REORGANIZATION OF THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM
Break-up of the Ante-bellum System
The cotton planter of the South, the master of many negro slaves,
organized a very efficient slave labor system. Each plantation was an
industrial community almost independent of the outside world; the division
of labor was minute, each servant being assigned a task suited to his or
her strength and training. Nothing but the most skilful management could
save a planter from ruin, for, though the labor was efficient, it was very
costly. The value of an overseer was judged by the general condition,
health, appearance, and manners of the slaves; the amount of work done
with the least punishment; the condition of stock, buildings, and
plantation; and the size of the crops. All supplies were raised on the
plantation,--corn, bacon, beef, and other food-stuffs; farm implements and
harness were made and repaired by the skilled negroes in rainy weather
when no outdoor work could be done; clothes were cut out in the "big
house" and made by the negro women under the direction of the mistress.
The skilled laborers were blacks. Work was usually done by tasks, and
industrious negroes were able to complete their daily allotment and have
three or four hours a day to work in their own gardens and "patches." They
often earned money at odd jobs, and the church records show that they
contributed regularly. Negro children were trained in the arts of industry
and in sobriety by elderly negroes of good judgment and firm character,
usually women.[2028] Children too young to work were cared for by a
competent mammy in the plantation nursery while their parents were in the
fields.
In the Black Belt there was little hiring of extra labor and less renting
of land. Except on the borders, nearly all whites were of the planting
class. Their greater wealth had enabled them to outbid the average farmer
and secure the rich lands of the black prairies, cane-brakes, and river
bottoms. The small farmer who secured a foothold in the Black Belt would
find himself in a situation not altogether pleasant, and, selling out to
the nearest planter, would go to poorer and cheaper land in the hills and
pine woods, where most of the people were white.
In the Black Belt cotton was largely a surplus money crop, and once the
labor was paid for, the planter was a very rich man.[2029] In the white
counties of the cotton states about the same crops were raised as in the
Black Belt, but the land was less fertile and the methods of cultivation
less skilful. In the richer parts of these white counties there was
something of the plantation system with some negro labor. But slavery
gradually drove white labor to the hill and mountain country, the sand and
pine barrens. No matter how poor a white man was, he was excessively
independent in spirit and wanted to work only his own farm. This will
account for the lack of renters and hired white laborers in black or in
white districts, and also for the fact that the less fertile land was
taken up by the whites who desired to be their own employers. Land was
cheap, and any man could purchase it. There was some renting of land in
the white counties, and the form it took was that now known as "third and
fourth."[2030] It was then called "shares." There was little or no tenancy
"on halves" or "standing rent." But the average farmer worked his own
land, often with the help of from three to ten slaves.
On the borders of the Black Belt in Alabama dwelt a peculiar class called
"squatters." They settled down with or without permission on lots of poor
and waste land, built cabins, cleared "patches," and made a precarious
living by their little crops, by working as carpenters, blacksmiths, etc.
Some bought small lots of land on long-time payments and never paid for
them, but simply stayed where they were. In the edge of the Black Belt in
the busy season were found numbers of white hired men working alongside of
negro slaves,[2031] for there was no prejudice against manual labor, that
is, no more than anywhere else in the world.[2032]
As soon as the war was over the first concern of the returning soldiers
was to obtain food to relieve present wants and to secure supplies to last
until a crop could be made. In the white counties of the state the
situation was much worse than in the Black Belt. The soil of the white
counties was less fertile; the people were not wealthy before the war, and
during the war they had suffered from the depredations of the enemy and
from the operation of the tax-in-kind, which bore heavily upon them when
they had nothing to spare. The white men went to the war and there were
only women, children, and old men to work the fields. The heaviest losses
among the Alabama Confederate troops were from the ranks of the white
county soldiers. In these districts there was destitution after the first
year of the war, and after 1862 from one-fourth to one-half of the
soldiers' families received aid from the state. The bountiful Black Belt
furnished enough for all, but transportation facilities were lacking. At
the close of hostilities the condition of the people in the poorer regions
was pitiable. Stock, fences, barns, and in many cases dwellings had
disappeared; the fields were grown up in weeds; and no supplies were
available. How the people managed to live was a mystery. Some walked
twenty miles to get food, and there were cases of starvation. No seeds and
no farm implements were to be had. The best work of the Freedmen's Bureau
was done in relieving these people from want until they could make a crop.
