have ceased,
The riches shall be dust of dust, dry ashes be the feast!
"On the strong and cunning few
Cynic favors I will strew2;
I will stuff their maw with overplus until their spirit dies;
From the patient and the low
I will take the joys they know;
They shall hunger after vanities and still an-hungered go.
Madness shall be on the people, ghastly jealousies3 arise;
Brother's blood shall cry on brother up the dead and empty skies.
WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY4.
Have you ever seen a cotton-field white with harvest,—its golden fleece hovering5 above the black earth like a silvery cloud edged with dark green, its bold white signals waving like the foam6 of billows from Carolina to Texas across that Black and human Sea? I have sometimes half suspected that here the winged ram7 Chrysomallus left that Fleece after which Jason and his Argonauts went vaguely8 wandering into the shadowy East three thousand years ago; and certainly one might frame a pretty and not far-fetched analogy of witchery and dragons' teeth, and blood and armed men, between the ancient and the modern quest of the Golden Fleece in the Black Sea.
And now the golden fleece is found; not only found, but, in its birthplace, woven. For the hum of the cotton-mills is the newest and most significant thing in the New South to-day. All through the Carolinas and Georgia, away down to Mexico, rise these gaunt red buildings, bare and homely9, and yet so busy and noisy withal that they scarce seem to belong to the slow and sleepy land. Perhaps they sprang from dragons' teeth. So the Cotton Kingdom still lives; the world still bows beneath her sceptre. Even the markets that once defied the parvenu10 have crept one by one across the seas, and then slowly and reluctantly, but surely, have started toward the Black Belt.
To be sure, there are those who wag their heads knowingly and tell us that the capital of the Cotton Kingdom has moved from the Black to the White Belt,—that the Negro of to-day raises not more than half of the cotton crop. Such men forget that the cotton crop has doubled, and more than doubled, since the era of slavery, and that, even granting their contention11, the Negro is still supreme12 in a Cotton Kingdom larger than that on which the Confederacy builded its hopes. So the Negro forms to-day one of the chief figures in a great world-industry; and this, for its own sake, and in the light of historic interest, makes the field-hands of the cotton country worth studying.
We seldom study the condition of the Negro to-day honestly and carefully. It is so much easier to assume that we know it all. Or perhaps, having already reached conclusions in our own minds, we are loth to have them disturbed by facts. And yet how little we really know of these millions,—of their daily lives and longings14, of their homely joys and sorrows, of their real shortcomings and the meaning of their crimes! All this we can only learn by intimate contact with the masses, and not by wholesale16 arguments covering millions separate in time and space, and differing widely in training and culture. To-day, then, my reader, let us turn our faces to the Black Belt of Georgia and seek simply to know the condition of the black farm-laborers19 of one county there.
Here in 1890 lived ten thousand Negroes and two thousand whites. The country is rich, yet the people are poor. The keynote of the Black Belt is debt; not commercial credit, but debt in the sense of continued inability on the part of the mass of the population to make income cover expense. This is the direct heritage of the South from the wasteful20 economies of the slave regime; but it was emphasized and brought to a crisis by the Emancipation21 of the slaves. In 1860, Dougherty County had six thousand slaves, worth at least two and a half millions of dollars; its farms were estimated at three millions,—making five and a half millions of property, the value of which depended largely on the slave system, and on the speculative22 demand for land once marvellously rich but already partially23 devitalized by careless and exhaustive culture. The war then meant a financial crash; in place of the five and a half millions of 1860, there remained in 1870 only farms valued at less than two millions. With this came increased competition in cotton culture from the rich lands of Texas; a steady fall in the normal price of cotton followed, from about fourteen cents a pound in 1860 until it reached four cents in 1898. Such a financial revolution was it that involved the owners of the cotton-belt in debt. And if things went ill with the master, how fared it with the man?
The plantations24 of Dougherty County in slavery days were not as imposing26 and aristocratic as those of Virginia. The Big House was smaller and usually one-storied, and sat very near the slave cabins. Sometimes these cabins stretched off on either side like wings; sometimes only on one side, forming a double row, or edging the road that turned into the plantation25 from the main thoroughfare. The form and disposition27 of the laborers' cabins throughout the Black Belt is to-day the same as in slavery days. Some live in the self-same cabins, others in cabins rebuilt on the sites of the old. All are sprinkled in little groups over the face of the land, centering about some dilapidated Big House where the head-tenant28 or agent lives. The general character and arrangement of these dwellings29 remains30 on the whole unaltered. There were in the county, outside the corporate31 town of Albany, about fifteen hundred Negro families in 1898. Out of all these, only a single family occupied a house with seven rooms; only fourteen have five rooms or more. The mass live in one- and two-room homes.
The size and arrangements of a people's homes are no unfair index of their condition. If, then, we inquire more carefully into these Negro homes, we find much that is unsatisfactory. All over the face of the land is the one-room cabin,—now standing32 in the shadow of the Big House, now staring at the dusty road, now rising dark and sombre amid the green of the cotton-fields. It is nearly always old and bare, built of rough boards, and neither plastered nor ceiled. Light and ventilation are supplied by the single door and by the square hole in the wall with its wooden shutter33. There is no glass, porch, or ornamentation without. Within is a fireplace, black and smoky, and usually unsteady with age. A bed or two, a table, a wooden chest, and a few chairs compose the furniture; while a stray show-bill or a newspaper makes up the decorations for the walls. Now and then one may find such a cabin kept scrupulously35 neat, with merry steaming fireplaces and hospitable36 door; but the majority are dirty and dilapidated, smelling of eating and sleeping, poorly ventilated, and anything but homes.
