 (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries
Press, 1935), 46-47. For more on competition from western cotton producers, see, Daniel,
Breaking the Land; Fite, Cotton Fields No More; and Kirby, Rural Worlds Lost.
13. Vance, Human Factors in Cotton Culture, 138; Range, A Century of Georgia Agricul?
ture, 176,270,271; Johnson, Collapse of Cotton Tenancy, 47.
14. Range, A Century of Georgia Agriculture, 272; Raper, Preface to Peasantry, 6,77-78,
233,256; Woodman, King Cotton and His Retainers; Harold Hoffsommer, "Survey of Rural
Problem Areas: Morgan County, Georgia, Cotton Growing Region of the Old South," 1935,
pp. iv-v; Federal Emergency Relief Administration State Reports on Rural Problem Areas,
1934-35; Records of the Division of Farm Population and Rural Life and its Predecessors,
Bureau of Agricultural Economics, RG 83, National Archives and Records Administration,
College Park, Md. [hereafter NARA II]; Moore, et al, "Credit Problems in Georgia," 8.

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 From Crop Lien to Contract Farming / 187

15. Raper, Preface to Peasantry, 245; Vance, Human Factors in Cotton Culture, 190. On
the plow-up see also, Daniel, Breaking the Land, 258; Kirby, Rural Worlds Lost, 58-65; Fite,
Cotton Fields No More, 123,129-130; Range,/! Century of Georgia Agriculture, 178.
16. Jimmy Carter, An Hour before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood (New York:
Simon & Schuster, 2001), 70-71. Jimmy Carter's boyhood memoir chronicles his childhood
in southwest Georgia. Even though Carter did not come of age in the Upcountry, the agri?
cultural phenomena upon which he comments occurred throughout the South.
17. Charles McD. Puckette, "King Cotton's New Adventure: The South Watches With
Hope Here and Misgiving There the Great Experiment in Which the First Step, Just Com?
pleted, Was the Plowing Under of Millions of Cultivated Acres," New York Times Magazine,
Aug.27,1933,Section6,l.
18. Carter, An Hour Before Daylight, 64; Raper, Preface to Peasantry, 245.
19. AAA, USDA, "Agricultural Adjustment: A Report of Administration of the Agri?
cultural Adjustment Act May 1933 to February 1934" (Washington, DC: GPO, 1934); The-
odore E. Whiting and Thomas Jackson Woofter, Summary of Relief and Federal Work Pro?
gram Statistics, 1933-1940 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1941); Miriam S. Farley, Agricultural
Adjustment under the New Deal (New York: American Council, Institute of Pacific Rela-
tions, 1936), 12-13; Fite, Cotton Fields No More, 132-33; Range,/! Century of Georgia Agri?
culture, 179; US Bureau of the Census, "Special Cotton Report," xiv-xv.
20. Johnson, The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy, 51-53; Kirby, Rural Worlds Lost, 59;
Raper, Preface to Peasantry, 245; Daniel, Breaking the Land, 105-108; Records of the
USDA's Extension Service confirm elite control. See, for example, T. L. Asbury, "Annual
Report of the District 1 Agricultural Agent, 1935," pp. 4-5, M855, Roll 71, Georgia, 1909-
44, Extension Service Annual Narrative and Statistical Reports, RG 33.6, NARA II.
21. H. A. Maxey, "Annual Report of Extension Activities, Cherokee County, December
31,1934-December 31,1935," p. 8, M855, Roll 72, Georgia, 1909-44, Extension Service An?
nual Narrative and Statistical Reports, RG 33.6, NARA II; Guy Castleberry, interview by
Lu Ann Jones, Apr. 24,1987, transcript, p. 22, An Oral History of Southern Agriculture, Na?
tional Museum of American History, Washington, DC [hereafter SAOHP]; Johnson, The
Collapse of Cotton Tenancy, 52.
22. Range, A Century of Georgia Agriculture, 21 A; Pete Daniel, "The Legal Basis of
Agrarian Capitalism: The South Since 1933," in Race and Class in the American South since
1890, ed. Melvyn Stokes and Rick Halpern (Providence, RI: Berg, 1994), 79-102; Raper,
Preface to Peasantry, 252. Between 1930 and 1940, in nearby Cherokee County, the number
of tenant farms fell from 1,405 to 1,298. Over the same ten years, Forsyth County witnessed
a similar decline as its tenant farms fell from 1,320 to 1,247. To access statistics on state and
county population and other census material, see, University of Virginia Library, "Historical
Census Browser," http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus/. The database al?
lows you to examine state and county data for individual census years and to examine data
over time. The data and terminology are drawn from the US Census, Agricultural Adjust?
ment: A Report of Administration of the Agricultural Adjustment Act May 1933 to February
1934, 272.
23. Harold Hoffsommer quoted in Johnson, The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy, 58-59. See
also, Lee J. Alston and Joseph P. Ferrie, "Labor Costs, Paternalism, and Loyalty in Southern
Agriculture: A Constraint on the Growth of the Welfare State," Journal of Economic His?
tory 45 (Mar. 1985): 95-117; Lee J. Alston and Joseph P. Ferrie, "Paternalism in Agricultural
Labor Contracts in the U.S. South: Implications for the Growth of the Welfare State," Amer-