The Black Belt was the richest as well as the least exposed section of the
state and fared well until the end of the war. The laborers were negroes,
and these worked as well in war time as in peace. Immense food crops were
made in 1863 and 1864, and there was no suffering among whites or blacks.
Until 1865 there was no loss from Federal invasion, but with the spring of
1865 misfortune came. Four large armies marched through the central
portions of the state, burning, destroying, and confiscating. In June,
1865, the Black Belt was in almost as bad condition as the white counties.
All buildings in the track of the armies had disappeared; the stores of
provisions were confiscated; gin-houses and mills were burned; cattle and
horses and mules were carried away; and nothing much was left except the
negroes and the fertile land. The returning planter, like the farmer,
found his agricultural implements worn out and broken, and in all the land
there was no money to purchase the necessaries of life. But in the
portions of the black counties untouched by the armies there were supplies
sufficient to last the people for a few months. A few fortunate
individuals had cotton, which was now bringing fabulous prices, and it was
the high price received for the few bales not confiscated by the
government that saved the Black Belt from suffering as did the other
counties.
Neither master nor slave knew exactly how to begin anew, and for a while
things simply drifted. Now that the question of slavery was settled, many
of the former masters felt a great relief from responsibility, though for
their former slaves they felt a profound pity. The majority of them had no
faith in free negro labor, yet all were willing to give it a trial, and a
few of the more strenuous ones said that the energy and strength of the
white man that had made the savage negro an efficient laborer could make
the free negro work fairly well; and if the free negro would work, they
were willing to admit that the change might be beneficial to both races.
During the spring and summer and fall the masters came straggling home,
and were met by friendly servants who gave them cordial welcome. Each one
called up his servants and told them that they were free; and that they
might stay with him and work for wages, or find other homes. Except in the
vicinity of the towns and army posts the negroes usually chose to stay and
work; and in the remote districts of the Black Belt affairs were little
changed for several weeks after the surrender, which there hardly caused a
ripple on the surface of society. Life and work went on as before. The
staid negro coachmen sat upon their boxes on Sunday as of old; the field
hands went regularly about their appointed tasks. Labor was cheerful, and
the negroes went singing to the fields. "The negro knew no Appomattox. The
Revolution sat lightly,--save in the presence of vacant seats at home and
silent graves in the churchyard, in the memorials of destructive raids, in
the wonder on the faces of a people once free, now ruled, where ruled at
all, by a Bureau agent." Here it was that the master race believed that
after all freedom of the negro might be well.[2033] In other sections,
where the negro was more exposed to outside influences, people were not
hopeful. The common opinion was that with free negro labor cotton could
not be cultivated with success. The northerner often thought that it was a
crop made by forced labor and that no freeman would willingly perform such
labor; the southerner believed that the negro would neglect the crop too
much when not under strict supervision. Yet later years have shown that
free white labor is most successful in the cultivation of cotton because
of the care the whites expend upon their farms; while cotton is the only
crop that the free negro has cultivated with any degree of success,
because some kind of a crop can be made by the most careless cultivation.
At first no one knew just how to work the free negro; innumerable plans
were formed and many were tried. The old patriarchal relations were
preserved as far as possible. Truman,[2034] who made a long stay in
Alabama, reported that in most cases there was a genuine attachment
between masters and negroes; that the masters were the best friends the
negroes had; and that, though they regarded the blacks with much
commiseration, they were inclined to encourage them to collect around the
big house on the old slavery terms, giving food, clothes, quarters,
medical attendance, and a little pay.[2035] At that time no one could
understand the freedom of the negro.[2036] As one old master expressed it,
he saw no "free negroes"[2037] until the fall of 1865, when the Bureau
began to influence the blacks. But with the extension of the Bureau and
the spread of army posts, the negroes became idle, neglected the crops
that had been planted in the spring, moved from their old homes and went
to town to the Bureau, or went wandering about the country. The house
servants and the artisans, who were the best and most intelligent of the
negroes, also began to go to the towns. Negro women desiring to be as
white ladies, refused to work in the fields, to cook, to wash, or to
perform other menial duties. It was years before this "freedom" prejudice
of the negro women against domestic service died out.[2038] The negro
would work one or two days in the week, go to town two days, and wander
about the rest of the time. Under such conditions there was no hope of
continuing the old patriarchal system, and new plans, modelled on what
they had heard of free labor, were tried by the planters. In the white
counties the ex-soldiers went to work as before the war, but they had come
home from the army too late to plant full crops, and few had supplies
enough to last until the crops should be gathered. In most of the white
counties the negroes were so few as to escape the serious attention of the
Bureau, and consequently they worked fairly well at what they could get to
do.[2039]
The first work of the Bureau was to break up the labor system that had
been partially constructed, and to endeavor to establish a new system
based on the northern free labor system and the old slave-hiring system
with the addition of a good deal of pure theory. The Bureau was to act as
a labor clearing-house; it was to have entire control of labor; contracts
must be written in accordance with the minute regulations of the Bureau,
and must be registered by the agent, who charged large fees.[2040]
The result of these regulations was to destroy industry where an alien
Bureau agent was stationed, for the planters could not afford to have
their land worked on such terms. In some of the counties, where the native
magistrates served as Bureau agents, no attention was paid to the rules of
the Bureau, and the people floundered along, trying to develop a workable
basis of existence. In the districts infested by the Bureau agents the
negroes had fantastic notions of what freedom meant. On one plantation
they demanded that the plantation bell be no longer rung to summon the
hands to and from work, because it was too much like slavery.[2041] In
various places they refused to work and congregated about the Bureau
offices, awaiting the expected division of property, when they would get
the "forty acres and one old gray mule." When wages were paid they
believed that each should receive the same amount, whether his labor had
been good or bad, whether the laborer was present or absent, sick or well.