Above all, the cabins are crowded. We have come to associate crowding with homes in cities almost exclusively. This is primarily because we have so little accurate knowledge of country life. Here in Dougherty County one may find families of eight and ten occupying one or two rooms, and for every ten rooms of house accommodation for the Negroes there are twenty-five persons. The worst tenement37 abominations of New York do not have above twenty-two persons for every ten rooms. Of course, one small, close room in a city, without a yard, is in many respects worse than the larger single country room. In other respects it is better; it has glass windows, a decent chimney, and a trustworthy floor. The single great advantage of the Negro peasant is that he may spend most of his life outside his hovel, in the open fields.
There are four chief causes of these wretched homes: First, long custom born of slavery has assigned such homes to Negroes; white laborers would be offered better accommodations, and might, for that and similar reasons, give better work. Secondly38, the Negroes, used to such accommodations, do not as a rule demand better; they do not know what better houses mean. Thirdly, the landlords as a class have not yet come to realize that it is a good business investment to raise the standard of living among labor17 by slow and judicious39 methods; that a Negro laborer18 who demands three rooms and fifty cents a day would give more efficient work and leave a larger profit than a discouraged toiler41 herding42 his family in one room and working for thirty cents. Lastly, among such conditions of life there are few incentives44 to make the laborer become a better farmer. If he is ambitious, he moves to town or tries other labor; as a tenant-farmer his outlook is almost hopeless, and following it as a makeshift, he takes the house that is given him without protest.
In such homes, then, these Negro peasants live. The families are both small and large; there are many single tenants45,—widows and bachelors, and remnants of broken groups. The system of labor and the size of the houses both tend to the breaking up of family groups: the grown children go away as contract hands or migrate to town, the sister goes into service; and so one finds many families with hosts of babies, and many newly married couples, but comparatively few families with half-grown and grown sons and daughters. The average size of Negro families has undoubtedly46 decreased since the war, primarily from economic stress. In Russia over a third of the bridegrooms and over half the brides are under twenty; the same was true of the antebellum Negroes. Today, however, very few of the boys and less than a fifth of the Negro girls under twenty are married. The young men marry between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five; the young women between twenty and thirty. Such postponement47 is due to the difficulty of earning sufficient to rear and support a family; and it undoubtedly leads, in the country districts, to sexual immorality48. The form of this immorality, however, is very seldom that of prostitution, and less frequently that of illegitimacy than one would imagine. Rather, it takes the form of separation and desertion after a family group has been formed. The number of separated persons is thirty-five to the thousand,—a very large number. It would of course be unfair to compare this number with divorce statistics, for many of these separated women are in reality widowed, were the truth known, and in other cases the separation is not permanent. Nevertheless, here lies the seat of greatest moral danger. There is little or no prostitution among these Negroes, and over three-fourths of the families, as found by house-to-house investigation49, deserve to be classed as decent people with considerable regard for female chastity. To be sure, the ideas of the mass would not suit New England, and there are many loose habits and notions. Yet the rate of illegitimacy is undoubtedly lower than in Austria or Italy, and the women as a class are modest. The plague-spot in sexual relations is easy marriage and easy separation. This is no sudden development, nor the fruit of Emancipation. It is the plain heritage from slavery. In those days Sam, with his master's consent, "took up" with Mary. No ceremony was necessary, and in the busy life of the great plantations of the Black Belt it was usually dispensed50 with. If now the master needed Sam's work in another plantation or in another part of the same plantation, or if he took a notion to sell the slave, Sam's married life with Mary was usually unceremoniously broken, and then it was clearly to the master's interest to have both of them take new mates. This widespread custom of two centuries has not been eradicated51 in thirty years. To-day Sam's grandson "takes up" with a woman without license52 or ceremony; they live together decently and honestly, and are, to all intents and purposes, man and wife. Sometimes these unions are never broken until death; but in too many cases family quarrels, a roving spirit, a rival suitor, or perhaps more frequently the hopeless battle to support a family, lead to separation, and a broken household is the result. The Negro church has done much to stop this practice, and now most marriage ceremonies are performed by the pastors53. Nevertheless, the evil is still deep seated, and only a general raising of the standard of living will finally cure it.
Looking now at the county black population as a whole, it is fair to characterize it as poor and ignorant. Perhaps ten per cent compose the well-to-do and the best of the laborers, while at least nine per cent are thoroughly54 lewd55 and vicious. The rest, over eighty per cent, are poor and ignorant, fairly honest and well meaning, plodding56, and to a degree shiftless, with some but not great sexual looseness. Such class lines are by no means fixed57; they vary, one might almost say, with the price of cotton. The degree of ignorance cannot easily be expressed. We may say, for instance, that nearly two-thirds of them cannot read or write. This but partially expresses the fact. They are ignorant of the world about them, of modern economic organization, of the function of government, of individual worth and possibilities,—of nearly all those things which slavery in self-defence had to keep them from learning. Much that the white boy imbibes58 from his earliest social atmosphere forms the puzzling problems of the black boy's mature years. America is not another word for Opportunity to all her sons.
It is easy for us to lose ourselves in details in endeavoring to grasp and comprehend the real condition of a mass of human beings. We often forget that each unit in the mass is a throbbing59 human soul. Ignorant it may be, and poverty stricken, black and curious in limb and ways and thought; and yet it loves and hates, it toils60 and tires, it laughs and weeps its bitter tears, and looks in vague and awful longing15 at the grim horizon of its life,—all this, even as you and I. These black thousands are not in reality lazy; they are improvident61 and careless; they insist on breaking the monotony of toil40 with a glimpse at the great town-world on Saturday; they have their loafers and their rascals63; but the great mass of them work continuously and faithfully for a return, and under circumstances that would call forth64 equal voluntary effort from few if any other modern laboring65 class. Over eighty-eight per cent of them—men, women, and children—are farmers. Indeed, this is almost the only industry. Most of the children get their schooling66 after the "crops are laid by," and very few there are that stay in school after the spring work has begun. Child-labor is to be found here in some of its worst phases, as fostering ignorance and stunting67 physical development. With the grown men of the county there is little variety in work: thirteen hundred are farmers, and two hundred are laborers, teamsters, etc., including twenty-four artisans, ten merchants, twenty-one preachers, and four teachers. This narrowness of life reaches its maximum among the women: thirteen hundred and fifty of these are farm laborers, one hundred are servants and washerwomen, leaving sixty-five housewives, eight teachers, and six seamstresses.
