Street roots
Jan. 3, 2014
Depression before the Depression
BY MIKE WOLD
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Book Review -
Cotton Tenants: Three
Families, by Jam es Agee
ne of the iconic books of the
Depression, “Let Us Now Praise
Famous Men,” by James Agee, is not
really about the Depression at all. Based on
a magazine assignment to report on the
lives of white sharecroppers in Alabama, the
poverty Agee documented existed long
before the Depression ever started. But in
1936, even the editors of Fortune were
interested in how the poorest segments — at
least the poorest white segments — of
America lived.
Fortune never published the article; five
years later, Agee and photographer Walker
Evans published the book. A few years ago,
the original draft of the Fortune article was
found in Agee’s papers. The result, with the
addition of some of Evans’ famous
photographs, is “Cotton Tenants,” which is
not at all a rough draft of “Famous Men.”
It’s a finished, if not polished, piece in its
own right, more straightforward and less
poetic. “Famous Men,” though it contains
fragments from “Cotton Tenants,” is a
stream-of-consciousness love letter about
three desperately poor families. “Cotton
Tenants” is an exposé and indictment of a
society that pushes its poorest members to
the margins.
Agee makes no secret of his views: “A
civilization ... which can exist only by putting
human life at a disadvantage; is worthy
H
n e ith e r of th e n a m e n o r of co n tin u an ce. A nd
a human being ... who prefers that this
should remain as it is, is a human being by
definition only/ Those are strong words for
a magazine aimed at the rich.
“Cotton Tenants” gives detailed, raw and
unvarnished descriptions of how Agee’s
three families really lived: “The Tingles no
longer think of what life they have in terms
of something in the least controllable from
season to season ... they welter on their
living as on water, from one hour to the
next, flashing into brief impulse,
disorganized and numbed.” It continues,
“Poveriy caused their carelessness; their
carelessness brings them deeper poverty;
disease runs in among them, free as hogs in
a garden.”
Agee documents the three families’
isolation, even though they’re within a
couple of hours’ journey of Moundville, Ala.,
the nearest town. Their children go to
school there — when they make it to school.
Only some of the isolation is due to
distance, since the families generally go into
town every Saturday when it’s not picking
season. Some is class exclusion: They are at
the low end of the social scale among
whites. The Fields and Tingle girls, in
particular, mostly wear clothing made of
sh e etin g , fe rtiliz e r o r flo u r sacks. M u ch of
their isolation is due to poverty, since there
are few forms ¿f entertainment or
community involvement they can afford. A
lot of it is because of race, since, even
though black families surround them, they
cannot conceive of socializing or worshiping
with them, and probably would get in
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trouble if they did.
“Cotton Tenants” goes softer on the race
question than the more famous book, only
casually mentioning race, as a factor in the
families’ isolation. Agee notes in an
appendix that black sharecroppers are far
worse off than white ones — indirectly
giving some sense of how destitute black
sharecroppers must have lived. He says he
focused on whites to portray the “typical,”
paralleling how the New Deal also largely
ignored the lives of Southern blacks.
Agee avoids proposing easy answers; in
his section on education, he notes that
public education of the sort available in
Moundville is not much use to these
farmers; the most educated farmer, Frank
Tinglè, who finished fifth grade and still
Ukes to read magazines and pulps, is also
the poorest. Agee also makes clear that he
is describing a system that constrains
landlords as well as tenants.
One thing that’s missing is thè families
speaking for themselves about their lives.
Agee, a self-described Communist, is careful
not to blame his subjects for the conditions
of their lives.He finds beauty in the Way
that they live. But, except for brief quotes
that are rendered in thick dialect — which
itself creates a distance between the
speaker and the reader — he doesn’t give
them voice, He also gives short shrift to
their spiritual lives, an area where they
might have reflected on the meaning of
their existence and their poverty, even
though their weekly lay-led worship services
are clearly significant to them.
“Cotton Tenants” includes 32 Evans
photographs from his collection in the
Library of Congress, including people,
places and objects, sUch as a pair of old
boots. Although some are also found in the
other book, mariy will be new to readers.
Agee’s prose has flashes of brilliance and
Evans’ photos are consistently works of art
in their composition. Together, they form a
powerfuKndictment of a system of farm
production that is still remembered with
nostalgia by some people in oùr country.