In one instance a planter was paying his men in corn according to the time
each had worked. The negroes objected and got an order from the Bureau
agent that the division should be made equally. The planter read the order
(which the negroes could not read), and at once directed the division as
before. The negroes, thinking that the Bureau had so ordered, were
satisfied. In the cane-brake region the agents were afraid of the great
planters and did not interfere with the negroes except to organize them
into Union Leagues; but elsewhere in the Black Belt the planter could not
afford to hire negroes on the terms fixed by the Bureau.[2042]
Northern and Foreign Immigration
With the break-up of the slave system the planter found himself with much
more land than he knew what to do with. He could get no reliable labor, he
had no cash capital, so in many cases he offered his best lands for sale
at low prices. The planters wanted to attract northern and foreign
immigration and capital into the country; the cotton planter sought for a
northern partner who could furnish the capital. Owing to the almost
religious regard of the negro for his northern deliverers, many white
landlords thought that northern men, especially former soldiers, might be
better able than southern men to control negro labor. General Swayne, the
head of the Bureau, said that the negroes had more confidence in a
"bluecoat" than in a native, and that among the larger planters northern
men as partners or overseers were in great demand.[2043]
For a short time after the close of the war northern men in considerable
numbers planned to go into the business of cotton raising. DeBow[2044]
gives a description of the would-be cotton planters who came from the
North to show the southern people how to raise cotton with free negro
labor. They had note-books and guide-books full of close and exact tables
of costs and profits, and from them figured out vast returns. They
acknowledged that the negro might not work for the southern man, but they
were sure that he would work for them. They were very self-confident, and
would listen to no advice from experienced planters, whom they laughed at
as old fogies, but from their note-books and tables they gave one another
much information about the new machinery useful in cotton culture, about
rules for cultivation, how to control labor, etc. They estimated that each
laborer's family would make $1000 clear gain each year. DeBow would not
say they were wrong, but he said that he thought that they should hasten a
little more slowly. Northern energy and capitol flowed in; plantations
were bought, and the various industries of plantation life started; and
mills and factories were established. Because of the paralyzed condition
of industry the southern people welcomed these enterprises, but they were
very sceptical of their final success. The northern settler had confidence
in the negro and gave him unlimited credit or supplies; consequently, in a
few years the former was financially ruined and had to turn his attention
to politics, and to exploiting the negro in that field in order to make a
living.[2045] Both as employer and as manager the northern men failed to
control negro labor. They expected the negro to be the equal of the Yankee
white. The negroes themselves were disgusted with northern employers.