Among this people there is no leisure class. We often forget that in the United States over half the youth and adults are not in the world earning incomes, but are making homes, learning of the world, or resting after the heat of the strife68. But here ninety-six per cent are toiling69; no one with leisure to turn the bare and cheerless cabin into a home, no old folks to sit beside the fire and hand down traditions of the past; little of careless happy childhood and dreaming youth. The dull monotony of daily toil is broken only by the gayety of the thoughtless and the Saturday trip to town. The toil, like all farm toil, is monotonous70, and here there are little machinery71 and few tools to relieve its burdensome drudgery72. But with all this, it is work in the pure open air, and this is something in a day when fresh air is scarce.
The land on the whole is still fertile, despite long abuse. For nine or ten months in succession the crops will come if asked: garden vegetables in April, grain in May, melons in June and July, hay in August, sweet potatoes in September, and cotton from then to Christmas. And yet on two-thirds of the land there is but one crop, and that leaves the toilers in debt. Why is this?
Away down the Baysan road, where the broad flat fields are flanked by great oak forests, is a plantation; many thousands of acres it used to run, here and there, and beyond the great wood. Thirteen hundred human beings here obeyed the call of one,—were his in body, and largely in soul. One of them lives there yet,—a short, stocky man, his dull-brown face seamed and drawn73, and his tightly curled hair gray-white. The crops? Just tolerable, he said; just tolerable. Getting on? No—he wasn't getting on at all. Smith of Albany "furnishes" him, and his rent is eight hundred pounds of cotton. Can't make anything at that. Why didn't he buy land! Humph! Takes money to buy land. And he turns away. Free! The most piteous thing amid all the black ruin of war-time, amid the broken fortunes of the masters, the blighted74 hopes of mothers and maidens75, and the fall of an empire,—the most piteous thing amid all this was the black freedman who threw down his hoe because the world called him free. What did such a mockery of freedom mean? Not a cent of money, not an inch of land, not a mouthful of victuals,—not even ownership of the rags on his back. Free! On Saturday, once or twice a month, the old master, before the war, used to dole76 out bacon and meal to his Negroes. And after the first flush of freedom wore off, and his true helplessness dawned on the freedman, he came back and picked up his hoe, and old master still doled77 out his bacon and meal. The legal form of service was theoretically far different; in practice, task-work or "cropping" was substituted for daily toil in gangs; and the slave gradually became a metayer, or tenant on shares, in name, but a laborer with indeterminate wages in fact.
Still the price of cotton fell, and gradually the landlords deserted78 their plantations, and the reign79 of the merchant began. The merchant of the Black Belt is a curious institution,—part banker, part landlord, part banker, and part despot. His store, which used most frequently to stand at the cross-roads and become the centre of a weekly village, has now moved to town; and thither80 the Negro tenant follows him. The merchant keeps everything,—clothes and shoes, coffee and sugar, pork and meal, canned and dried goods, wagons82 and ploughs, seed and fertilizer,—and what he has not in stock he can give you an order for at the store across the way. Here, then, comes the tenant, Sam Scott, after he has contracted with some absent landlord's agent for hiring forty acres of land; he fingers his hat nervously83 until the merchant finishes his morning chat with Colonel Saunders, and calls out, "Well, Sam, what do you want?" Sam wants him to "furnish" him,—i.e., to advance him food and clothing for the year, and perhaps seed and tools, until his crop is raised and sold. If Sam seems a favorable subject, he and the merchant go to a lawyer, and Sam executes a chattel84 mortgage on his mule85 and wagon81 in return for seed and a week's rations34. As soon as the green cotton-leaves appear above the ground, another mortgage is given on the "crop." Every Saturday, or at longer intervals86, Sam calls upon the merchant for his "rations"; a family of five usually gets about thirty pounds of fat side-pork and a couple of bushels of cornmeal a month. Besides this, clothing and shoes must be furnished; if Sam or his family is sick, there are orders on the druggist and doctor; if the mule wants shoeing, an order on the blacksmith, etc. If Sam is a hard worker and crops promise well, he is often encouraged to buy more,—sugar, extra clothes, perhaps a buggy. But he is seldom encouraged to save. When cotton rose to ten cents last fall, the shrewd merchants of Dougherty County sold a thousand buggies in one season, mostly to black men.
The security offered for such transactions—a crop and chattel mortgage—may at first seem slight. And, indeed, the merchants tell many a true tale of shiftlessness and cheating; of cotton picked at night, mules87 disappearing, and tenants absconding88. But on the whole the merchant of the Black Belt is the most prosperous man in the section. So skilfully89 and so closely has he drawn the bonds of the law about the tenant, that the black man has often simply to choose between pauperism90 and crime; he "waives91" all homestead exemptions92 in his contract; he cannot touch his own mortgaged crop, which the laws put almost in the full control of the land-owner and of the merchant. When the crop is growing the merchant watches it like a hawk93; as soon as it is ready for market he takes possession of it, sells it, pays the landowner his rent, subtracts his bill for supplies, and if, as sometimes happens, there is anything left, he hands it over to the black serf for his Christmas celebration.