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 188 / Agricultural History

ican Economic Review 83 (Sept. 1993): 852-76; Lee J. Alston and Joseph P. Ferrie, "Resist-
ing the Welfare State: Southern Opposition to the Farm Security Administration," Research
in Economic History Supplement 4 (1985): 83-120; Lee J. Alston and Joseph P Ferrie,
Southern Paternalism and the American Welfare State: Economics, Politics, and Institutions in
the South, 1865-1965 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
24. Raper, Preface to Peasantry, 85,251-52.
25. US Bureau of the Census, "Special Cotton Report";Tom Blackstock, interview by
Lu Ann Jones, Apr. 22,1987, transcript, pp. 10,45, SAOHP.
26. Farley, Agricultural Adjustment under the New Deal, 21; "An Interview with Jesse D.
Jewell," Broiler Industry (Mar. 1959): 3-15; William Alexander in the forward to Preface to
Peasantry, xv.
27. James Aswell, "Chickens in the Wind," Colliers, Sept. 9, 1950, 31^8; Ted Oglesby,
"Poultryland's Salute to Jesse Jewell," special supplement to The Gainesville Ga. Times,
Nov. 7,1971; see also, Sawyer, The Agribusiness Poultry Industry, 85-96.
28. Harper and Hester, "Influence of Production Practices," 9; Harper, "Marketing
Georgia Broilers," 25; Sawyer, The Agribusiness Poultry Industry, 205.
29. Carter, An Hour Before Daylight, 89; Ruby Byers, interview by Lu Ann Jones, Apr.
23,1987, transcript, p. 9, SAOHP.
30. Spurgeon Welborn, interview by Lu Ann Jones, Apr. 27,1987, transcript, pp. 11,16,
SAOHP; Carter, An Hour Before Daylight, 90; Ruby Byers, interview by Lu Ann Jones,
Apr. 23,1987, transcript, p. 11, SAOHP.
31. "How I Developed My Market Project and What it has meant to me by Mrs. O. H.
Cooper, a testimonial of a club woman, Walton county, Georgia," unpaginated appendix, re-
produced in Leila R. Mize, "Marketing (Women) Annual Report, 1937," M855, Roll 87,
Georgia, 1909-44, Extension Service Annual Narrative and Statistical Reports, RG 33.6,
NARA II. See also, "How I Developed My Market Project and What it has meant to me by
Mrs. W D. Watson, Monroe County, Georgia," unpaginated appendix, reproduced in Leila R.
Mize, "Marketing (Women) Annual Report, 1937"; Ray Marshall and Allen Thompson, Sta?
tus and Prospects of Small Farmers in the South (Atlanta: Southern Regional Council, Inc,
1976), 55; Harper and Hester, "Influence of Production Practices," 9.
32. Harper, "Marketing Georgia Broilers," 25; Hester and Harper, "The Function of
Feed-Dealer Suppliers," 31; Gordon Sawyer, of Gainesville, Georgia, interview by author,
July 15,2003, tape recording in author's possession. A series of cases surrounding the con?
tract from 1935 onward attest to northern investment in the poultry industry and attest to
confusion over contracts. Hall Brothers Hatchery, Inc. v. Hendrix (1945); Alpharaetta Feed
and Poultry Co. v. Cocke, 82 Ga. App. 718,62 S.E. 2d 642 (1950); Lynch v. Etheridge (1945);
Jewell v. Martin (1942); Roper v. Holbrook (1948); Cloud v. Bagwell (1946); Oxford v. Jewell
(1960).
33. Testimony of Jesse D. Jewell, Hearings before the Subcommittee No. 6 of the Select
Committee on Small Business, House of Representatives, 85th Cong., 1st Sess., 1957, Pt. 1,
216-41. Problems in the Poultry Industry, 1957; Arthur Flemming, interview by Lu Ann
Jones, Apr. 21, 1987, transcript, p. 28, SAOHP; Richard K. Noles and Milton Y Dendy,
"Broiler Production in Georgia: Grower's Costs and Returns," University of Georgia Col?
lege of Agriculture Experiment Stations, Report 34 (Dec. 1968): 3-30.
34. H. Y Cook, "Annual Report of the Agricultural Extension Work, Hall County 1935,"
p. 16, M855, Roll 74, Georgia, 1909-44, Extension Service Annual Narrative and Statistical
Reports, RG 33.6, NARA II; Blackstock interview, p. 11, Flemming interview, pp. 4,8.

