=IN PLOWING TIME.=
Previous to the appearance of the European, West Central Africa for
untold hundreds of years had been almost completely separated from the
outside world. The climate is hot, humid, enervating. The Negro tribes
living in the great forests found little need for exertion to obtain the
necessities of savage life. The woods abounded in game, the rivers in
fish. By cutting down a few trees and loosening the ground with
sharpened sticks the plantains, a species of coarse banana, could be
made to yield many hundred fold. The greater part of the little
agricultural work done fell on the women, for it was considered
degrading by the men. Handicrafts were almost unknown among many tribes
and where they existed were of the simplest. Clothing was of little
service. Food preparations were naturally crude. Sanitary restrictions,
seemingly so necessary in hot climates, were unheard of. The dead were
often buried in the floors of the huts. Miss Kingsley says: "All
travelers in West Africa find it necessary very soon to accustom
themselves to most noisome odors of many kinds and to all sorts of
revolting uncleanliness." Morality, as we use the term, did not exist.
Chastity was esteemed in the women only as a marketable commodity.
Marriage was easily consummated and with even greater ease dissolved.
Slavery, inter-tribal, was widespread, and the ravages of the slave
hunter were known long before the arrival of the whites. Religion was a
mass of grossest superstitions, with belief in the magical power of
witches and sorcerers who had power of life and death over their
fellows. Might was right and the chiefs enforced obedience. It is not
necessary to go more into detail. In the words of a recent writer:
"It is clear that any civilization which is based on the fertility
of the soil, and not on the energy of man, contains within itself
the seed of its own destruction. Where food is easily obtained,
where there is little need for clothing or houses, where, in brief,
unaided nature furnishes all man's necessities, those elements
which produce strength of character and vigor of mind are wanting,
and man becomes the slave of his surroundings. He acquires no
energy of disposition, he yields himself to superstition and
fatalism; the very conditions of life which produced his
civilization set the limit of its existence."
It is evident from the foregoing that there had been almost nothing in
the conditions of Africa to further habits of thrift and industry. The
warm climate made great provision for the future unnecessary, not to say
impossible, while social conditions did not favor accumulation of
property. It is necessary to emphasize these African conditions, for
they have an important influence on future development. Under these
conditions Negro character was formed, and that character was not like
that of the long-headed blonds of the North.
The transfer to America marked a sharp break with the past. One needs
but to stop to enumerate the changes to realize how great this break
was. A simple dialect is exchanged for a complex language. A religion
whose basic principle is love gradually supplants the fears and
superstitions of heathenhood. The black passes from an enervating, humid
climate to one in which activity is pleasurable. From the isolation and
self-satisfaction of savagery he emerges into close contact with one of
the most ambitious and progressive of peoples. Life at once becomes far
more secure and wrongs are revenged by the self-interest of the whites
as well as by the feeble means of self-defense in possession of the
blacks. That there were cruelties and mistreatment under slavery goes
without saying, but the woes and sufferings under it were as nothing
compared to those of the life in the African forests. This fact is
sometimes overlooked. With greater security of life came an emphasis,
from without, to be sure, on better marital relations. In this respect
slavery left much to be desired, but conditions on the whole were
probably in advance of those in Africa. Marriage began to be something
more than a purchase. Sanitation, not the word, but the underlying idea,
was taught by precept and example. There came also a dim notion of a new
sphere for women. Faint perceptions ofttimes, but ideas never dreamed of
in Africa. I would not defend slavery, but in this country its evil
results are the inheritance of the whites, not of the blacks, and the
burden today of American slavery is upon white shoulders.
Many of the changes have been mentioned, but the greatest is reserved
for the last. This is embraced in one word--WORK. For the first time the
Negro was made to work, not casual work, but steady, constant labor.
From the Negro's standpoint this is the redeeming feature of his slavery
as perhaps it was for the Israelites in Egypt of old. Booker Washington
has written:[5] "American slavery was a great curse to both races, and I
would be the last to apologize for it, but, in the providence of God, I
believe that slavery laid the foundation for the solution of the problem
that is now before us in the South. During slavery the Negro was taught
every trade, every industry, that constitutes the foundation for making
a living."