The direct result of this system is an all-cotton scheme of agriculture and the continued bankruptcy94 of the tenant. The currency of the Black Belt is cotton. It is a crop always salable95 for ready money, not usually subject to great yearly fluctuations96 in price, and one which the Negroes know how to raise. The landlord therefore demands his rent in cotton, and the merchant will accept mortgages on no other crop. There is no use asking the black tenant, then, to diversify97 his crops,—he cannot under this system. Moreover, the system is bound to bankrupt the tenant. I remember once meeting a little one-mule wagon on the River road. A young black fellow sat in it driving listlessly, his elbows on his knees. His dark-faced wife sat beside him, stolid98, silent.
"Hello!" cried my driver,—he has a most imprudent way of addressing these people, though they seem used to it,—"what have you got there?"
"Meat and meal," answered the man, stopping. The meat lay uncovered in the bottom of the wagon,—a great thin side of fat pork covered with salt; the meal was in a white bushel bag.
"What did you pay for that meat?"
"Ten cents a pound." It could have been bought for six or seven cents cash.
"And the meal?"
"Two dollars." One dollar and ten cents is the cash price in town. Here was a man paying five dollars for goods which he could have bought for three dollars cash, and raised for one dollar or one dollar and a half.
Yet it is not wholly his fault. The Negro farmer started behind,—started in debt. This was not his choosing, but the crime of this happy-go-lucky nation which goes blundering along with its Reconstruction99 tragedies, its Spanish war interludes and Philippine matinees, just as though God really were dead. Once in debt, it is no easy matter for a whole race to emerge.
In the year of low-priced cotton, 1898, out of three hundred tenant families one hundred and seventy-five ended their year's work in debt to the extent of fourteen thousand dollars; fifty cleared nothing, and the remaining seventy-five made a total profit of sixteen hundred dollars. The net indebtedness of the black tenant families of the whole county must have been at least sixty thousand dollars. In a more prosperous year the situation is far better; but on the average the majority of tenants end the year even, or in debt, which means that they work for board and clothes. Such an economic organization is radically100 wrong. Whose is the blame?
The underlying101 causes of this situation are complicated but discernible. And one of the chief, outside the carelessness of the nation in letting the slave start with nothing, is the widespread opinion among the merchants and employers of the Black Belt that only by the slavery of debt can the Negro be kept at work. Without doubt, some pressure was necessary at the beginning of the free-labor system to keep the listless and lazy at work; and even to-day the mass of the Negro laborers need stricter guardianship103 than most Northern laborers. Behind this honest and widespread opinion dishonesty and cheating of the ignorant laborers have a good chance to take refuge. And to all this must be added the obvious fact that a slave ancestry104 and a system of unrequited toil has not improved the efficiency or temper of the mass of black laborers. Nor is this peculiar105 to Sambo; it has in history been just as true of John and Hans, of Jacques and Pat, of all ground-down peasantries. Such is the situation of the mass of the Negroes in the Black Belt to-day; and they are thinking about it. Crime, and a cheap and dangerous socialism, are the inevitable106 results of this pondering. I see now that ragged107 black man sitting on a log, aimlessly whittling108 a stick. He muttered to me with the murmur109 of many ages, when he said: "White man sit down whole year; Nigger work day and night and make crop; Nigger hardly gits bread and meat; white man sittin' down gits all. It's wrong." And what do the better classes of Negroes do to improve their situation? One of two things: if any way possible, they buy land; if not, they migrate to town. Just as centuries ago it was no easy thing for the serf to escape into the freedom of town-life, even so to-day there are hindrances110 laid in the way of county laborers. In considerable parts of all the Gulf111 States, and especially in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas, the Negroes on the plantations in the back-country districts are still held at forced labor practically without wages. Especially is this true in districts where the farmers are composed of the more ignorant class of poor whites, and the Negroes are beyond the reach of schools and intercourse112 with their advancing fellows. If such a peon should run away, the sheriff, elected by white suffrage113, can usually be depended on to catch the fugitive114, return him, and ask no questions. If he escape to another county, a charge of petty thieving, easily true, can be depended upon to secure his return. Even if some unduly115 officious person insist upon a trial, neighborly comity116 will probably make his conviction sure, and then the labor due the county can easily be bought by the master. Such a system is impossible in the more civilized117 parts of the South, or near the large towns and cities; but in those vast stretches of land beyond the telegraph and the newspaper the spirit of the Thirteenth Amendment118 is sadly broken. This represents the lowest economic depths of the black American peasant; and in a study of the rise and condition of the Negro freeholder we must trace his economic progress from the modern serfdom.
Even in the better-ordered country districts of the South the free movement of agricultural laborers is hindered by the migration119-agent laws. The "Associated Press" recently informed the world of the arrest of a young white man in Southern Georgia who represented the "Atlantic Naval120 Supplies Company," and who "was caught in the act of enticing121 hands from the turpentine farm of Mr. John Greer." The crime for which this young man was arrested is taxed five hundred dollars for each county in which the employment agent proposes to gather laborers for work outside the State. Thus the Negroes' ignorance of the labor-market outside his own vicinity is increased rather than diminished by the laws of nearly every Southern State.
Similar to such measures is the unwritten law of the back districts and small towns of the South, that the character of all Negroes unknown to the mass of the community must be vouched122 for by some white man. This is really a revival123 of the old Roman idea of the patron under whose protection the new-made freedman was put. In many instances this system has been of great good to the Negro, and very often under the protection and guidance of the former master's family, or other white friends, the freedman progressed in wealth and morality. But the same system has in other cases resulted in the refusal of whole communities to recognize the right of a Negro to change his habitation and to be master of his own fortunes. A black stranger in Baker124 County, Georgia, for instance, is liable to be stopped anywhere on the public highway and made to state his business to the satisfaction of any white interrogator125. If he fails to give a suitable answer, or seems too independent or "sassy," he may be arrested or summarily driven away.
