Something Southern: A History of Mules in South Georgia presented by Tyler Hendrix: Physical Exhibit

Humans have utilized mules for thousands of years, but they became widely used within the United States after the American Revolution. Their introduction into southern agriculture came in the 1820s, when farmers imported mules to provide suitable motive power needed to accomplish agricultural tasks, especially for plowing fields, operating grinders and cotton gins, and hauling crops to market.^[1] By the beginning of the Civil War, there were 101,009 mules working throughout Georgia.^[2] After the end of the Civil War in 1865, mule ownership became much more widespread, and by 1890, over 135,000 mules worked throughout Georgia.^[3]

In the decades after the Civil War, mules had become so ingrained in everyday life that their ownership became seen as a status symbol for all social classes and occupations. However, after a series of agricultural crashes in the 1920s and 1930s and the development of affordable tractors after World War I, mule usage began to decline throughout the South. One final shock, the New Deal-era Agricultural Adjustment Administration, which provided subsidies to farmers to limit cotton production, sent mules to pasture for good.

Mules became favored on farms throughout South Georgia due to their strength, their steady gait, their ability to thrive on almost any type of feed, and their ability to stop working when they grew tired.^[1] In addition, mules proved to be particularly suited for cotton production because their narrow stature allowed them to walk between the plants without stepping on them. In contrast, the other major working stock options like horses and oxen had specific feeding requirements, and often worked themselves to severe injury or death in the hot Georgia summer. Their larger, wider stature also made them significantly more likely to step directly on the plant.^[2]

In practice, landowning farmers, tenant farmers, and sharecroppers alike utilized mules for a variety of agricultural tasks. In the fields, mules powered the equipment for farmers to plow the fields for growing and harvesting crops like cotton, tobacco, hay, peanuts, and corn. At the end of the growing season, farmers employed mules to transport the harvested crops to market.

Mules also powered the processing grinders for sugar cane and corn. Sugar cane, for example, was fed through a mule-powered presser, or the “grinder,” to extract the juice. Then the juice was boiled to create a cane syrup, a precursor to modern granulated sugar, as its final product.

Additionally, mules became widely utilized in the timber industry, where they hauled lumber from logging sites to sawmills for further processing.

State and local governments made extensive use of mules for public works projects. For example, construction crews utilized mule-powered equipment to flatten the ground and grade it for the placement of railroad tracks, a process mimicked by chain gangs tasked with working on local roads.^[3]

The most varied task mules were utilized in, however, was in commerce, where they propelled the wagons of traders and businesspeople across the region. Their wagons transported, among other things, cuts of beef and early Coca-Cola products.^[4]

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, mules were utilized by vast swaths of southern society. Members of all socioeconomic classes used them, white and African American alike. Using and working with mules was a common experience for most members of society within Georgia in general and Bulloch County in particular. In 1910, the population of Bulloch County was 26,377 people, of which 80% were living in the rural areas of the county while 20% lived in incorporated areas.^[1]

In agriculture, white and African American farmers were engaged in rented farming, particularly sharecropping. Of all farms statewide, 100,027 were owned and 190,180 were rented.^[2] In Bulloch County, 60% of all farms, owned and rented, were operated by white farmers, while the remainder were owned or rented by African American farmers.^[3] For African American and white tenant farmers alike, owning mules was seen as an avenue for increasing social status and general wealth due to the better rental terms this afforded.^[4]

While most of the population of Bulloch County owned or utilized mules in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the local newspaper stories focused on mules that were owned and utilized by white men. Occasionally, African Americans and mules were mentioned together with racist connotations.^[5] For example, in a Bulloch Times article dated September 22, 1909, a public speaker at a local segregated school opening told a crowd of African Americans that education was a waste of time and to return to working with mules on farms.^[6]

After the end of the Civil War, mules constituted a major part of everyday life in Georgia, where many farmers regarded them as their most prized possessions. As time passed, the demand and consequent value of mules went up dramatically, and many farmers invested significant sums of money into buying and maintaining their mules.^[1] In many instances, whenever a white farmer lost his mule to any incident, especially barn fires, lightning strikes, or theft, local newspapers reported them as major incidents. Regionally, mules became celebrated enough that organizations formed to show mules and to champion their continued use, such as the Gray Horse and Gray Mule Association in Swainsboro, Georgia.^[2]

