THE TILLERS OF THE GROUND
There is held at the Tuskegee Institute every year a remarkable
conference of Negro workers, mostly farmers, who are to work out their
salvation by the sweat of their brows in tilling the soil of the South.
The purpose of these gatherings is severely practical--to encourage
those who have not had the advantages of training and instruction,
and to give them a chance to learn from the success of others as
handicapped as they what are their own possibilities. As I have said
many times, it is my conviction that the great body of the Negro
population must live in the future as they have done in the past, by
the cultivation of the soil, and the most hopeful service now to be
done is to enable the race to follow agriculture with intelligence and
diligence.
I have just finished reading a little pamphlet written by Mr. George
W. Carver, Director of the Agricultural Department at Tuskegee, giving
the results of some of his experiments in raising sweet potatoes for
one year. This coloured man has shown in plain, simple language, based
on scientific principles, how he has raised two hundred and sixty-six
bushels of sweet potatoes on a single acre of common land, and made
a net profit of one hundred and twenty-one dollars. The average yield
of sweet potatoes to the acre, in the part of the South where this
experiment was tried, is thirty-seven bushels per acre. This coloured
man is now preparing to make this same land produce five hundred
bushels of potatoes.
I have watched this experiment with a great deal of pleasure. The
deep interest shown by the neighbouring white farmers has been most
gratifying. I do not believe that a single white farmer who visited the
field to see the unusual yield ever thought of having any prejudice or
feeling against this coloured man because his education had enabled
him to make a marked success of raising sweet potatoes. There were, on
the other hand, many evidences of respect for this coloured man and of
gratitude for the information which he had furnished.
If we had a hundred such coloured men in each county in the South,
who could make their education felt in meeting the world's needs,
there would be no race problem. But in order to get such men, those
interested in the education of the Negro must begin to look facts and
conditions in the face. Too great a gap has been left between the
Negro's real condition and the position for which we have tried to
fit him through the medium of our text-books. We have overlooked in
many cases the fact that long years of experience and discipline are
necessary for any race before it can get the greatest amount of good
out of the text-books. Much that the Negro has studied presupposes
conditions that do not, for him, exist.
The weak point in the past has been that no attempt has been made to
bridge the gap between the Negro's educated brain and his opportunity
for supplying the wants of an awakened mind. There has been almost no
thought of connecting the educated brain with the educated hand. It
is almost a crime to take young men from the farm, or from farming
districts, and educate them, as is too often done, in everything except
agriculture, the one subject with which they should be most familiar.
The result is that the young man, instead of being educated to love
agriculture, is educated out of sympathy with it; and instead of
returning to his father's farm after leaving college, to show him how
to produce more with less labour, the young man is often tempted to go
into the city or town to live by his wits.
The purpose of the Tuskegee Negro Conference is to help the farmers who
are too old, or too bound down by their responsibilities, to attend
schools or institutes; to do for them, in a small way, what Tuskegee
and other agencies seek to do for the younger generation. Coloured men
and women make long and expensive journeys to be present, coming from
all the Southern and several of the Northern states. They have found
that their money is not wasted, for they learn much by seeing what
has been done at the school, from the advice of experts, but more
especially by the exchange of opinions and by comparing experiences
in their own field of work. These meetings are not for whining or
complaints. Their keynote is hopeful courage. To look up and not down,
forward and not backward, to be cheerful and mutually helpful, is the
golden rule of the conference.
It was decided from the first to confine the proceedings to matters
which the race had closely within its own control, and to positive,
aggressive effort, rather than to mere negative criticisms and
recitations of wrongs. I wanted these coloured farmers and their wives
to consult about the methods and means of securing homes, of freeing
themselves from debt, of encouraging intelligent production, of paying
their taxes, of cultivating habits of thrift, honesty and virtue, of
building school-houses, and securing education and high Christian
character, of cementing the friendships between the races.
In these conventions, as in other ways, we have tried to keep alive the
feeling of hope and encouragement. We have seen darker days than these,
and no race that is patient, long-suffering, industrious, economical,
and virtuous, no race that is persistent in efforts that make for
progress, no race that cultivates a spirit of good-will toward all
mankind, is left without reward.
The Farmers' Conference each year adopts a declaration of principles,
which sum up its objects in such words as these:
"Our object shall be to promote the moral, material, and educational
progress of this entire community. Believing, as we do, that we are our
own worst enemies, we pledge, here and now, from this time forth, to
use every effort--
"To abolish and do away with the mortgage system just as rapidly as
possible.