Thus it is that in the country districts of the South, by written or unwritten law, peonage, hindrances to the migration of labor, and a system of white patronage126 exists over large areas. Besides this, the chance for lawless oppression and illegal exactions is vastly greater in the country than in the city, and nearly all the more serious race disturbances127 of the last decade have arisen from disputes in the count between master and man,—as, for instance, the Sam Hose affair. As a result of such a situation, there arose, first, the Black Belt; and, second, the Migration to Town. The Black Belt was not, as many assumed, a movement toward fields of labor under more genial128 climatic conditions; it was primarily a huddling129 for self-protection,—a massing of the black population for mutual130 defence in order to secure the peace and tranquillity131 necessary to economic advance. This movement took place between Emancipation and 1880, and only partially accomplished132 the desired results. The rush to town since 1880 is the counter-movement of men disappointed in the economic opportunities of the Black Belt.
In Dougherty County, Georgia, one can see easily the results of this experiment in huddling for protection. Only ten per cent of the adult population was born in the county, and yet the blacks outnumber the whites four or five to one. There is undoubtedly a security to the blacks in their very numbers,—a personal freedom from arbitrary treatment, which makes hundreds of laborers cling to Dougherty in spite of low wages and economic distress133. But a change is coming, and slowly but surely even here the agricultural laborers are drifting to town and leaving the broad acres behind. Why is this? Why do not the Negroes become land-owners, and build up the black landed peasantry, which has for a generation and more been the dream of philanthropist and statesman?
To the car-window sociologist134, to the man who seeks to understand and know the South by devoting the few leisure hours of a holiday trip to unravelling135 the snarl136 of centuries,—to such men very often the whole trouble with the black field-hand may be summed up by Aunt Ophelia's word, "Shiftless!" They have noted137 repeatedly scenes like one I saw last summer. We were riding along the highroad to town at the close of a long hot day. A couple of young black fellows passed us in a muleteam, with several bushels of loose corn in the ear. One was driving, listlessly bent138 forward, his elbows on his knees,—a happy-go-lucky, careless picture of irresponsibility. The other was fast asleep in the bottom of the wagon. As we passed we noticed an ear of corn fall from the wagon. They never saw it,—not they. A rod farther on we noted another ear on the ground; and between that creeping mule and town we counted twenty-six ears of corn. Shiftless? Yes, the personification of shiftlessness. And yet follow those boys: they are not lazy; to-morrow morning they'll be up with the sun; they work hard when they do work, and they work willingly. They have no sordid139, selfish, money-getting ways, but rather a fine disdain140 for mere141 cash. They'll loaf before your face and work behind your back with good-natured honesty. They'll steal a watermelon, and hand you back your lost purse intact. Their great defect as laborers lies in their lack of incentive43 beyond the mere pleasure of physical exertion142. They are careless because they have not found that it pays to be careful; they are improvident because the improvident ones of their acquaintance get on about as well as the provident62. Above all, they cannot see why they should take unusual pains to make the white man's land better, or to fatten143 his mule, or save his corn. On the other hand, the white land-owner argues that any attempt to improve these laborers by increased responsibility, or higher wages, or better homes, or land of their own, would be sure to result in failure. He shows his Northern visitor the scarred and wretched land; the ruined mansions144, the worn-out soil and mortgaged acres, and says, This is Negro freedom!
Now it happens that both master and man have just enough argument on their respective sides to make it difficult for them to understand each other. The Negro dimly personifies in the white man all his ills and misfortunes; if he is poor, it is because the white man seizes the fruit of his toil; if he is ignorant, it is because the white man gives him neither time nor facilities to learn; and, indeed, if any misfortune happens to him, it is because of some hidden machinations of "white folks." On the other hand, the masters and the masters' sons have never been able to see why the Negro, instead of settling down to be day-laborers for bread and clothes, are infected with a silly desire to rise in the world, and why they are sulky, dissatisfied, and careless, where their fathers were happy and dumb and faithful. "Why, you niggers have an easier time than I do," said a puzzled Albany merchant to his black customer. "Yes," he replied, "and so does yo' hogs145."
Taking, then, the dissatisfied and shiftless field-hand as a starting-point, let us inquire how the black thousands of Dougherty have struggled from him up toward their ideal, and what that ideal is. All social struggle is evidenced by the rise, first of economic, then of social classes, among a homogeneous population. To-day the following economic classes are plainly differentiated146 among these Negroes.
A "submerged tenth" of croppers, with a few paupers147; forty per cent who are metayers and thirty-nine per cent of semi-metayers and wage-laborers. There are left five per cent of money-renters and six per cent of freeholders,—the "Upper Ten" of the land. The croppers are entirely148 without capital, even in the limited sense of food or money to keep them from seed-time to harvest. All they furnish is their labor; the land-owner furnishes land, stock, tools, seed, and house; and at the end of the year the laborer gets from a third to a half of the crop. Out of his share, however, comes pay and interest for food and clothing advanced him during the year. Thus we have a laborer without capital and without wages, and an employer whose capital is largely his employees' wages. It is an unsatisfactory arrangement, both for hirer and hired, and is usually in vogue149 on poor land with hard-pressed owners.