Truman reported, after an experience of one season, that "it is the almost
universal testimony of the negroes themselves, who have been under the
supervision of both classes,--and I have talked with many with a view to
this point,--that they prefer to labor for a southern employer."[2046]
Northern capital came in after the war, but northern labor did not, though
the planters offered every inducement. Land was offered to white
purchasers at ridiculously low rates, but the northern white laborer did
not come. He was afraid of the South with its planters and negroes. The
poorer classes of native whites, however, profited by the low prices and
secured a foothold on the better lands. So general was the unbelief in the
value of the free negro as a laborer, especially in the Bureau districts,
and so signally had all inducements failed to bring native white laborers
from the North, that determined efforts were made to obtain white labor
from abroad. Immigration societies were formed with officers in the state
and headquarters in the northern cities. These societies undertook to send
to the South laboring people, principally German, in families at so much
per head. The planter turned with hope to white labor, of the superiority
of which he had so long been hearing, and he wished very much to give it a
trial. The advertisements in the newspapers read much like the old slave
advertisements: so many head of healthy, industrious Germans of good
character delivered f.o.b. New York, at so much per head. One of the white
labor agencies in Alabama undertook to furnish "immigrants of any nativity
and in any quantity" to take the place of negroes. Children were priced at
the rate of $50 a year; women, $100; men, $150,--they themselves providing
board and clothes. One of every six Germans was warranted to speak
English.[2047] Most of these agencies were frauds and only wanted an
advance payment on a car load of Germans who did not exist. In a few
instances some laborers were actually shipped in; but they at once
demanded an advance of pay, and then deserted. Like the bounty jumpers,
they played the game time and time again. The influence of the Radical
press of the North was also used to discourage emigration to the
South;[2048] consequently white immigration into the state did not amount
to anything,[2049] and the Black Belt received no help from the North or
from abroad, and had to fall back upon the free negro.
In the white counties there had been little hope or desire for alien
immigration. The people and the country were so desperately poor that the
stranger would never think of settling there. Many of the whites in
moderate circumstances, living near the Black Belt, took advantage of the
low price of rich lands, and acquired small farms in the prairies, but
there was no influx of white labor to the Black Belt from the white
counties.[2050] Nearly every man, woman, and child in the white districts
had to go to work to earn a living. Many persons--lawyers, public men,
teachers, ministers, physicians, merchants, overseers, managers, and even
women--who had never before worked in the fields or at manual occupations,
were now forced to do so because of losses of property, or because they
could not live by their former occupations.[2051]
While the number of white laborers had increased somewhat, negro labor had
decreased. Several thousand negro men had gone with the armies; for
various reasons thousands had drifted to the towns, where large numbers
died in 1865-1866. The rural negro had a promising outlook, for at any
time he could get more work than he could do; the city negro found work
scarce even when he wanted it.[2052]
Attempts to organize a New System
Several attempts were made by the negroes in 1865 and 1866 to work farms
and plantations on the coöperative system, that is, to club work, but with
no success. They were not accustomed to independent labor, their faculty
for organization had not been sufficiently developed, and the dishonesty
of their leading men sometimes caused failures of the schemes.[2053]
In the summer of 1865 the Monroe County Agricultural Association was
formed to regulate labor, and to protect the interests of both employer
and laborer. It was the duty of the executive committee to look after the
welfare of the freedmen, to see that contracts were carried out and the
freedmen protected in them, and, in cases of dispute, to act as
arbitrator. The members of the association pledged themselves to see that
the freedman received his wages, and to aid him in case his employer
refused to pay. They were also to see that the freedman fulfilled his
contract, unless there was good reason why he should not. Homes and the
necessaries of life were to be provided by the association for the aged
and helpless negroes, of whom there were several on every plantation. The
planters declared themselves in favor of schools for the negro children,
and a committee was appointed to devise a plan for their education. Every
planter in Monroe County belonged to the association.[2054] An
organization in Conecuh County adopted, word for word, the constitution of
the Monroe County association. In Clarke and Wilcox counties similar
organizations were formed, and in all counties where negro labor was the
main dependence some such plans were devised.[2055] But it is noticeable
that in those counties where the planters first undertook to reorganize
the labor system, there were no regular agents of the Freedmen's Bureau
and no garrisons.
The average negro quite naturally had little or no sense of the obligation
of contracts. He would leave a growing crop at the most critical period,
and move into another county, or, working his own crop "on shares," would
leave it in the grass and go to work for some one else in order to get
small "change" for tobacco, snuff, and whiskey. After three years of
experience of such conduct, a meeting of citizens at Summerfield, Dallas
County, decided that laborers ought to be impressed with the necessity of
complying with contracts. They agreed that no laborers discharged for
failure to keep contracts would be hired again by other employers. They
declared it to be the duty of the whites to act in perfect good faith in
their relations with freedmen, to respect and uphold their rights, and to
promote good feeling.[2056]
Development of the Share System
At first the planters had demanded a system of contracts, thinking that by
law they might hold the negro to his agreements. But the Bureau contracts
were one-sided, and the planters could not afford to enter into them.
