Seven cent cotton, $100 gas

Dan Verner
Published: September 8, 2008

I’ve been listening to a three CD set of American music entitled Song of America. Produced in part by former Attorney General Janet Reno, it includes songs ranging from “Yankee Doodle” to Alan
Jackson’s “Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning?” which detail the historical and cultural changes throughout this country’s 232-year history. The collection is on the rootsy side, using
some lesser-known artists, so consider that if you find anything south of Josh Groban hard to take. It’s rootsier than, say, the soundtrack to O Brother Where Art Thou but not as rootsy as the soundtrack
to Cold Mountain. (I hope that helps.) I think it’s well worth having.

One song that struck me as déja vu all over again is from 1930, the lament of a poor farmer whose income doesn’t keep up with his outgo. It’s entitled “Seven Cent Cotton and Forty Cent Meat.” Even if
you’re as unschooled in economics as I am, you get the picture:

Seven cent cotton and forty cent meat,/ How in the world can a poor man eat?

Flour up high and cotton down low,/ How in the world can we raise the dough?

Clothes worn out, shoes run down,/ Old slouch hat with a hole in the crown,

Back nearly broken and fingers all sore,/ Cotton gone down to rise no more.

I was thinking of this song in connection with the current economy. While most people I know are not starving or doing without necessities, high fuel prices, the bad housing market and job cutbacks have
affected most everyone I know. Several people I know own two houses, not because they want to, but because they can’t sell the one they left unless they lower the price to bargain basement level. I
don’t see how anyone pays two mortgages. Anyone who has anything to do with the housing market and all its associated industries is suffering.

Oil is involved in almost everything we do or consume in our culture, and a 33 percent increase in gas prices over the past year is hard to take. Most people’s income has not increased by 33 percent in
the same time period. People I talk to are combining trips, switching to public transportation, changing to churches and work places closer to where they live, or doing without vacations in far-off places. I
think the increase particularly hits single-parent households, many of whom don’t have a lot of extra cash to throw around.

Of course, even if you parked your car and rode a bicycle (which some people are also doing) you’d still be affected. Most everything we use or consume comes from somewhere else and is delivered by
a vehicle powered by oil, if not made from it outright. People also are thinking locally and trying to find their necessities closer to home.  That in itself might not be all bad.

Our county was built on cheap energy and mobility, and both those qualities might be in jeopardy. The thing is, we’ve been here before. I remember the gas crisis of 1973 (when gas was about 40 cents a
gallon, kids!) and also a more minor one in 1979. The price of fuel went up, we drove less and started to use more fuel-efficient cars. Then the political climate changed, demand lessened and the price
went down. We happily went back to driving more and driving larger vehicles. Every time we get into this mess we talk about changing our habits and developing alternative fuel sources. That’s a long-term
solution, of course, but it doesn’t seem to happen. I would happily drive a car powered by fuel cells (I would call it the Hindenburg) but one is not likely to be available any time soon.

I’m marginally affected by all this since I don’t drive much and “work” from home. Plenty of other people are in a tight place, and I hate to see that happen. I wish I had some solutions but I don’t. I do think
that we as a people are resourceful and intelligent.

We do respond to crises, and we will come up with answers.  In the meantime, though, it’s difficult.

I was getting gas the other day, and the fellow at the next pump who had just put nearly a hundred dollars’ worth in his truck said to me, “Man, someone’s getting rich and it ain’t us.”

Seven cent cotton and forty cent meat/ How in the world can a poor man eat?

Poor getting poorer all around here,/ Kids coming regular every year.

Fatten our hogs, take ‘em to town,/ All we get is six cents a pound.

Very next day we have to buy it back,/ Forty cents a pound in a paper sack.

Dan Verner is a long-time Manassas resident. He contributes to these pages every week.