Above the croppers come the great mass of the black population who work the land on their own responsibility, paying rent in cotton and supported by the crop-mortgage system. After the war this system was attractive to the freedmen on account of its larger freedom and its possibility for making a surplus. But with the carrying out of the crop-lien system, the deterioration150 of the land, and the slavery of debt, the position of the metayers has sunk to a dead level of practically unrewarded toil. Formerly151 all tenants had some capital, and often considerable; but absentee landlordism, rising rack-rent, and failing cotton have stripped them well-nigh of all, and probably not over half of them to-day own their mules. The change from cropper to tenant was accomplished by fixing the rent. If, now, the rent fixed was reasonable, this was an incentive to the tenant to strive. On the other hand, if the rent was too high, or if the land deteriorated152, the result was to discourage and check the efforts of the black peasantry. There is no doubt that the latter case is true; that in Dougherty County every economic advantage of the price of cotton in market and of the strivings of the tenant has been taken advantage of by the landlords and merchants, and swallowed up in rent and interest. If cotton rose in price, the rent rose even higher; if cotton fell, the rent remained or followed reluctantly. If the tenant worked hard and raised a large crop, his rent was raised the next year; if that year the crop failed, his corn was confiscated153 and his mule sold for debt. There were, of course, exceptions to this,—cases of personal kindness and forbearance; but in the vast majority of cases the rule was to extract the uttermost farthing from the mass of the black farm laborers.
The average metayer pays from twenty to thirty per cent of his crop in rent. The result of such rack-rent can only be evil,—abuse and neglect of the soil, deterioration in the character of the laborers, and a widespread sense of injustice154. "Wherever the country is poor," cried Arthur Young, "it is in the hands of metayers," and "their condition is more wretched than that of day-laborers." He was talking of Italy a century ago; but he might have been talking of Dougherty County to-day. And especially is that true to-day which he declares was true in France before the Revolution: "The metayers are considered as little better than menial servants, removable at pleasure, and obliged to conform in all things to the will of the landlords." On this low plane half the black population of Dougherty County—perhaps more than half the black millions of this land—are to-day struggling.
A degree above these we may place those laborers who receive money wages for their work. Some receive a house with perhaps a garden-spot; then supplies of food and clothing are advanced, and certain fixed wages are given at the end of the year, varying from thirty to sixty dollars, out of which the supplies must be paid for, with interest. About eighteen per cent of the population belong to this class of semi-metayers, while twenty-two per cent are laborers paid by the month or year, and are either "furnished" by their own savings155 or perhaps more usually by some merchant who takes his chances of payment. Such laborers receive from thirty-five to fifty cents a day during the working season. They are usually young unmarried persons, some being women; and when they marry they sink to the class of metayers, or, more seldom, become renters.
The renters for fixed money rentals157 are the first of the emerging classes, and form five per cent of the families. The sole advantage of this small class is their freedom to choose their crops, and the increased responsibility which comes through having money transactions. While some of the renters differ little in condition from the metayers, yet on the whole they are more intelligent and responsible persons, and are the ones who eventually become land-owners. Their better character and greater shrewdness enable them to gain, perhaps to demand, better terms in rents; rented farms, varying from forty to a hundred acres, bear an average rental156 of about fifty-four dollars a year. The men who conduct such farms do not long remain renters; either they sink to metayers, or with a successful series of harvests rise to be land-owners.
In 1870 the tax-books of Dougherty report no Negroes as landholders. If there were any such at that time,—and there may have been a few,—their land was probably held in the name of some white patron,—a method not uncommon158 during slavery. In 1875 ownership of land had begun with seven hundred and fifty acres; ten years later this had increased to over sixty-five hundred acres, to nine thousand acres in 1890 and ten thousand in 1900. The total assessed property has in this same period risen from eighty thousand dollars in 1875 to two hundred and forty thousand dollars in 1900.
Two circumstances complicate102 this development and make it in some respects difficult to be sure of the real tendencies; they are the panic of 1893, and the low price of cotton in 1898. Besides this, the system of assessing property in the country districts of Georgia is somewhat antiquated159 and of uncertain statistical160 value; there are no assessors, and each man makes a sworn return to a tax-receiver. Thus public opinion plays a large part, and the returns vary strangely from year to year. Certainly these figures show the small amount of accumulated capital among the Negroes, and the consequent large dependence161 of their property on temporary prosperity. They have little to tide over a few years of economic depression, and are at the mercy of the cotton-market far more than the whites. And thus the land-owners, despite their marvellous efforts, are really a transient class, continually being depleted162 by those who fall back into the class of renters or metayers, and augmented163 by newcomers from the masses. Of one hundred land-owners in 1898, half had bought their land since 1893, a fourth between 1890 and 1893, a fifth between 1884 and 1890, and the rest between 1870 and 1884. In all, one hundred and eighty-five Negroes have owned land in this county since 1875.
If all the black land-owners who had ever held land here had kept it or left it in the hands of black men, the Negroes would have owned nearer thirty thousand acres than the fifteen thousand they now hold. And yet these fifteen thousand acres are a creditable showing,—a proof of no little weight of the worth and ability of the Negro people. If they had been given an economic start at Emancipation, if they had been in an enlightened and rich community which really desired their best good, then we might perhaps call such a result small or even insignificant164. But for a few thousand poor ignorant field-hands, in the face of poverty, a falling market, and social stress, to save and capitalize two hundred thousand dollars in a generation has meant a tremendous effort. The rise of a nation, the pressing forward of a social class, means a bitter struggle, a hard and soul-sickening battle with the world such as few of the more favored classes know or appreciate.