Dr. H. B. Frissell has borne the same testimony:
"The southern plantation was really a great trade school where
thousands received instruction in mechanic arts, in agriculture, in
cooking, sewing and other domestic occupations. Although it may be
said that all this instruction was given from selfish motives, yet
the fact remains that the slaves on many plantations had good
industrial training, and all honor is due to the conscientious men
and still more to the noble women of the South who in slavery times
helped to prepare the way for the better days that were to come."
Work is the essential condition of human progress. Contrast the training
of the Negro under enforced slavery with that of the Indian, although it
should not be thought that the characters were the same, for the life in
America had made the Indian one who would not submit to the yoke, and
all attempts to enslave him came to naught. Dr. Frissell out of a long
experience says:
"When the children of these two races are placed side by side, as
they are in the school rooms and workshops and on the farms at
Hampton, it is not difficult to perceive that the training which
the blacks had under slavery was far more valuable as a preparation
for civilized life than the freedom from training and service
enjoyed by the Indian on the Western reservations. For while
slavery taught the colored man to work, the reservation pauperized
the Indian with free rations; while slavery brought the black into
the closest relations with the white race and its ways of life, the
reservation shut the Indian away from his white brothers and gave
him little knowledge of their civilization, language or religion."
The coddled Indian, with all the vices of the white man open to him, has
made little, if any, progress, while the Negro, made to work, has held
his own in large measure at least.
Under slavery three general fields of service were open to the blacks.
The first comprised the domestic and body servants, with the
seamstresses, etc., whose labors were in the house or in close personal
contact with masters and mistresses. This class was made up of the
brightest and quickest, mulattoes being preferred because of their
greater aptitude. These servants had almost as much to do with the
whites as did the other blacks and absorbed no small amount of learning.
Yet the results were not always satisfactory. A southern lady after
visiting for a time in New York said on leaving:[6]
"I cannot tell you how much, after being in your house so long, I
dread to go home, and have to take care of our servants again. We
have a much smaller family of whites than you, but we have twelve
servants, and your two accomplish a great deal more and do their
work a great deal better than our twelve. You think your girls are
very stupid and that they give much trouble, but it is as nothing.
There is hardly one of our servants that can be trusted to do the
simplest work without being stood over. If I order a room to be
cleaned, or a fire to be made in a distant chamber, I can never be
sure I am obeyed unless I go there and see for myself.... And when
I reprimand them they only say that they don't mean to do anything
wrong, or they won't do it again, all the time laughing as though
it were a joke. They don't mind it at all. They are just as playful
and careless as any wilful child; and they never will do any work
if you don't compel them."
The second class comprised the mechanics, carpenters, blacksmiths,
masons and the like. These were also a picked lot. They were well
trained ofttimes and had a practical monopoly of their trades in many
localities. In technical knowledge they naturally soon outstripped their
masters and became conscious of their superiority, as the following
instance related by President G. T. Winston shows:
"I remember one day my father, who was a lawyer, offered some
suggestions to one of his slaves, a fairly good carpenter, who was
building us a barn. The old Negro heard him with ill-concealed
disgust, and replied: 'Look here, master, you'se a first-rate
lawyer, no doubt, but you don't know nothin' 'tall 'bout
carpentering. You better go back to your law books.'"
The training received by these artisans stood them in good stead after
the war, when, left to themselves, they were able to hold their ground
by virtue of their ability to work alone.
The third class was made up of all that were left, and their work was in
the fields. The dullest, as well as those not needed elsewhere, were
included. Some few became overseers, but the majority worked on the
farms. As a rule little work was required of children under 12, and when
they began their tasks were about of the adult's. Thence they passed to
"half," "three-quarter" and "full" hands. Olmsted said:[7]
"Until the Negro is big enough for his labor to be plainly
profitable to his master he has no training to application or
method, but only to idleness and carelessness. Before children
arrive at a working age they hardly come under the notice of their
owner.... The only whipping of slaves I have seen in Virginia has
been of these wild, lazy children, as they are being broke in to
work. They cannot be depended upon a minute out of sight. You will
see how difficult it would be if it were attempted to eradicate the
indolent, careless, incogitant habits so formed in youth. But it is
not systematically attempted, and the influences that continue to
act upon a slave in the same direction, cultivating every quality
at variance with industry, precision, forethought and providence,
are innumerable."
