So they were all
glad to reach the cotton fields they had been steering toward.
But there they did not find what they had hoped for. There were
too many workers ahead of them and too little left to do.
Tractors, it seemed, were taking the place of many men, one
machine driving out two to five families.
Though the camp was a fairly comfortable one, it proved lonesome
for the children for there was no Center, and it did not seem
worth while for them to start to school for so short a time. It
was doubtful, anyway, whether the school had room for them.
Grandma was too lame to work in the cotton. When she bent over,
she could hardly straighten up again; so she stayed home with
Jimmie and the baby, and Dick and Rose-Ellen picked. Rose-Ellen
felt superior, because there were children her age picking into
small sacks, like pillow-slips, and she used one of the regular
long bags, fastened to her belt and trailing on the ground
behind.
At first cotton-picking was interesting, the fluffy bolls looking
like artificial roses and the stray blossoms strangely shaped and
delicately pink. Sometimes a group of Negro pickers would chant
in rich voices as they picked. "Da cotton want a-pickin' so
ba-ad!" But it was astonishing to the Beechams to find how many
aches they had and how few pounds of cotton when the day's
picking was weighed.
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