Following the Color Line Part 11

"When it comes to cotton picking time and I know that they are grinding cane and hunting possums, I jest naturally get lonesome for the country."

But nothing would persuade the women and children to go back to the old hard life. Hawkinsville has a small cotton mill and just such a community of white workers around it. Owing to the scarcity of labour, wages in the mills have been going up rapidly all over the South, during the last two or three years, furnis.h.i.+ng a still more potent attraction for country people.

All these various tendencies are uniting to produce some very remarkable conditions in the South. A natural segregation of the races is apparently taking place. I saw it everywhere I went in the black belt. The white people were gravitating toward the towns or into white neighbourhoods and leaving the land, even though still owned by white men, more and more to the exclusive occupation of Negroes. Many black counties are growing blacker while not a few white counties are growing whiter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WHERE WHITE MILL HANDS LIVE IN ATLANTA, GEORGIA]

[Ill.u.s.tration: WHERE SOME OF THE POORER NEGROES LIVE IN ATLANTA, GEORGIA

COMPANION PICTURES

to show that there is comparatively little difference in the material comfort of the two cla.s.ses]

Take, for example, Pulaski County, through which I drove that November morning with Mr. Brown. In 1870 the coloured and white population were almost exactly equal--about 6,000 for each. In 1880 the Negroes had increased to 8,225 while the whites showed a loss. By 1890 the towns had begun to improve and the white population grew by about 700, but the Negroes increased nearly 2,000. And, finally, here are the figures for 1900: Negroes 11,029; Whites 7,460.

I have not wished to darken our observations with too many statistics, but this tendency is so remarkable that I wish to set down for comparison the figures of a "white county" in northern Georgia--Polk County--which is growing whiter every year.

Negroes Whites

1880 4,147 7,805 1890 4,654 10,289 1900 4,916 12,940

_Driving out Negroes_

One of the most active causes of this movement is downright fear--or race repulsion expressing itself in fear. White people dislike and fear to live in dense coloured neighbourhoods, while Negroes are often terrorised in white neighbourhoods--and not in the South only but in parts of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, as I shall show when I come to treat of Northern race conditions. I have acc.u.mulated many instances showing how Negroes are expelled from white neighbourhoods. There is a significant report from Little Rock, Arkansas:

(_Special to the Georgian._)

Little Rock, Ark., Jan. 1.--Practically every Negro in Evening Shade, Sharp County, in this state, has left town as the result of threats which have been made against the Negroes. For several years a small colony of Negroes has lived just on the outskirts of the town. A short time ago notices were posted warning the Negroes to leave the town at once. About the same time Joe Brooks, a Negro who lived with his family two miles north of town, was called to his door and fired upon by unknown persons. A load of shot struck the house close by his side and some of the shot entered his arm. Brooks and his family have left the country, and practically every member of the Negro colony has gone. They have abandoned their property or disposed of it for whatever they could get.

From the New Orleans _Times Democrat_ of March 20, 1907, I cut the following dispatch showing one method pursued by the whites of Oklahoma:

BLACKS ORDERED OUT

Lawton, Okla., March 20.--"Negroes, beware the cappers. We, the Sixty Sons of Waurika, demand the Negroes to leave here at once. We mean Go! Leave in twenty-four hours, or after that your life is uncertain." These were the words on placards which the eighty Negroes of the town of Waurika, forty miles south of Lawton, saw posted conspicuously in a number of public places this morning.

Dispatches from here to-night stated that the whites are in earnest, and that the Negroes will be killed if they do not leave town.

Not a few students of Southern conditions like John Temple Graves among the whites and Bishop Turner among the coloured people have argued that actual physical separation of the races (either by deportation of the Negroes to Africa or elsewhere, or by giving them certain reservation-like parts of the South to live in) is the only solution. But here is, in actuality, a natural segregation going forward in certain parts of the South, though in a very different way from that recommended by Mr. Graves and Bishop Turner; for even in the blackest counties the white people own most of the land, occupy the towns, and dominate everywhere politically, socially, and industrially.