General Swayne early reported[2057] a general breakdown of the contract
system, though he told the planters that in case of dispute, where no
contract was signed, he would exact payment for the negro at the highest
rates. The "share" system was discouraged, but where there were no Bureau
agents it was developing. And so bad was the wage system, that even in the
Bureau districts, share hiring was done. The object of "share" renting was
to cause the laborer to take an interest in his crop and to relieve the
planter of disputes about loss of time, etc. Some of the negroes also
decided that the share system was the proper one. On the plantations near
Selma the negroes demanded "shares," threatening to leave in case of
refusal. General Hardee, who was living near, proposed a plan for a verbal
contract; wages should be one-fourth of all crops, meat and bread to be
furnished to the laborer, and his share of crop to be paid to him in kind,
or the net proceeds in cash; the planter to furnish land, teams, wagons,
implements, and seed to the laborer, who, in addition, had all the slavery
privileges of free wood, water, and pasturage, garden lot and truck patch,
teams to use on Sundays and for going to town. The absolute right of
management was reserved to the planter, it being understood that this was
no copartnership, but that the negro was hired for a share of the crop;
consequently he had no right to interfere in the management.[2058]
On another plantation, where a share system similar to Hardee's was in
operation, the planter divided the workers into squads of four men each.
To each squad he assigned a hundred acres of cotton and corn, in the
proportion of five acres of cotton to three of corn, and forty acres of
cotton for the women and children of the four families. The squads were
united to hoe and plough and to pick the cotton, because they worked
better in gangs. Wage laborers were kept to look after fences and ditches,
and to perform odd jobs. A frequent source of trouble was the custom of
allowing the negro, as part of his pay, several acres of "outside crop,"
to be worked on certain days of the week, as Fridays and Saturdays. The
planter was supposed to settle disputes among the negroes, give them
advice on every subject except politics and religion, on which they had
other advisers, pay their fines and get them out of jail when arrested,
and sometimes to thrash the recalcitrant.[2059]
Several kinds of share systems were finally evolved from the industrial
chaos. They were much the same in black or white districts, and the usual
designations were "on halves," "third and fourth," and "standing rent."
The tenant "on halves" received one-half the crop, did all the work, and
furnished his own provisions. The planter furnished land, houses to live
in, seed, ploughs, hoes, teams, wagons, ginned the cotton, paid for half
the fertilizer, and "went security" for the negro for a year's credit at
the supply store in town, or he furnished the supplies himself, and
charged them against the negro's share of the crop. The "third and fourth"
plan varied according to locality and time, and depended upon what the
tenant furnished. Sometimes the planter furnished everything, while the
negro gave only his labor and received one-fourth of the crop; again, the
planter furnished all except provisions and labor, and gave the negro
one-third of the crop. In such cases "third and fourth" was a lower grade
of tenancy than "on halves." Later it developed to a higher grade: the
tenant furnished teams and farming implements, and the planter the rest,
in which case the planter received a third of the cotton, and a fourth of
the corn raised. "Standing rent" was the highest form of tenancy, and only
responsible persons, white or black, could rent under that system. It
called for a fixed or "standing" rent for each acre or farm, to be paid
in money or in cotton. The unit of value in cotton was a 500-pound bale of
middling grade on October 1st. Tenants who had farm stock, farming
implements, and supplies or good credit would nearly always cultivate for
"standing rent." The planter exercised a controlling direction over the
labor and cultivation of a crop worked "on halves"; he exercised less
direction over "third and fourth" tenants, and was supposed to exercise no
control over tenants who paid "standing rent." In all cases the planter
furnished a dwelling-house free, wood and water (paid for digging wells),
and pasture for the pigs and cows of the tenants. In all cases the renter
had a plot of ground of from one to three acres, rent free, for a
vegetable garden and "truck patch." Here could be raised watermelons,
sugar-cane, potatoes, sorghum, cabbage, and other vegetables. Every tenant
could keep a few pigs and a cow, chickens, turkeys, and guineas, and
especially dogs, and could hunt in all the woods around and fish in all
the waters. "On halves" was considered the safest form of tenancy for both
planter and tenant, for the latter was only an average man, and this
method allowed the superior direction of the planter.[2060] Many negroes
worked for wages; the less intelligent and the unreliable could find no
other way to work; and some of the best of them preferred to work for
wages paid at the end of each week or month. Wage laborers worked under
the immediate oversight of the farmer or tenant who hired them. They