"To raise our food supplies, such as corn, potatoes, syrup, pease,
hogs, chickens, etc., at home rather than to go in debt for them at the
store.
"To stop throwing away our time and money on Saturdays by standing
around towns, drinking and disgracing ourselves in many other ways.
"To oppose, at all times, the excursion and camp-meeting, and to
try earnestly to secure better schools, better teachers, and better
preachers.
"To try to buy homes, to urge upon all Negroes the necessity of owning
homes and farms, and not only to own them, but to beautify and improve
them.
"Since the greater number of us are engaged in agriculture, we urge the
importance of stock and poultry raising, the teaching of agriculture
in the country schools, the thorough cultivation of a small acreage,
rather than the poor cultivation of a large one, attention to farm-work
in winter, and getting rid of the habit of living in one-room houses.
"We urge more protection to life and property, better homes for
tenants, and that home life in the country be made more attractive, all
this with the view of keeping such great numbers of our people out of
the large cities.
"In connection with the better schools and churches, we emphasise the
need of careful attention to the morals of our ministers and teachers,
and all others acting in the capacity of leaders.
"Prosperity and peace are dependent upon friendly relations between the
races, and to this end we urge a spirit of manly forbearance and mutual
interest."
What these conferences are doing, and what sort of people are coming
to them every year, may be gathered from some of their experiences as
they have told them themselves during their visit to Tuskegee. Some of
the best things are said by men and women who have succeeded in working
their way up from abject poverty to comfortable independence. There
is no better antidote for the foolish talk so often heard about the
inevitable shiftlessness of the Negro race than these short and pithy
narratives of sacrifice, struggle and achievement. A Florida man said
that he had six dollars when he married. He now owns two hundred acres
and a home of seven rooms. "I did without most everything until I got
it paid for," he explained. He has fifty-seven head of cattle, six work
horses, and five colts, all raised by himself. Is it dangerous to
give the ballot to that kind of a citizen? Will he be apt to use it to
promote extravagant taxation?
An Alabama farmer said:
"I own sixty-seven acres of land. I got it by working hard and living
close. I did not eat at any big tables. I often lived on bread and
milk. I have five rooms to my house. I started with one, and that was
made of logs. I add a room every year. I was lucky in marrying a woman
whose father gave her a cow. I ain't got no fine clock or organ. I did
once own a buggy, but it was a shabby one, and now we ride in a wagon,
or I go horse-back on a horse I raised that is worth two hundred and
fifty dollars. I have seven children in school."
"I started plowing with my pants rolled up and barefoot," said a
Georgia man. "I saved five hundred dollars and bought a home in Albany,
Georgia. I bought two hundred acres for seven dollars an acre, and paid
for it in three years. I made that pay for two hundred acres more.
After awhile I bought thirteen hundred acres. I live on it, and it is
all paid for. I have twenty-five buildings and they all came out of my
pocketbook. That land is now worth twenty-five dollars an acre. For a
distance of four or five miles from my settlement, there has not been
a man in the chain-gang for years. I work forty-seven head of mules.
The only way we will ever be a race is by getting homes and living a
virtuous life. I don't give mortgages. I take mortgages on black and
white. I have put the first bale of cotton on the market in Georgia
every year for eight years."
A widow from Alabama told her story, which shows among other things how
a dog may be useful:
"There are three in my family, and I am the boss. I save about a
hundred dollars a year. I give no mortgages. I plant everything that
a farmer can plant. I raise my own syrup, meat, pease, corn, and
everything we need to eat. I have three cows. You have got to go low
down to get up high. I traded a little puppy with my brother for a
pig. From this one pig I raised eight pigs, and for seven years I have
not bought a pound of meat. I am living on the strength of that little
puppy yet. I own forty acres, and sometimes rent more land."
A coloured minister from Alabama said that he farmed as well as
preached. He was a renter for seven years. In nine years he paid for
four hundred acres, and now owns ten hundred and fifteen acres. He
raises horses, cows, mules, and hogs and has fifty persons dependent
upon him. He owns the land where he used to live as a renter, and lives
in the house of the man from whom he rented. There are few white people
in his neighbourhood. Most of the coloured people own their own homes,
and they have lengthened the annual school term two months at their own
expense. This man said that, when he first bought land, he split rails
to fence it during the day and carried them around at night, and his
wife built the fence.