Mules were so commonplace that they entered the region’s vocabulary with phrases like “stubborn as a mule” and “kicks like a mule.” They became a common thread in the stories told and the songs sung among people of all classes, such as Walter Barclay’s song “Long Boy: Goodbye, Ma! Goodbye, Pa! Goodbye, mule!” and the African American work song “Mule on the Mount.”^[3]

Mules became so entrenched in the southern way of life that many people initially resisted the adoption of automobiles, including within Bulloch County. When the first automobile unexpectedly arrived in Statesboro in early October 1905, it had broken down and was towed in by a mule, much to the interest of spectators.^[4] As automobiles became more common, farmers continued to worry that they would take precedence on the roads or spook their mules. This worry was well-founded; in October 1911, the Bulloch Times reported that a passing automobile had panicked local farmers’ mules.^[5] Because of the noise and smell generated as well as their negative impact on mules, the Statesboro city council temporarily revoked the right for automobile driving during daylight hours in late 1905.^[6]

Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most mules produced within the United States originated in Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, and Texas. While agricultural advocacy groups routinely argued for locally producing mules, all efforts failed due to the widespread reliance on cotton and tobacco as cash crops. Consequently, Georgian farmers had to purchase their mules from distant sources. In regional trading hubs throughout the South, entrepreneurs developed thriving businesses connecting the distant mule breeders and local farmers.^[1]

By the turn of the twentieth century, Statesboro had developed into the second largest mule market in the state, where two traders sold 280 mules in only two months.^[2] Advertisements for mule sales appeared in the local newspapers during the early 1890s, and these seasonal advertisements continued mostly uninterrupted until the mule trade’s later demise.^[3] The major mule traders in Statesboro included W.T. Smith, B.T. Outland, R. Simmons, and J.W. Olliff.^[4] The mule trade remained vibrant, and the demand and value of mules rose rapidly through most of the 1900s and early 1910s.^[5] For example, during the 1914 mule trading season, Statesboro mule traders combined to sell more than 1,200 mules and horses.^[6] To support this industry, a series of large mule trading barns were constructed around Bulloch County. One of these barns still stands just outside Statesboro at the Welter-Johnson Heritage Site.

In the opening decade of the twentieth century, mules as a commodity reached a historic high, but technology and global circumstances rapidly encroached on the superiority of mules as a source of labor and transportation. During the early twentieth century, automobiles gradually replaced mule-powered buggies on the streets of Statesboro until, by March 1920, mules had become a rare sight on its streets.^[1]

When World War I began in Europe in 1914, some southern farmers began selling their mules to British government agents to be sent overseas for wartime service.^[2] During the war, the British, French, Italian, and United States governments all purchased horses and mules in large numbers for use in the war effort. By August 1917, over one million horses and mules had been sent overseas, and by July 1918, wartime demands had shipped 343,435 mules overseas, reducing the supply available for domestic farmers.^[3] While mule markets in the United States normalized shortly after the armistice, the mule soon had a new competitor: affordable tractors.

American automotive manufacturers began producing affordable tractors in the late 1910s and early 1920s. The first of these, the Beamon Tractor, appeared in an advertising campaign in the Bulloch Times on April 3, 1919, and others, including the Cletrac and Fordson tractors, appeared shortly after.^[4]

In 1914, the boll weevil entered Georgia and began decimating the cotton crops, forcing thousands of farmers off their land.^[5] While the cotton price had been low for years, the boll weevil and the later Great Depression pushed prices to unsustainable lows. In 1933, the federal government instituted the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, a key program of the New Deal, to pay farmers to reduce the acreage of cotton they cultivated, which reduced the number of mules needed to work the remaining crop.^[6]

Combined, these factors served to both reduce the demand for mules and to provide an opportunity for automobile manufacturers to produce tractors as a direct replacement for mule power on the farm. Because of these pressures, some farmers divested themselves of their farms altogether while others gradually replaced mules with tractors; Bulloch County farmers replaced over eight hundred mules with tractors between 1935 and 1940 alone.^[7] By the end of World War II in 1945, tractors were on their way to replacing mules on farms throughout the South.