received $8 to $12 a month and were "found," that is, furnished with
rations. In the white counties the negro hired man was often fed in the
farmer's kitchen. The laborer, if hired by the year, had a house,
vegetable garden, truck patch, chickens, a pig perhaps, always a dog, and
he could hunt and fish anywhere in the vicinity. Sometimes he was "found";
sometimes he "found" himself. When he was "found," the allowance for a
week was three and a half pounds of bacon, a peck of meal, half a gallon
of syrup, and a plug of tobacco; his garden and truck patch furnished
vegetables. This allowance could be varied and commuted. The system was
worked out in the few years immediately following the war, and has lasted
almost without change. Where the negroes are found, the larger plantations
have not been broken up into small farms, the census statistics to the
contrary notwithstanding.[2061] The negro tenant or laborer had too many
privileges for his own good and for the good of the planter. The negro
should have been paid more money or given a larger proportion of the crop,
and fewer privileges. He needed more control and supervision, and the
result of giving him a vegetable garden, a truck patch, a pasture, and the
right of hunting and fishing, was that the negro took less interest in the
crop; the privileges were about all he wanted. Agricultural industry was
never brought to a real business basis.[2062]
An essential part of the share system was the custom of advancing supplies
to the tenant with the future crop as security. The universal lack of
capital after the war forced an extension of the old ante-bellum credit or
supply system. The merchant, who was also a cotton buyer, advanced money
or supplies until the crop was gathered. Before the war his security was
crop, land, and slaves; after the war the crop was the principal security,
for land was a drug in the market. Consequently, the crop was more
important to the creditor. Cotton was the only good cash staple, and the
high prices encouraged all to raise it. It was to the interest of the
merchant, even when prices were low, to insist that his debtors raise
cotton to the exclusion of food crops, since much of his money was made by
selling food supplies to them. Before the war the planter alone had much
credit, and a successful one did not make use of the system; but after
the war all classes of cotton raisers had to have advances of supplies.
The credit or crop lien system was good to put an ambitious farmer on the
way to independence, but it was no incentive to the shiftless. Cotton
became the universal crop under the credit system, and even when the
farmer became independent, he seldom planted less of his staple crop, or
raised more supplies at home.
Negro Farmers and White Farmers
At the end of the war everything was in favor of the negro cotton raiser;
and everything except the high price of cotton was against the white
farmer in the poorer counties. The soil had been used most destructively
in the white districts, and it had to be improved before cotton could be
raised successfully.[2063] The high price of cotton caused the white
farmer, who had formerly had only small cotton patches, to plant large
fields, and for several years the negro was not a serious competitor. The
building of railroads through the mineral regions afforded transportation
to the white farmer for crops and fertilizers,--an advantage that before
this time had been enjoyed only by the Black Belt,--and improved methods
gradually supplanted the wasteful frontier system of cultivation. The
gradual increase[2064] of the cotton production after 1869 was due
entirely to white labor in the white counties, the black counties never
again reaching their former production, though the population of those
counties has doubled. Governor Lindsay said, in 1871, that the white
people of north Alabama, where but little had been produced before the
war, were becoming prosperous by raising cotton, and at the same time
raising supplies that the planter on the rich lands with negro labor had
to buy from the West. This prosperity, he thought, had done more than
anything else to put an end to Ku Klux disturbances. Somers reported, as
early as 1871, that the bulk of the cotton crop in the Tennessee valley
was made by white labor, not by black.[2065] As long as there was plenty
of cheap, thin land to be had, the poor but independent white would not
work the fertile land belonging to some one else; and before and long
after the war there was plenty of practically free land.[2066] Therefore
the tendency of the whites was to remain on the less fertile land. Dr. E.
A. Smith, in the Alabama Geological Survey of 1881-1882, and in the Report
on Cotton Production in Alabama (1884), shows the relation between race
and cotton production, and race location, with respect to fertility of
soil: (1) On the most fertile lands the laboring population was black; the
farmers were shiftless, and no fertilizers were used; there the credit
evil was worse, and the yield per acre was less than on the poorest soils
cultivated by whites. (2) Where the races were about equal the best system
was found; the soils were medium, the farms were small but well
cultivated, and fertilizers were used. (3) On the poorest soils only
whites were found. These by industry and use of fertilizers could produce
about as much as the blacks on the rich soils.