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 From Crop Lien to Contract Farming / 189

35. "An Interview with Jesse Jewell," Broiler Industry, Mar. 1959,3; "The Story of Jesse D.
Jewell," unpublished pamphlet dated 1965, Jesse D. Jewell Vertical File, The Georgia Moun?
tain History Center, Gainesville, Ga.; Sanford Byers, interview by Lu Ann Jones Apr. 20,
1987, transcript, pp. 29,30, SAOHP; Byers interview, p. 15.
36. Welborn interview, pp. 41-42; Byers interview, p. 37; Lu Ann Jones, Mama Learned
Us to Work: Farm Women in the New South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2002), 104.
37. J. H. Wood, "Poultry Possibilities of Georgia," unpublished paper dated 1927, An-
drew Soule Papers, Box 26, Hargrett Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection, University of
Georgia, Athens, Ga.
38. Byers interview, p. 13.
39. Sawyer, The Agribusiness Poultry Industry, 85-95; Testimony of Jesse D. Jewell, p.
217. On the evolution of standardized contracts, see, Hester and Harper, "The Function of
Feed-Dealer Suppliers," 19-20; and "Financing Production and Marketing of Broilers in the
South: Part I: Dealer Phase," in Southern Cooperative Series Bulletin 38, Agricultural
Experiment Stations of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Caro?
lina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia, and the Agricultural Marketing Ser?
vice, USDA (June 1954): 15.
40. Testimony of Jesse D. Jewell, p. 217; Flemming interview, p. 28; Noles and Dendy,
"Broiler Production in Georgia"; Clay Fulcher, "Vertical Integration in the Poultry Indus?
try: The Contractual Relationship," Agricultural Law Update (Jan. 1992): 4-6; E. Roy, Con?
tract Farming and Economic Integration (Danville, 111.: Interstate Printers & Publishers, Inc,
1972); J. M. Sprott and H. Jackson, "Contract Broiler Growers in Arkansas," in Arkansas
Farm Research (Nov.-Dec. 1964): 11; Welborn interview, p. 40; Byers interview, p. 7.
41. Marshall and Thompson, "Status and Prospects of Small Farmers," 55; Sprott and
Jackson, "Contract Broiler Growers in Arkansas," 11; Harper and Hester, "Influence of Pro?
duction Practices," 15; Harper, "Marketing Georgia Broilers," 34; Fite, Cotton Fields No
More, 201.
42. Welborn interview, pp. 42-^13.
43. Gregory W Blount, Douglas A. Henderson, and Debra Cline, "The New Nonpoint
Source Battleground: Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations," Albany Law Environ?
mental Outlook Journal 27 (Fall 2000). An early case dealing with environmental issues and
the poultry industry is Poultryland, Inc. v. Anderson, et al. (1946). Residents near Jewell's
poultry rendering plant petitioned for its closure.
44. This quotation is found in Sawyer, The Agribusiness Poultry Industry. He writes that
it was from the Eagle, a Gainesville, Georgia, newspaper, on the eve of World War II. Saw?
yer, The Agribusiness Poultry Industry, 72; Range, A Century of Georgia Agriculture, 201;
"Hall County Farm Statistics, 1900-1960," undated pamphlet from "Poultry Industry" verti?
cal file, Hargrett Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Georgia, Athens, Ga.; William
Boyd and Michael Watts, "Agro-Industrial Just-in-Time: The Chicken Industry and Postwar
American Capitalism," in Globalising Food: Agrarian Questions and Global Restructuring,
ed. David Goodman and Michael J. Watts (New York: Routledge, 1997), 192-93.
45. Kirby, Rural Worlds Lost.
46. Boyd and Watts, "Agro-Industrial Just-in-Time," 193,211,214; Glenn E. Bugos, "In-
tellectual Property Protection in the American Chicken-Breeding Industry," Business His?
tory Review 66 (Spring 1992): 127-68; Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side ofthe
All-American Meal (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001), 141.

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