[2] Mathis ran her own farm and bought and sold others, becoming one of the largest landowners in the state and gaining the practical experience that fed her later advocacy career.

[4][5] A crucial part of her success was her move away from the one-crop (cotton) system that dominated Alabama at the time, which was destructive to the soil and economically risky for farmers.

[5] She is also credited with helping to greatly reduce the ravages of the cattle tick in the state by leading the organization of a massive cattle-dipping campaign.

[5] During the latter part of World War I (1915–1917), Southern cotton farmers suffered through a severe economic depression caused largely by a combination of bad boll weevil infestations and the loss of their prewar European markets.

[3] The flavor of Mathis's vigorous and direct style is evident in this excerpt from an informal interview she gave to a contemporary magazine: "We Alabama folks can do more fool stunts to the square inch than any people in America!

[2] Mathis championed a drive to site a nitrate plant in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and was the sole woman on the committee of one hundred citizens that spearheaded that effort.

[3] For her work, Mathis was referred to as the "leader of Alabama's agricultural Renaissance"[5] and the "economic Moses of the South,"[3] and one writer estimated in 1917 that her efforts had been worth $20 million to her home state.

They quickly discovered that they could not compete with much cheaper Mexican onyx, and Mathis bought out all the shares in order to keep the cave and surrounding land in her family.