The average product per acre of the fertile Black Belt is lower than the
lowest in the poorest white counties. Only the best of soil, as in
Clarke, Monroe, and Wilcox counties, is able to overcome the bad labor
system, and produce an average equal to that made by the whites in
Winston, the least fertile county in the state. In white counties, where
the average product per acre falls below the average for the surrounding
region, the fact is always explained by the presence of blacks, segregated
on the best soils, keeping down the average product. For example, Madison
County in 1880 had a majority of blacks, and the average product per acre
was 0.28 bale, as compared with 0.32 bale for the Tennessee valley, of
which Madison was the richest county; in Talladega, the most fertile
county of the Coosa valley, the average production per acre was 0.32, as
compared with 0.40 for the rest of the valley; in Autauga, where the
blacks outnumbered the whites two to one, the average fell below that of
the country around, though the Autauga soil was the best in the region.
The average product of the rich prairie region cultivated by the blacks
was 0.27 bale per acre; the average product in the poor mineral region
cultivated by the whites was 0.26 to 0.28; in the short-leaf pine region
the whites outnumber the blacks two to one, and the average production is
0.34 bale, while in the gravelly hill region, where the blacks are twice
as numerous as the whites, the production is 0.30, the soil in the two
sections being about equal. In general, the fertility of the soil being
equal, the production varies inversely as the proportion of colored
population to white. Density of colored population is a sure sign of
fertile soil; predominance of white a sign of medium or poor soil. Outside
of the Black Belt, white owners cultivate small farms, looking closely
after them. The negro seldom owns the land he cultivates, and is more
efficient when working under direction on the small farm in the white
county. In the Black Belt, nearly all land is fertile and capable of
cultivation, but in the white counties a large percentage is rocky, in
hills, forests, mountains, etc. Many soils in southeast and in north
Alabama, formerly considered unproductive, have been brought into
cultivation by the use of fertilizers, hauled in wagons, in many cases,
from twenty to a hundred miles. Fertilizers have not yet come into general
use in the Black Belt. In the negro districts are still found horse-power
gins and old wooden cotton presses; in the white counties, steam and water
power and the latest machinery. In the white counties it has always been
a general custom to raise a part of the supplies on the farm; in the
Black Belt this has not been done since the war.[2067] Though many of the
white farmers remained under the crop lien bondage, there was a steady
gain toward independence on the part of the more industrious and
economical. But not until toward the close of the century did emancipation
come for many of the struggling whites.
In other directions the whites did better. They opened the mines of north
Alabama, cut the timber of south Alabama, built the railroads and
factories, and to some extent engaged in commerce.[2068] Market gardening
became a common occupation. Negro labor in factories failed. It was the
negro rather than slavery that prevented and still prevents the
establishment of manufactures.[2069] The development of manufactures in
recent years has benefited principally the poor people of the white
counties. "For this mill people is not drawn from foreign immigrants, nor
from distant states, but it is drawn from the native-born white
population, the poor whites, that belated hill-folk from the ridges and
hollows and coves of the silent hills."[2070] The negro artisan is giving
way to the white; even in the towns of the Black Belt, the occupations
once securely held by the negro are passing into the hands of the whites.
In the white counties, during Reconstruction, the relations between the
races became more strained than in the Black Belt. One of the
manifestations of the Ku Klux movement in the white counties was the
driving away of negro tenants from the more fertile districts by the
poorer classes of whites who wanted these lands. For years immigration was
discouraged by the northern press. Foreigners were afraid to come to the
"benighted and savage South."[2071] But in the '80's the railroad
companies began to induce Germans to settle on their lands in the poorest
of the white counties. Later there has been a slow movement from the
Northwest. As a rule, where the northerners and the Germans settle the
wilderness blossoms, and the negro leaves.
After ploughing their hilltops until the soil was exhausted, the whites,
even before the war, decided that only by clearing the swamps in the
poorer districts could they get land worth cultivating. This required much
labor and money. After the war, with the increase of transportation
facilities, fertilizers came into use, the swamps were deserted, and the
farmers went back to the uplands. "By the use of commercial fertilizers,
vast regions once considered barren have been brought into profitable
cultivation, and really afford a more reliable and constant crop than the
rich alluvial lands of the old slave plantations. In nearly every
agricultural county in the South there is to be observed, on the one hand,
this section of fertile soils, once the heart of the old civilization, now
largely abandoned by the whites, held in tenantry by a dense negro
population, full of dilapidation and ruin; while on the other hand, there
is the region of light, thin soils, occupied by the small white
freeholder, filled with schools, churches, and good roads, and all the
elements of a happy, enlightened country life."[2072]
The Decadence of the Black Belt
The patriarchal system failed in the Black Belt, the Bureau system of
contracts and prescribed wages failed, the planter's own wage system
failed,[2073] and finally all settled down to the share system. In this
there was some encouragement to effort on the part of the laborer, and in
case of failure of the crop he bore a share of the loss. After a few
years' experience, the negroes were ready to go back to the wage system,
and labor conventions were held demanding a return to that system.[2074]
But whatever system was adopted, the work of the negro was unsatisfactory.
