MARKETS AND FARMING.
The negro population of Richmond gives to its streets a peculiarly
picturesque and animated appearance. Colored faces predominate; but of
these not more than one in five or six shows unmixed African blood; and
you are reminded less of an American city than of some town of Southern
Europe. More than once I could have fancied myself in Naples, but that I
looked in vain for the crowds of importunate beggars, and the
dark-skinned lazzaroni lying all day in the sunshine on the street
corners. I saw no cases of mendicancy among the colored people of
Richmond, and very little idleness. The people found at work everywhere
belonged to the despised race; while the frequenters of bar-rooms, and
loungers on tavern-steps, were white of skin. To get drunk, especially,
appeared to be a prerogative of the chivalry.
The mules and curious vehicles one sees add to the picturesqueness of
the streets. The market-carts are characteristically droll. A little way
off you might fancy them dogcarts. Under their little ribbed canvas
covers are carried little jags of such produce as the proprietor may
have to sell,—a few cabbages, a few pecks of sweet potatoes, a pair of
live chickens, tied together by the legs; a goose or a duck in a box,
its head sticking out; with perhaps a few eggs and eggplants. These
little carts, drawn by a mule or the poorest of ponies, have been driven
perhaps a dozen or fifteen miles, bringing to market loads, a dozen of
which would scarcely equal what a New-York farmer, or a New-England
market-gardener often heaps upon a single wagon.
In the markets, business is transacted on the same petty scale. You see
a great number of dealers, and extraordinary throngs of purchasers,
considering the little that appears to be sold. Not every producer has
so much even as an antiquated mule-cart. Many come to market with what
they can carry on their backs or in their hands. Yonder is an old negro
with a turkey, which he has walked five miles to dispose of here. That
woman with a basket of eggs, whose rags and sallow complexion show her
to be one of the poor whites whom respectable colored people look down
upon, has travelled, it may be, quite as far. Here comes a mulatto boy,
with a string of rock-fish caught in the James. This old man has hard
peaches in his bag; and that other woman contributes a box of wild
grapes.
People of all colors and all classes surround the sheds or press in
throngs through the passages between the stalls. The fine lady, followed
by her servant bearing a basket, has but little money; and although she
endeavors to make it go as far as possible, it must be a small family
that can subsist until Monday upon what she carries away. There is
little money to be seen anywhere; in which respect these scenes are very
different from those witnessed during the last years of Confederate
rule, when it was said that people went to market with baskets to carry
their money, and wallets to bring home what it would buy. The markets
are not kept open during the evening, and as the hour for closing them
arrives, the bargaining and loud talking grow more and more vivacious,
while prices decline. I remember one fellow who jumped upon his table,
and made a speech, designed to attract the patronage of the freedmen.
“Walk up hyer, and buy cheap!” he shouted. “I don’t say niggers; I say
ladies and gentlemen. Niggers is played out; they’re colored people now,
and as good as anybody.”
The markets indicate the agricultural enterprise of a community. Yet,
even after seeing those of Richmond, I was amazed at the petty and
shiftless system of farming I witnessed around the city. I was told that
it was not much better before the war. The thrifty vegetable gardens of
the North, producing two or three crops a year; the long rows of
hot-beds by the fences, starting cucumbers and supplying the market with
greens sometimes before the snow is gone,—such things are scarcely known
in the capital of Virginia. “We have lettuce but a month or two in the
year,” said a lady, who was surprised to learn how Northern gardeners
managed to produce it in and out of season.
In one of my rides I passed the place of a Jersey farmer, about three
miles from the city. It looked like an oasis in the desert. I took pains
to make the proprietor’s acquaintance, and learn his experience.
“I came here and bought in ’59 one hundred and twenty-seven acres for
four thousand dollars. The first thing I did was to build that barn.
Everybody laughed at me. The most of the farms have no barns at all; and
such a large one was a wonder,—it must have been built by a fool or a
crazy man. This year I have that barn full to the rafters.
“I found the land worn out, like nearly all the land in the country. The
way Virginia folks have spoilt their farms looks a good deal more like
fools or crazy men than my barn. First, if there was timber, they burnt
it off and put a good coat of ashes on the soil. Then they raised
tobacco three or four years. Then corn, till the soil got run out and
they couldn’t raise anything. Then they went to putting on guano, which
was like giving rum to an exhausted man; it just stimulated the soil
till all the strength there was left was burnt out. That was the
condition of my farm when I came here.
“The first thing I did, I went to hauling out manure from Richmond. I
was laughed at for that too. The way people do here, they throw away
their manure. They like to have their farm-yards high and dry; so they
place them on the side of a hill, where every rain washes them, and
carries off into the streams the juices that ought to be saved for the
land. They left their straw-stacks any number of years, then drew the
straw out on the farms dry. I made my barn-yard in a hollow, and rotted
the straw in it. Now I go to market every day with a big Jersey
farm-wagon loaded down with stuff.”
He had been getting rich, notwithstanding the war. I asked what labor he
employed.
“Negro labor mostly. It was hard to get any other here. I didn’t own
slaves, but hired them of their masters. Only the poorest hands were
usually hired out in that way; I could seldom get first-class hands; yet
I always found that by kind treatment and encouragement I could make
very good laborers of those I had. I get along still better with them
now they are free.”
“Do you use horses?”
“No; mules altogether. Two mules are equal to three horses. Mules are
not subject to half the diseases horses are. They eat less, and wear
twice as long.”
I found farms of every description for sale, around Richmond. The best
land on the James River Bottom could be bought at prices varying from
forty to one hundred dollars an acre. I remember one very desirable
estate, of eight hundred acres, lying on the river, three miles from the
city, which was offered for sixty dollars. There were good buildings on
it; and the owner was making fences of old telegraph wire, to replace
those destroyed during the war.