Out of the hard economic conditions of this portion of the Black Belt, only six per cent of the population have succeeded in emerging into peasant proprietorship165; and these are not all firmly fixed, but grow and shrink in number with the wavering of the cotton-market. Fully13 ninety-four per cent have struggled for land and failed, and half of them sit in hopeless serfdom. For these there is one other avenue of escape toward which they have turned in increasing numbers, namely, migration to town. A glance at the distribution of land among the black owners curiously166 reveals this fact. In 1898 the holdings were as follows: Under forty acres, forty-nine families; forty to two hundred and fifty acres, seventeen families; two hundred and fifty to one thousand acres, thirteen families; one thousand or more acres, two families. Now in 1890 there were forty-four holdings, but only nine of these were under forty acres. The great increase of holdings, then, has come in the buying of small homesteads near town, where their owners really share in the town life; this is a part of the rush to town. And for every land-owner who has thus hurried away from the narrow and hard conditions of country life, how many field-hands, how many tenants, how many ruined renters, have joined that long procession? Is it not strange compensation? The sin of the country districts is visited on the town, and the social sores of city life to-day may, here in Dougherty County, and perhaps in many places near and far, look for their final healing without the city walls.
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1
brute
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| n.野兽，兽性 | |
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strew
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| vt.撒；使散落；撒在…上，散布于 | |
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jealousies
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| n.妒忌( jealousy的名词复数 )；妒羡 | |
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moody
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| adj.心情不稳的，易怒的，喜怒无常的 | |
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hovering
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| 鸟( hover的现在分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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foam
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| v./n.泡沫，起泡沫 | |
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ram
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| (random access memory)随机存取存储器 | |
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vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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homely
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| adj.家常的，简朴的；不漂亮的 | |
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parvenu
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| n.暴发户，新贵 | |
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contention
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| n.争论，争辩，论战；论点，主张 | |
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supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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longings
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| 渴望，盼望( longing的名词复数 ) | |
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longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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wholesale
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| n.批发；adv.以批发方式；vt.批发，成批出售 | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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laborer
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| n.劳动者，劳工 | |
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laborers
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| n.体力劳动者，工人( laborer的名词复数 )；（熟练工人的）辅助工 | |
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wasteful
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| adj.（造成）浪费的，挥霍的 | |
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emancipation
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| n.（从束缚、支配下）解放 | |
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speculative
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| adj.思索性的，暝想性的，推理的 | |
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partially
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| adv.部分地，从某些方面讲 | |
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plantations
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| n.种植园，大农场( plantation的名词复数 ) | |
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plantation
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| n.种植园，大农场 | |
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imposing
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| adj.使人难忘的，壮丽的，堂皇的，雄伟的 | |
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disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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tenant
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| n.承租人；房客；佃户；v.租借，租用 | |
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dwellings
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| n.住处，处所( dwelling的名词复数 ) | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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corporate
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| adj.共同的，全体的；公司的，企业的 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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shutter
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| n.百叶窗；(照相机)快门；关闭装置 | |
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rations
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| 定量( ration的名词复数 )； 配给量； 正常量； 合理的量 | |
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scrupulously
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| adv.一丝不苟地；小心翼翼地，多顾虑地 | |
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hospitable
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| adj.好客的；宽容的；有利的，适宜的 | |
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tenement
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| n.公寓；房屋 | |
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secondly
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| adv.第二，其次 | |
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judicious
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| adj.明智的，明断的，能作出明智决定的 | |
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toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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toiler
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| 辛劳者，勤劳者 | |
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herding
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| 中畜群 | |
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incentive
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| n.刺激；动力；鼓励；诱因；动机 | |
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incentives
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| 激励某人做某事的事物( incentive的名词复数 )； 刺激； 诱因； 动机 | |
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tenants
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| n.房客( tenant的名词复数 )；佃户；占用者；占有者 | |
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46
undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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postponement
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| n.推迟 | |
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48
immorality
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| n. 不道德, 无道义 | |
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investigation
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| n.调查，调查研究 | |
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50
dispensed
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| v.分配( dispense的过去式和过去分词 )；施与；配（药） | |
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51
eradicated
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| 画着根的 | |
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license
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| n.执照，许可证，特许；v.许可，特许 | |
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pastors
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| n.（基督教的）牧师( pastor的名词复数 ) | |
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54
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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55
lewd
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| adj.淫荡的 | |
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56
plodding
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| a.proceeding in a slow or dull way | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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58
imbibes
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| v.吸收( imbibe的第三人称单数 )；喝；吸取；吸气 | |
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59
throbbing
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| a. 跳动的,悸动的 | |
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60
toils
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| 网 | |
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61
improvident
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| adj.不顾将来的，不节俭的，无远见的 | |
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provident
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| adj.为将来做准备的，有先见之明的 | |
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rascals
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| 流氓( rascal的名词复数 )； 无赖； （开玩笑说法）淘气的人（尤指小孩）； 恶作剧的人 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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laboring
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| n.劳动，操劳v.努力争取(for)( labor的现在分词 )；苦干；详细分析；（指引擎）缓慢而困难地运转 | |
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schooling
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| n.教育；正规学校教育 | |
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67
stunting
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| v.阻碍…发育[生长]，抑制，妨碍( stunt的现在分词 ) | |
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68
strife
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| n.争吵，冲突，倾轧，竞争 | |
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69
toiling
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| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的现在分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
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monotonous
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| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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drudgery
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| n.苦工，重活，单调乏味的工作 | |
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73
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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blighted
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| adj.枯萎的，摧毁的 | |
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maidens
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| 处女( maiden的名词复数 )； 少女； 未婚女子； （板球运动）未得分的一轮投球 | |
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76
dole
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| n.救济，（失业）救济金；vt.（out）发放，发给 | |
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doled
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| 救济物( dole的过去式和过去分词 )； 失业救济金 | |
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deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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reign
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| n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势 | |
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80
thither
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| adv.向那里；adj.在那边的，对岸的 | |
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81