The skilled laborer left the plantation, and the new generation knew
nothing of the arts of industry. Labor became migratory, and the negro
farmer wanted to change his location every year.[2075] Regular work was a
thing of the past. In two or three days each week a negro could work
enough to live, and the remainder of the time he rested from his labors,
often leaving much cotton in the fields to rot.[2076] He went to the field
when it suited him to go, gazed frequently at the sun to see if it was
time to stop for meals, went often to the spring for water, and spent much
time adjusting his plough or knocking the soil and pebbles from his shoes.
The negro women refused to work in the fields, and yet did nothing to
better the home life; the style of living was "from hand to mouth." Extra
money went for whiskey, snuff, tobacco, and finery, while the standard of
living was not raised.[2077] The laborer would always stop to go to a
circus, election, political meeting, revival, or camp-meeting. A great
desolation seemed to rest upon the Black Belt country.[2078]
In the interior of the state, the negroes worked better during and after
Reconstruction than where they were exposed to the ministrations of the
various kinds of carpet-baggers.[2079] In the Tennessee valley, where the
negroes had taken a prominent part in politics, and had not only seen much
of the war, but many of them had enlisted in the Federal army, cotton
raising almost ceased for several years. The only crops made were made by
whites.[2080] In Sumter County, where the black population was dense, it
was, in 1870, almost impossible to secure labor; those negroes who wished
to work went to the railways.[2081] A description of a "model negro farm"
in 1874 was as follows: The farmer purchased an old mule on credit and
rented land on shares, or for so many bales of cotton; any old tools were
used; corn, bacon, and other supplies were bought on credit, and a lien
given on the crop; a month later, corn and cotton were planted on soil not
well broken up; the negro "would not pay for no guano," to put on other
people's land; by turns the farmer planted and fished, ploughed and
hunted, hoed and frolicked, or went to "meeting." At the end of the year
he sold his cotton, paid part of his rent, and some of his debt, returned
the mule to its owner, and sang:--
"Nigger work hard all de year,
White man tote de money."[2082]
If the negro made anything, his fellows were likely to steal it. Somers
said, "There can be no doubt that the negroes first steal one another's
share of the crop, and next the planter's, by way of general
redress."[2083] Crop stealing was usually done at night. Stolen cotton,
corn, pork, etc., was carried to the doggeries kept on the outskirts of
the plantation by low white men, and there exchanged for bad whiskey,
tobacco, and cheap stuff of various kinds. These doggeries were called
"deadfalls," and their proprietors often became rich.[2084] So serious did
the theft of crops become, that the legislature passed a "sunset" law,
making it a penal offence to purchase farm produce after nightfall.
Poultry, hogs, corn, mules, and horses were stolen when left in the open.
Emancipation destroyed the agricultural supremacy of the Black Belt. The
uncertain returns from the plantations caused an exodus of planters and
their families to the cities, and formerly well-kept plantations were
divided into one-and two-house farms for negro tenants, who allowed
everything to go to ruin. The negro tenant system was much more ruinous
than the worst of the slavery system, and none of the plantations ever
again reached their former state of productiveness. Ditches choked up,
fences down, large stretches of fertile fields growing up in weeds and
bushes, cabins tumbling in and negro quarters deserted, corn choked by
grass and weeds, cotton not half as good as under slavery,--these were the
reports from travellers in the Black Belt, towards the close of
Reconstruction.[2085] Other plantations were leased to managers, who also
kept plantation stores whence the negroes were furnished with supplies.
The money lenders came into possession of many plantations. By the crop
lien and blanket mortgage, the negro became an industrial serf. The "big
house" fell into decay. For these and other reasons, the former masters,
who were the most useful friends of the negro, left the Black Belt, and
the black steadily declined.[2086] The unaided negro has steadily grown
worse; but Tuskegee, Normal, Calhoun, and similar bodies are endeavoring
to assist the negro of the black counties to become an efficient member of
society. In the success of such efforts lies the only hope of the negro,
and also of the white of the Black Belt, if the negro is to continue to
exclude white immigration.[2087]