Poverty, Ignorance, Idiocy, and Degeneration during the Great Depression: Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell

Book Review
Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell

First Published in 1932

This Edition Published in 1995 by the University of Georgia Press

Set in the deep South during the Great Depression, Erskine Caldwell's Tobacco Road is a story about the Lester family--white sharecroppers who live in extreme poverty near Augusta, Georgia. This is one of those great novels that is bound to leave a permanent imprint in the reader's mind. On the one hand, the story is quite comedic because the predicament of the Lester family seems to be largely due to the character of the head of the household, Jeeter, as exquisitely brought out by Caldwell in the dialogue:

"Now that he was alone he began to worry all over again about the way he had treated Lov. He wanted to do something to make amends. If he went down to the chute the next morning and told Lov how sorry he was and that he promised never to steal anything from him again, he hoped that Lov would forgive him and not try to hit him with chunks of coal. And while he was about it, he could stop by Lov's house and speak to Pearl. He would tell her that she had to stop sleeping on a pallet on the floor, and be more considerate of Lov's wants. It was bad enough, he knew, to have to put up with a woman all day long, and then when night came to be left alone, was even worse.
'Ain't you going to haul no more wood to Augusta?' Ada demanded. 'I ain't had no new snuff since I don't know when. And all the meal is gone, and the meat, too. Ain't nothing in the house to eat.'
'I'm aiming to take a load over there to-morrow or the next day," teeter said. "Don't hurry me, woman. It takes a heap of time to get ready to make a trip over there. I got my own interests to consider. You keep out of it.'
'You're just lazy, that's what's wrong with you. If you wasn't lazy you could haul a load every day, and I'd have me some snuff when I wanted it most.'
'I got to be thinking about farming the land,' teeter said. 'I ain't no durn woodchopper. I'm a farmer. Them woodchoppers hauling wood to Augusta ain't got no farming to take up their time, like I has. Why, I expect I'm going to grow near about fifty bales of cotton this year, if I can borrow the mules and get some seed-cotton and guano on credit in Fuller. By God and by Jesus, I'm a farmer. I ain't no durn woodchopper.'
'That's the way you talk every year about this time, but you don't never get started. It's been seven or eight years since you turned a furrow. I been listening to you talk about taking up farming again so long I don't believe nothing you say now. It's a big old whopping lie. All you men is like that. There's a hundred more just like you all around here, too. None of you is going to do nothing, except talk. The rest of them go around begging, but you're so lazy you won't even do that.'
'Now, Ada,' Jeeter said, 'I'm going to start in the morning. Soon as I get all the fields burned off, I'll go borrow me some mules. Me and Dude can grow a bale to the acre, if I can get me some seed-cotton and guano.'
'Humph!' Ada said, leaving the porch.
J E E T E R did not go down to the coal chute to see Lov. Neither did he go to the house to speak to Pearl. There were always well-developed plans in Jeeter's mind for the things he intended doing; but somehow he never got around to doing them. One day led to the next, and it was much more easy to say he would wait until to¬morrow. When that day arrived, he invariably postponed action until a more convenient time. Things had been going along in that easy way for almost a lifetime now; nevertheless, he was again getting ready to burn off the fields and plow the land. He wanted to raise a crop of cotton."

On the other hand, the poverty experienced by sharecroppers was obviously due to the economic depression during the 1930s. The extent of the despair is evident when the family depends on tobacco, a.k.a. "snuff", to quiet their hunger:

"'By God and by Jesus, Lov,' Jeeter shouted across the yard, 'what about them there turnips? Has they got them damn-blasted green-gutted worms in them like mine had? I been wanting some good eating turnips since way back last spring. If Captain John hadn't sold off all his mules and shut off letting me get guano on his credit, I could have raised me a whopping big mess of turnips this year. But when he sold the mules and moved to Augusta, he said he wasn't going to ruin himself by letting us tenants break him buying guano on his credit in Fuller. He said there wasn't no sense in trying to run a farm no more-fifty plows or one plow. He said he could make more money out of farming by not running plows. And that's why we ain't got no snuff and rations no more. Ada says she's just bound to have a little snuff now and then, because it sort of staves off hunger, and it does, at that, Every time I sell a load of wood I get about a dozen jars of snuff, even if I ain't got the money to buy meal and meat, because snuff is something a man is just bound to have. When I has a sharp pain in the belly, I can take a little snuff and not feel hungry all the rest of the day. Snuff is a powerful help to keep a man living.'"

Yet throughout the plot ignorance and stupidity lead to further degeneration, and it is that atrophy, poignantly described by Erskine Caldwell, that makes Tobacco Road a sad story, and a classic.