In many places the field hands were given set tasks to do each day, and
they were then allowed to take their own time and stop when the task was
completed. In Georgia and South Carolina the following is cited by
Olmsted as tasks for a day:[7]
"In making drains in light clean meadow land each man or woman of
the full hands is required to dig one thousand cubic feet; in swamp
land that is being prepared for rice culture, where there are not
many stumps, the task for a ditcher is five hundred feet; while in
a very strong cypress swamp, only two hundred feet is required; in
hoeing rice, a certain number of rows equal to one-half or
two-thirds of an acre, according to the condition of the land; in
sowing rice (strewing in drills), two acres; in reaping rice (if it
stands well), three-quarters of an acre, or, sometimes a gang will
be required to reap, tie in sheaves, and carry to the stack yard
the produce of a certain area commonly equal to one-fourth the
number of acres that there are hands working together; hoeing
cotton, corn or potatoes, one-half to one acre; threshing, five to
six hundred sheaves. In plowing rice land (light, clean, mellow
soil), with a yoke of oxen, one acre a day, including the ground
lost in and near the drains, the oxen being changed at noon. A
cooper also, for instance, is required to make barrels at the rate
of eighteen a week; drawing staves, 500 a day; hoop-poles, 120;
squaring timber, 100 feet; laying worm fence, 50 panels per day;
post and rail fence, posts set two and a half to three feet deep,
nine feet apart, nine or ten panels per hand. In getting fuel from
the woods (pine to be cut and split), one cord is the task for a
day. In 'mauling rails,' the taskman selecting the trees (pine)
that he judges will split easiest, 100 a day, ends not sharpened.
"In allotting the tasks the drivers are expected to put the weaker
hands where, if there is any choice in the appearance of the
ground, as where certain rows in hoeing corn would be less weedy
than others, they will be favored.
"These tasks would certainly not be considered excessively hard by
a northern laborer, and, in point of fact, the more industrious and
active hands finish them often by two o'clock. I saw one or two
leaving the field soon after one o'clock, several about two, and
between three and four I met a dozen women and several men coming
to their cabins, having finished their day's work.... If, after a
hard day's labor he (the driver) sees that the gang has been
overtasked, owing to a miscalculation of the difficulty of the
work, he may excuse the completion of the tasks, but he is not
allowed to extend them."
In other places the work was not laid out in tasks, but it is safe to
say that, judging from all reports and all probabilities, the amount of
work done did not equal that of the free labor of the North, then or
now. If it had the commercial supremacy of the South would have been
longer maintained.
Some things regarding the agricultural work at once become prominent.
All work was done under the immediate eye of the task master. Thus there
was little occasion for the development of any sense of individual
responsibility for the work. As a rule the methods adopted were crude.
Little machinery was used, and that of the simplest. Hoes, heavy and
clumsy, were the common tools. Within a year I have seen grass being
mowed with hoes preparatory to putting the ground in cultivation. Even
today the Negro has to be trained to use the light, sharp hoe of the
North. Corn, cotton and, in a few districts, rice or tobacco were the
staple crops, although each plantation raised its own fruit and
vegetables, and about the cabins in the quarters were little plots for
gardens. The land was cultivated for a time, then abandoned for new,
while in most places little attention was paid to rotation of crops or
to fertilizers. The result was that large sections of the South had been
seriously injured before the war. As some one has said:
"The destruction of the soils by the methods of cultivation prior
to the war was worse than the ravages of the war. The _post bellum_
farmer received as an inheritance large areas of wornout and
generally unproductive soils."
