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apprenticed, sort of like a practitioner, a veterinarian or something.
That's the way it started off. Then the degrees come along, and they
had to have degrees.
K: What were your responsibilities as a cotton adjustment agent?
M: Well, they had contracts, there was a form assigned, they reduced the acreage,
and they'd pay them so much an acre. Then it would have to be measured and
recorded in the office. On top of that, the Bankhead Jones Act was in effect.
They got the average yields of cotton and paid them a bonus based on those
yields...in other words, I was helping out. Things were getting pretty
desperate along those times. They started that, and then later on they
started other things with the Triple A (AAA). They had a peanut program,
you reduced acreage and stayed within your allotments, and then when I went
down to Bonifay in about '36, they had Irish potatoes.
There was a farmer growing 250 acres down on the river who had a great big
wholesale grocery at Westmill, Florida. The election came in and elected
him chairman, and bless God, I found out he couldn't write his name.
We had to turn right around and elect somebody who could write, because
you had to have someone who could sign things.
K: Now you were up at Milton for two years, is that right?
M: I would say approximately two years. I was working down at Bonifay.
K: This was as an adjustment agent.
M: Yeah, in this farm program and at Holmes County, smallest county in West
Florida.
Everybody started farming. The sawmills had closed out a few years before,
and everybody had to go into farming. Just about when they started in farming,
the Depression hit, and they were put in bad circumstances. I had peanut
contracts, corn hog contracts, cotton contracts to Bankhead Jones, a sugar
cane contract, and a potato contract. I was working about fifteen people
in the office there.
I was going back to catch up on my work in Santa Rosa County when they made
me county agent down there. I didn't want to go, because the county didn't
pay but fifty dollars, and the federal government extension service didn't
pay but 117 dollars.
K: That's a month?
M: That's all you got. I stayed at the hotel there for five months, before I
moved down there. After the first month I said, "M. D. what are you going
to charge me for staying here at the hotel? I never stayed at a hotel in my
life!" He's the one that instigated getting me down there. He ran a big