A South Carolinian, who was never before so far from home, said that he
was a slave for twenty years. "I used to work six days for my master,
and Sunday for myself," he said. "God introduced ten commandments,
but our people have added another, 'Thou shalt not work Saturdays
or Sundays, either.' I stick to the Ten Commandments and put in six
days a week, and in that way have bought three hundred acres and paid
for it. I have a large house for my own family of ten, and fourteen
other buildings on the place, six of them rented. No man is a farmer
excepting the man who lives on the produce of his farm."
A visitor from Louisiana told how he had borrowed two hundred and fifty
dollars from his father and bought twenty-five acres of land in 1877.
He used to begin work at four o'clock in the morning. For a year his
wife ground all their meal, three ears at a time, in a small hand-mill.
Now he owns three hundred acres of sugar land, worth a hundred dollars
an acre, and has twenty-seven white and forty-eight coloured people
working for him.
"I would like to set a big table for you," said one of these farmers
whom I visited at his home, "but, professor, you-all is teachin' us
to 'conermise an' save, an' dats what I'se tryin' to do." When you
remember how anxious the good farmers and their wives are always to set
a good table for the visiting "professors" and "revrums," this man had
a good deal of courage in departing from old customs.
I say to the farmers: "If feeding the 'brutherins' is a strain on you,
feed no more of them. Cut down on all expenses that can be trimmed
without injury to yourself."
One woman from Bullock County, Alabama, carried away the true spirit
of the conference. Not long ago, one of our agents saw a deed to a
valuable piece of farm land, bought with money she had saved by selling
cows. She said that she had never thought of any such plan until she
had visited the Farmers' Conference and heard others tell how they had
bought land. An unusual feature of this case was that the woman did
not live in the town in which she had invested her money. She had made
herself interested enough to seek a chance to invest her earnings in
the purchase of property several miles from her home settlement. She
said that it required a mighty sight of will-power to keep from buying
fine clothes with the money, but she was determined to get hold of some
land, and she did it without any assistance from her husband.
"Yes, of course I'll be at the next Negro Conference," wrote another
farmer, "I want you to give me a chance to talk, too. I want to show
Mr. Washington a turnip I raised in my own garden, and have been
saving for the Conference, and I want to tell him how much I have
raised and eaten out of my own garden, and how much I have saved as the
result of these teachings at the annual meetings."
Another wrote recently:
"I have to buy very little to eat, for I raise with one horse all I
want to eat, and a little more besides. Last year I raised nine bales
of cotton, plenty of corn, sugar cane, pease, and potatoes, and many
other things. Besides this, my wife raised twenty hogs, and a yard full
of chickens, geese and turkeys. The only way for the farmer to get out
of debt and keep out of debt is to buy a home, raise what he eats, and
pay at once for what he gets out of the store."
A pilgrim from Georgia thus expressed himself:
"I came here to get my keg full of good news and glad tidings to carry
back to Georgia, and I have got it. I began working for myself when I
was eighteen years old. My father and mother died when I was a child.
I first worked for eight dollars and fifty cents a month and my board,
and cleared eighty-three dollars the first year. Then I worked on
shares for a while, then I bought a mule on credit, using my money to
support myself while raising a crop. Now I own fifteen hundred acres
of land, all paid for. I have six rooms in my house. I don't give any
mortgages. I have twenty-three plows, and a bank account. I haul on my
drays about ten thousand bales of cotton every year for the planters
in my county. I have another patch of fifty acres near Fort Gaines on
which there is a six-room house."
"We come here to learn wisdom and knowledge," said a man from Macon
County, Alabama. "I had a part of the slavery time, and I've had all of
the freedom time. When I was in my eighteenth year I wanted to marry
the worst way. I did it somehow, and then we tried every plan to get
ahead in the world. I worked Sunday as well as Monday. I even hitched
myself to the plow, and my wife plowed me. Now I have got horses,
mules, corn, and plenty of everything to do me, but I have not got any
home. Next year when I come here I am going to own a place of my own
instead of renting it."