Mr. Brown's plantation contains about 5,000 acres, of which some 3,500 acres are in cultivation, a beautiful rolling country, well watered, with here and there clumps of pines, and dotted with the small homes of the tenantry.

As we drove along the country road we met or pa.s.sed many Negroes who bowed with the greatest deference. Some were walking, but many drove horses or mules and rode not infrequently in top buggies, looking most prosperous, as indeed, Mr. Brown informed me that they were. He knew them all, and sometimes stopped to ask them how they were getting along. The outward relations.h.i.+ps between the races in the country seem to me to be smoother than it is in the city.

Cotton, as in all this country, is almost the exclusive crop. In spite of the constant preaching of agricultural reformers, like Mr. Brown himself, hardly enough corn is raised to supply the people with food, and I was surprised here and elsewhere at seeing so few cattle and hogs. Sheep are non-existent. In Hawkinsville, though the country round about raises excellent gra.s.s, I saw in front of a supply store bales of hay which had been s.h.i.+pped in 400 miles--from Tennessee. Enough sugar cane is raised, mostly in small patches, to supply syrup for domestic uses. At the time of my visit the Negroes were in the cane-fields with their long knives, getting in the crop. We saw several little one-horse grinding mills pressing the juice from the cane, while near at hand, sheltered by a shanty-like roof, was the great simmering syrup kettle, with an expert Negro at work stirring and skimming. And always there were Negroes round about, all the boys and girls with jolly smeared faces--and the older ones peeling and sucking the fresh cane.

It was a great time of year!

How does the landlord--and a lord he is in a very true sense--manage his great estate? The same system is in use with slight variations everywhere in the cotton country and a description of Mr. Brown's methods, with references here and there to what I have seen or heard elsewhere, will give an excellent idea of the common procedure.

_A Country of Great Plantations_

The black belt is a country of great plantations, some owners having as high as 30,000 acres, interspersed with smaller farms owned by the poorer white families or Negroes. In one way the conditions are similar to those prevailing in Ireland; great landlords and a poor tenantry or peasantry, the tenants here being very largely black.

It requires about 100 families, or 600 people, to operate Mr. Brown's plantation. Of these, 90 per cent. are coloured and 10 per cent. white. I was much interested in what Mr. Brown said about his Negro tenants, which varies somewhat from the impression I had in the city of the younger Negro generation.

"I would much rather have young Negroes for tenants," he said, "because they work better and seem more disposed to take care of their farms. The old Negroes ordinarily will s.h.i.+rk--a habit of slavery."

Besides the residence of the overseer and the homes of the tenants there is on the plantation a supply store owned by Mr. Brown, a blacksmith shop and a Negro church, which is also used as a school-house. This is, I found all through the black belt, a common equipment.

Three different methods are pursued by the landlord in getting his land cultivated. First, the better cla.s.s of tenants rent the land for cash, a "standing rent" of some $3 an acre, though in many places in Mississippi it ranges as high as $6 and $8 an acre. Second, a share-crop rental, in which the landlord and the tenant divide the cotton and corn produced.

Third, the ordinary wage system; that is, the landlord hires workers at so much a month and puts in his own crop. All three of these methods are usually employed on the larger plantations. Mr. Brown rents 2,500 acres for cash, 400 on shares, and farms 600 himself with wage workers.

All the methods of land measurement are very different here from what they are in the North. The plantation is irregularly divided up into what are called one-mule or one-plough farms--just that amount of land which a family can cultivate with one mule--usually about thirty acres. Some ambitious tenants will take a two-mule or even a four-mule farm.

_The Negro Tenant_

Most of the tenants, especially the Negroes, are very poor, and wholly dependent upon the landlord. Many Negro families possess practically nothing of their own, save their ragged clothing, and a few dollars' worth of household furniture, cooking utensils and a gun. The landlord must therefore supply them not only with enough to live on while they are making their crop, but with the entire farming outfit. Let us say that a Negro comes in November to rent a one-mule farm from the landlord for the coming year.