Yet all things were the master's. A failure of the crop meant little
hunger to the black. Refusal to work could but bring bodily punishment,
for the master was seldom of the kind who would take life--a live Negro
was worth a good deal more than a dead one. Clothing and shelter were
provided, and care in sickness. The master must always furnish tools,
land and seed, and see to it that the ground was cultivated. There was
thus little necessity for the Negro to care for the morrow, and his
African training had not taught him to borrow trouble. Thus neither
Africa nor America had trained the Negro to independent, continuous
labor apart from the eye of the overseer. The requirements as to skill
were low. The average man learned little of the mysteries of fruit
growing, truck farming and all the economies which make diversified
agriculture profitable.
Freedom came, a second sharp break with the past. There is now no one
who is responsible for food and clothing. For a time all is in
confusion. The war had wiped out the capital of the country. The whites
were land poor, the Negroes landless. It so happened that at this time
the price of cotton was high. The Negro knew more about cotton than any
other crop. _Raise cotton_ became the order of the day. The money
lenders would lend money on cotton, even in advance, for it had a
certain and sure ready sale. Thus developed the crop-lien system which
in essence consists in taking a mortgage on crops yet to be raised. The
system existed among the white planters for many years before the war.
A certain amount of food and clothing was advanced to the Negro family
until the crop could be harvested, when the money value of the goods
received was returned with interest. Perhaps nothing which concerns the
Negro has been the subject of more hostile criticism than this crop-lien
system. That it is easily abused when the man on one side is a shrewd
and cunning sharpster and the borrower an illiterate and trusting Negro
is beyond doubt. That in thousands of cases advantage has been taken of
this fact to wrest from the Negro at the end of the year all that he had
is not to be questioned. Certainly a system which makes it possible is
open to criticism. It should not be forgotten, however, that the system
grew out of the needs of the time and served a useful purpose when
honestly administered, even as it does today. No money could be gotten
with land as security, and even today the land owner often sees his
merchant with far less capital get money from the bank which has refused
his security. The system has enabled a poor man without tools and work
animals without food to get a start and be provided with a modicum of
necessities until the crops were harvested. Thousands have become more
or less independent who started in this way. The evil influences of the
system, for none would consider it ideal, have probably been that it has
made unnecessary any saving on the part of the Negro, who feels sure
that he can receive his advances and who cares little for the fact that
some day he must pay a big interest on what he receives. Secondly, this
system has hindered the development of diversified farming, which today
is one of the greatest needs of the South. The advances have been
conditioned upon the planting and cultivating a given amount of cotton.
During recent years no other staple has so fallen in price, and the
result has been hard on the farmers. All else has faded into
insignificance before the necessity of raising cotton. The result on the
fertility of the soil is also evident. Luckily cotton makes light
demands on the land, but the thin soil of many districts has been unable
to stand even the light demands. Guano came just in time and the later
commercial fertilizers have postponed the evil day. The development of
the cotton mills has also served to give a local market, which has
stimulated the production of cotton. It seems rather evident, however,
that the increasing development of western lands will put a heavier
burden upon the Atlantic slope. This, of course, will not affect the
culture of sea-island cotton, which is grown in only a limited area. To
meet this handicap a more diversified agriculture must gradually
supplant in some way the present over-attention to cotton. In early days
Virginia raised much cotton, now it stands towards the bottom of the
cotton states. Perhaps it is safe to say that Virginia land has been as
much injured by the more exhaustive crop, tobacco, as the other states
by cotton. Large areas have been allowed to go back to the woods and
local conditions have greatly changed. How this diversification is to be
brought about for the Negro is one of the most important questions.
Recent years have witnessed an enormous development of truck farming,
but in this the Negro has borne little part. This intensive farming
requires a knowledge of soil and of plant life, coupled with much
ability in marketing wares, which the average Negro does not possess.
Nor has he taken any great part in the fruit industry, which is steadily
growing. The question to which all this leads may be stated as follows.
To what extent is the Negro taking advantage of the opportunities he now
has on the farm? What is his present situation?