Cotton Tenants: Three Families

Cotton Tenants: Three Families

Adult nonfiction
"A civilization which for any reason puts a human life at a
disadvantage; or a civilization which can exist only by putting human
life at a disadvantage; is worthy neither of the name or of
continuance. And a human being whose life is nurtured in an advantage
which has accrued from the disadvantage of other human beings, and who
prefers that it should remain as it is, is a human being by definition
only, having much more in common with the bedbug, the tapeworm, the
cancer, and the scavengers of the deep sea."
Yowza!
In 1936 James Agee, a Fortune magazine writer, was commissioned
to do a report on the lives of tenant farmers. Agee was not confident
that he could pull it off. He was also skeptical that the magazine
would publish the piece in the form he would write it. They did not.
As a matter of fact Cotton Tenants: Three Families was not published
until 77 years after it was written. Sadly the quote from it with
which I started this review is as true today as when it was penned.
Tenant farming in 1936 was a very precarious business. Bad
weather, weeds, and insect pests could spell disaster. Often the
farmer would earn less than he owed, plunging him deeper into debt.
Agee indicted a combination of capitalism and feudalism as
perpetuating the wretched situation.
I must mention two caveats early on. First, Agee was a poet as
well as a journalist. His voice reflected this. Some of his
allusions are a little hard to follow. The second is that he shared
some of the prejudices of his time. Some of the inferences he makes
on the presumed intellectual and moral deficiencies of his subjects
may be hard for twenty-first century readers to swallow.
Nevertheless, Agee's chapters, grouped into categories such as
shelter and education, and the accompanying period photos by Walker
Evans are highly revealing and shocking. Take the chapter on food.
Agee considers his subjects haves in the world of tenant farmers
because they have three meals a day except in the four hardest months
of the year. But look at what those meals consist of. The chapter on
health is a total heart breaker. Infant mortality is unconscienably
high. One of the families profiled lost seven out of thirteen
children. And those who up their survival chances by living past
their second birthday live with conditions such as epilepsy, maleria,
and cancer.
However, it would be a serious mistake to read Cotton Tenants as
only a period piece and indictment of the past. Although it takes
drastically different forms, the blend of capitalism and feudalism
Agee described is alive and well today. We'll never get beyond it
until we see the wrongness of a society in which a small minority are
allowed to benefit from the disadvantage of legions of others and act
decisively to change this.
On a personal note, Orono Public Library had an outdoor concert with
Julie and the Bug Boys and used book sale. The weather was ideal,
sunny with a breeze. Everyone had a wonderful time. And the library
raised good money for community programs.
A great big shout put goes out to everyone who worked to make it such
a success.
Julia Emily Hathaway



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