the whole cotton industry. It may seem odd that this unwelcome invader should be reckoned among the factors that are promoting agricultural development; but, in a very real sense, he has served as a pioneer to the movement.

77

Dr. Wallace Buttrick, of the General Education Board, was so kind as to give me an outline of the course of events.

“Our Board,” he said, “was established and endowed, and has been at various intervals re-endowed, by Mr. Rockefeller.”

“To promote education in the South?”

“Not in the South alone, nor even primarily; but we had, of course, to study the special conditions prevailing in the South. We soon convinced ourselves that the deficiencies of Southern education—and they were enormous—were due to the sheer poverty of the country.[25] In the Southern towns there are good schools, and the accommodation is fairly adequate. But 78only 15 per cent. of the population of the South is a city population. The remaining 85 per cent. is rural and agricultural—not even, for the most part, gathered in villages of any size—so that the problem of bringing education to the doors of the people is an immensely difficult one.”

78

“I suppose compulsory education is not to be thought of?”

“It is thought of; it is mooted; it is coming; but not yet awhile. That is just what, as I say, we realized—that the South is too poor to pay for an adequate system of education, and that the problem is too huge a one for even the most lavish outside philanthropy to tackle. What was to be done, then? Manifestly to enrich the Southern agriculturalist, so as to enable him to pay for the schooling of his children. As it is, his average income is something like a third of the average income of a man of his class in (say) the State of Iowa, where the public-school system is adequate and satisfactory. Multiply his income by three, or even by two, and he also will be able to afford an adequate public-school system.”

“So your problem was nothing less than to double or treble the wealth of the fifteen or sixteen Southern States?”

“Something like that; and it was right here that the boll-weevil came in. With ruin staring them in the face, the farmers of the affected districts took up eagerly 79the system of what are called Demonstration Farms, organized by Dr. S. A. Knapp, of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That department, at its 

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