Scores of similar illustrations could be quoted to show that the Negro
farmer is fighting his own battles, and that in his annual visits to
Tuskegee he preaches, both to the students and to his fellow toilers,
the gospel of work with the hands as the pathway to freedom. The kind
of practical advice distributed among these farmers is illustrated in
the following specimen of the leaflets issued by our "Bureau of Nature
Study for Schools." This one on Hints and Suggestions for Farmers has
to do with the ever-vital question of "Mortgage Lifting":
"Farmers all over the Cotton Belt are now finishing their plans for the
growing of this year's crop. All sorts of financial plans have been
made. Perhaps the most common among our farmers is the credit plan or
crop mortgage. In this the farmer binds himself and family to make a
crop, usually cotton, for any one who will 'advance' him what he must
buy while growing the crop. He agrees to pay interest, ranging from ten
to thirty-five per cent. on the cost of the things furnished. Thus a
pair of shoes which would sell for $1.50 in cash would cost about $2
in the fall. If allowed to run until the next Fall, it would cost him
about $2.50. If allowed to run three years, it would take $3.15 to pay
for a $1.50 pair of shoes. If carried the fourth year, it would take
$4, and one year more would call for $5.
"Too many farmers are paying $5 for shoes which would have cost them
only $1.50 if they had managed their business properly. Too many times
the $5 shoes are never paid for, leaving an unkindly feeling between
the 'advancer' and the one 'advanced,' causing the landlord and tenant,
and very often the merchant, to suffer.
"Yet the farmer must have clothing. He must have plows, hoes, wagons,
etc. No man who tills the soil should have to suffer for something to
eat. Perhaps no one will question the farmer's right to make the crop
mortgage. He must and ought to have plenty of good, wholesome food to
make it possible for him to do his work well. But for his own good, the
good of his family, for the good of the landlord, and the community in
which he lives, we do dispute his right to manage business as many of
our farmers do. He should not make a mortgage he cannot easily lift.
"If it requires $150 to supply a farmer for a season, at the end of
that season his debt will be about $180--an extra $30, the average
value of a bale of cotton, to do a credit business. If it requires $75
to carry him, he will owe about $90, costing him half a bale of cotton
to do a credit business. Now, do you note that the smaller the amount
borrowed, the smaller the amount of interest, and the easier it becomes
for the farmer to lift the whole thing? Don't load so heavily. Put two
thousand pounds on a thousand-pound wagon and see what becomes of you,
your load, and your wagon. One man tries by main strength to lift a
large load. He fails and gives up in despair. Another man gets a long
pole, or lever, and with the greatest ease raises and places the load
where it is wanted. The first uses only muscle, while the last mixes
muscle with brains.
"Could we not say the same thing of the unsuccessful and the successful
mortgage lifter? If you will use your head and go at that debt in the
right way, you will be surprised with what great ease you can get it
out of the way. Well, how can this be done, one man asks? What would
you advise? A wise man listens to advice. If he thinks it good, he will
try to follow it. The farmer who is in debt must--
"Not make bad bargains. He must work all day and sometimes part of
the night, and buy only what he is compelled to have. He should raise
everything he eats and a little more, and then cultivate as much cotton
as he can.
"Some of the farmers buy shoddy goods at fair prices. They allow the
boys and girls to buy cheap jewelry. They buy a sewing machine on
credit for fifty or sixty dollars, and when they get it paid for, if
they ever do, it has cost about a hundred dollars. They pay ten and
fifteen dollars for a washstand and bureau when an upholstered box
would do for the present. The industrious farmer works from sunrise to
sunset every day in the week. If there is some light work he can do by
putting in two or three hours during the long winter nights, you find
him at it. It takes this to lift the mortgage.
"The sensible farmer will not buy five hundred pounds of bacon if there
is any way to get along with two hundred and fifty. If he must buy
it on credit, he will eat butter, drink milk, raise and eat eggs and
chickens, kill a young beef when he can, and dry or pickle it, so as to
supply his wants from his own produce as long as possible.
"The farmer who wants to get out of debt will have large patches of
greens, his garden will have something growing in it the year round.
His table will be loaded with wild fruits, such as blackberries,
huckleberries, plums, etc. His potatoes will keep him from buying so
much corn meal and flour on credit. He plans to raise more than enough
corn, oats, and wheat to do him another year. Then he makes that cotton
crop count. He gathers every lock of it as fast as it opens and tries
to sell it for every cent it is worth. He walks up like a man and pays
every cent he owes when it falls due. Then his neighbours, both white
and coloured, learn to respect him because he is an honest man, he owes
nobody, his store-house, smoke-house, and barn are loaded with fruits,
and home-made produce. He is a happy man because that mortgage is
lifted."