wagon
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| n.四轮马车，手推车，面包车；无盖运货列车 | |
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82
wagons
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| n.四轮的运货马车( wagon的名词复数 )；铁路货车；小手推车 | |
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83
nervously
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| adv.神情激动地，不安地 | |
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84
chattel
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| n.动产；奴隶 | |
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85
mule
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| n.骡子，杂种，执拗的人 | |
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86
intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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87
mules
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| 骡( mule的名词复数 )； 拖鞋； 顽固的人； 越境运毒者 | |
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88
absconding
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| v.（尤指逃避逮捕）潜逃，逃跑( abscond的现在分词 ) | |
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89
skilfully
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| adv. (美skillfully)熟练地 | |
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pauperism
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| n.有被救济的资格，贫困 | |
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91
waives
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| v.宣布放弃( waive的第三人称单数 )；搁置；推迟；放弃（权利、要求等） | |
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92
exemptions
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| n.（义务等的）免除( exemption的名词复数 )；免（税）；（收入中的）免税额 | |
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93
hawk
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| n.鹰，骗子；鹰派成员 | |
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bankruptcy
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| n.破产；无偿付能力 | |
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95
salable
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| adj.有销路的，适销的 | |
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fluctuations
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| 波动，涨落，起伏( fluctuation的名词复数 ) | |
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97
diversify
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| v.（使）不同，（使）变得多样化 | |
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98
stolid
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| adj.无动于衷的，感情麻木的 | |
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99
reconstruction
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| n.重建，再现，复原 | |
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100
radically
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| ad.根本地，本质地 | |
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101
underlying
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| adj.在下面的，含蓄的，潜在的 | |
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102
complicate
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| vt.使复杂化，使混乱，使难懂 | |
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103
guardianship
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| n. 监护, 保护, 守护 | |
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104
ancestry
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| n.祖先，家世 | |
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105
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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106
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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108
whittling
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| v.切，削（木头），使逐渐变小( whittle的现在分词 ) | |
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109
murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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110
hindrances
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| 阻碍者( hindrance的名词复数 )； 障碍物； 受到妨碍的状态 | |
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111
gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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112
intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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113
suffrage
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| n.投票，选举权，参政权 | |
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114
fugitive
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| adj.逃亡的，易逝的；n.逃犯，逃亡者 | |
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115
unduly
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| adv.过度地，不适当地 | |
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116
comity
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| n.礼让，礼仪；团结，联合 | |
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117
civilized
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| a.有教养的，文雅的 | |
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118
amendment
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| n.改正，修正，改善，修正案 | |
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119
migration
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| n.迁移，移居，（鸟类等的）迁徙 | |
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120
naval
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| adj.海军的，军舰的，船的 | |
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121
enticing
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| adj.迷人的；诱人的 | |
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122
vouched
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| v.保证( vouch的过去式和过去分词 )；担保；确定；确定地说 | |
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123
revival
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| n.复兴，复苏，（精力、活力等的）重振 | |
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124
baker
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| n.面包师 | |
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125
interrogator
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| n.讯问者；审问者；质问者；询问器 | |
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126
patronage
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| n.赞助，支援，援助；光顾，捧场 | |
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disturbances
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| n.骚乱( disturbance的名词复数 )；打扰；困扰；障碍 | |
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genial
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| adj.亲切的，和蔼的，愉快的，脾气好的 | |
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huddling
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| n. 杂乱一团, 混乱, 拥挤 v. 推挤, 乱堆, 草率了事 | |
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mutual
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| adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的 | |
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131
tranquillity
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| n. 平静, 安静 | |
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132
accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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133
distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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134
sociologist
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| n.研究社会学的人，社会学家 | |
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135
unravelling
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| 解开，拆散，散开( unravel的现在分词 )； 阐明； 澄清； 弄清楚 | |
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136
snarl
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| v.吼叫，怒骂，纠缠，混乱；n.混乱，缠结，咆哮 | |
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137
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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138
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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139
sordid
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| adj.肮脏的，不干净的，卑鄙的，暗淡的 | |
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disdain
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| n.鄙视，轻视；v.轻视，鄙视，不屑 | |
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141
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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142
exertion
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| n.尽力，努力 | |
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143
fatten
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| v.使肥，变肥 | |
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144
mansions
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| n.宅第，公馆，大厦( mansion的名词复数 ) | |
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145
hogs
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| n.（尤指喂肥供食用的）猪( hog的名词复数 )；（供食用的）阉公猪；彻底地做某事；自私的或贪婪的人 | |
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146
differentiated
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| 区分，区别，辨别( differentiate的过去式和过去分词 )； 区别对待； 表明…间的差别，构成…间差别的特征 | |
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147
paupers
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| n.穷人( pauper的名词复数 )；贫民；贫穷 | |
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148
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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149
Vogue
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| n.时髦，时尚；adj.流行的 | |
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150
deterioration
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| n.退化；恶化；变坏 | |
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151
formerly
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| adv.从前，以前 | |
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152
deteriorated
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| 恶化，变坏( deteriorate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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153
confiscated
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| 没收，充公( confiscate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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154
injustice
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| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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155
savings
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| n.存款，储蓄 | |
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156
rental
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| n.租赁，出租，出租业 | |
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157
rentals
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| n.租费，租金额( rental的名词复数 ) | |
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158
uncommon
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| adj.罕见的，非凡的，不平常的 | |
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159
antiquated
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| adj.陈旧的，过时的 | |
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160
statistical
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| adj.统计的，统计学的 | |
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161
dependence
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| n.依靠，依赖；信任，信赖；隶属 | |
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162
depleted
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| adj. 枯竭的, 废弃的 动词deplete的过去式和过去分词 | |
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163
Augmented
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| adj.增音的 动词augment的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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164
insignificant
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| adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的 | |
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165
proprietorship
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| n.所有（权）；所有权 | |
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166
curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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