"What have you got?" asks the landlord.

"Noting', boss," he is quite likely to say.

The "boss" furnishes him with a cabin to live in--which goes with the land rented--a mule, a plough, possibly a one-horse waggon and a few tools.

He is often given a few dollars in cash near Christmas time which (ordinarily) he immediately spends--wastes. He is then allowed to draw upon the plantation supply store a regular amount of corn to feed his mule, and meat, bread, and tobacco, and some clothing for his family. The cost of the entire outfit and supplies for a year is in the neighbourhood of $300, upon which the tenant pays interest at from 10 to 30 per cent.

from the time of signing the contract in November, although most of the supplies are not taken out until the next summer. Besides this interest the planter also makes a large profit on all the groceries and other necessaries furnished by his supply store. Having made his contract the Negro goes to work with his whole family and keeps at it until the next fall when the cotton is all picked and ginned. Then he comes in for his "settlement"--a great time of year. The settlements were going forward while I was in the black belt. The Negro is credited with the amount of cotton he brings in and he is charged with all the supplies he has had, and interest, together with the rent of his thirty acres of land. If the season has been good and he has been industrious, he will often have a nice profit in cash, but sometimes he not only does not come out even, but closes his year of work actually in deeper debt to the landlord.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A "POOR WHITE" FAMILY

"Among them is a spirit of pride and independence which, rightly directed, would uplift and make them prosperous, but which, misguided and blind, as it sometimes is, keeps them in poverty."]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A MODEL NEGRO SCHOOL

Inspired by Tuskegee; different, indeed, from the ordinary country Negro school in the South]

Some Negroes, nowadays usually of the poorer sort, work for wages. They get from $12 to $15 a month (against $5 to $8 a few years ago) with a cabin to live in. They are allowed a garden patch, where they can, if they are industrious and their families help, raise enough vegetables to feed them comfortably, or part of a bale of cotton, which is their own. But it is sadly to be commented upon that few Negro tenants, or whites either, as far as I could see, do anything with their gardens save perhaps to raise a few collards, peanuts, and peppers--and possibly a few sweet potatoes.

This is due in part to indolence and lack of ambition, and in part to the steady work required by the planter. The wife and children of an industrious wage-working Negro nearly always help in the fields, earning an additional income from chopping cotton in spring and picking the lint in the fall.

This is the system as it is in theory; but the interest for us lies not in the plan, but in the actual practice. How does it all work out for good or for evil, for landlord and for tenant?

Tenantry in the South is a very different thing from what it is in the North. In the North, a man who rents a farm is nearly as free to do as he pleases as if he were the owner. But in the South, the present tenant system is much nearer the condition that prevailed in slavery times than it is to the present Northern tenant system. This grows naturally out of slavery; the white man had learned to operate big plantations with ignorant help; and the Negro on his part had no training for any other system. The white man was the natural master and the Negro the natural dependent and a mere Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation did not at once change the _spirit_ of the relations.h.i.+p.

To-day a white overseer resides on every large plantation and he or the owner himself looks after and disciplines the tenants. The tenant is in debt to him (in some cases reaching a veritable condition of debt slavery or peonage) and he _must_ see that the crop is made. Hence he watches the work of every Negro (and indeed that of the white tenants as well) sees that the land is properly fertilised, and that the dikes (to prevent was.h.i.+ng) are kept up, that the cotton is properly chopped (thinned) and regularly cultivated. Some of the greater landowners employ a.s.sistant overseers or "riders" who are constantly travelling from farm to farm. On one plantation I saw four such riders start out one day, each with a rifle on his saddle. And on a South Carolina plantation I had a glimpse of one method of discipline. A planter was telling me of his difficulties--how a spirit of unruliness sometimes swept abroad through a plantation, inspired by some "bigoty n.i.g.g.e.r."