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Land of Cotton. It was a natural interest, even more natural for Eastland than for most cotton state Senators. Since his father's death in 1944, Jim Eastland has been owner of the Doddsville plantation —it now comprises 5,020 acres—and cotton is one of his major sources of livelihood. This fact has not only influenced his legislative approach, but has helped to keep his heart firmly in Mississippi. The eleven-room brick house which the Eastlands purchased two years ago as a permanent Washington headquarters for themselves and their four children (three daughters, one son) is a sparsely decorated, unlived-in-looking place. And in Washington, where the younger children attend Sidwell Friends School (which recently announced that it planned to desegregate), the Eastlands almost never go out, very rarely entertain. In summertime, however, when the family gets home to Doddsville. all this changes. There the unpretentious, six-bedroom frame house, surrounded on three sides by cotton fields, bulges with guests. Says Eastland: "We always have at least five guests for dinner [at midday] and one or two staying the night." There, too, Jim can get his fill of hunting, and ride his two Tennessee walking horses.
Most of Eastland's time at Doddsville, however, is devoted to business. Though he relies heavily on his general manager, spry, 76-year-old William Godbold, Eastland is keenly aware that casual absentee ownership can never make a success of what is less of a plantation than an agricultural factory. Last year the Eastland plantation had about 1,900 acres in cotton, the remainder in corn, soybeans, oats, barley and pasturage. Under Eastland's close supervision, the land is cultivated according to the most scientific information available. Each spring, tractor-pulled applicators, straddling four rows at a time, inject seventy tons of anhydrous ammonia to the exact depth of 15 inches into the Eastland soil. Heavy plows bite deep into the Delta loam and turn under 150 tons of carefully prepared silage. Tons of cottonseed hulls provide humus for sections where the soil is heavy. This year, for the first time, several hundred acres of cotton will be irrigated by Eastland's own irrigation system, engineered by an Arkansas consultant.