Following the Color Line Part 15

On his part Jim agreed to "do good and faithful labour for the said T. L.

McCullough." "Good and faithful labour" means from sunrise to sunset every day but Sunday, and excepting Sat.u.r.day afternoon.

A payment of five dollars was made to bind the bargain--just before Christmas. Jim probably spent it the next day. It is customary to furnish a cabin for the worker to live in; no such place was furnished, and Jim had to walk three or four miles morning and evening to a house on another plantation. He worked faithfully until May 15th. Then he ran away, but when he heard that the landlord was after him, threatening punishment, he came back and agreed to work twenty days for the ten he had been away. Jim stayed some time, but he was not only given no cabin and paid no money, but his food ration was cut off! So he ran away again, claiming that he could not work unless he had a place to live. The landlord went after him and had him arrested, and although the Negro had worked nearly half a year, McCullough prosecuted him for fraud because he had got $5 in cash at the signing of the contract. In such a case the Alabama law gives the landlord every advantage; it says that when a person receives money under a contract and stops work, the presumption is that he intended to defraud the landowner and that therefore he is criminally punishable. The practical effect of the law is to permit imprisonment for debt, for it places a burden of proof on the Negro that he can hardly overturn. The law is defended on the ground that Negroes will get money any way they can, sign any sort of paper for it, and then run off--if there is not a stringent law to punish them. But it may be imagined how this law could be used, and is used, in the hands of unscrupulous men to keep the Negro in a sort of debt-slavery. When the case came up before Judge William H. Thomas of Montgomery, the const.i.tutionality of the law was brought into question, and the Negro was finally discharged.

Often an unscrupulous landlord will deliberately give a Negro a little money before Christmas, knowing that he will promptly waste it in a "celebration" thus getting him into debt so that he dare not leave the plantation for fear of arrest and criminal prosecution. If he attempts to leave he is arrested and taken before a friendly justice of the peace, and fined or threatened with imprisonment. If he is not in debt, it sometimes happens that the landlord will have him arrested on the charge of stealing a bridle or a few potatoes (for it is easy to find something against almost any Negro), and he is brought into court. In several cases I know of the escaping Negro has even been chased down with bloodhounds. On appearing in court the Negro is naturally badly frightened. The white man is there and offers as a special favour to take him back and let him work out the fine--which sometimes requires six months, often a whole year. In this way Negroes are kept in debt--so-called debt-slavery or peonage--year after year, they and their whole family. One of the things that I couldn't at first understand in some of the courts I visited was the presence of so many white men to stand sponsor for Negroes who had committed various offences. Often this grows out of the feudal protective instinct which the landlord feels for the tenant or servant of whom he is fond; but often it is merely the desire of the white man to get another Negro worker. In one case in particular, I saw a Negro brought into court charged with stealing cotton.

"Does anybody know this Negro?" asked the judge.

Two white men stepped up and both said they did.

The judge fined the Negro $20 and costs, and there was a real contest between the two white men as to who should pay it--and get the Negro. They argued for some minutes, but finally the judge said to the prisoner:

"Who do you want to work for, George?"

The Negro chose his employer, and agreed to work four months to pay off his $20 fine and costs.

Sometimes a man who has a debt against a Negro will sell the claim--which is practically selling the Negro--to some farmer who wants more labour.

A case of this sort came up in the winter of 1907 in Rankin County, Mississippi--the facts of which are all in testimony. A Negro named Dan January was in debt to a white farmer named Levi Carter. Carter agreed to sell the Negro and his entire family to another white farmer named Patrick. January refused to be sold. According to the testimony Carter and some of his companions seized January, bound him hand and foot and beat him most brutally, taking turns in doing the whipping until they were exhausted and the victim unconscious.

January's children removed him to his home, but the white men returned the next day, produced a rope and threatened to hang him unless he consented to go to the purchaser of the debt. The case came into court but the white men were never punished. January was in Jackson, Miss., when I was there; he still showed the awful effects of his beating.

_Keeping Negroes Poor_

This system has many bad results. It encourages the Negro in crime. He knows that unless he does something pretty bad, he will not be prosecuted because the landlord doesn't want to lose the work of a single hand; he knows that if he _is_ prosecuted, the white man will, if possible, "pay him out." It disorganises justice and confuses the ignorant Negro mind as to what is a crime and what is not. A Negro will often do things that he would not do if he thought he were really to be punished. He comes to the belief that if the white man wants him arrested, he will be arrested, and if he protects him, he won't suffer, no matter what he does. Thousands of Negroes, ignorant, weak, indolent, to-day work under this system. There are even landlords and employers who will trade upon the Negro's worst instincts--his love for liquor, for example--in order to keep him at work.

An instance of this sort came to my attention at Hawkinsville while I was there. The white people of the town were making a strong fight for prohibition; the women held meetings, and on the day of the election marched in the streets singing and speaking. But the largest employer of Negro labor in the county had registered several hundred of his Negroes and declared his intention of voting them against prohibition. He said bluntly: "If my n.i.g.g.e.rs can't get whisky they won't stay with me; you've got to keep a n.i.g.g.e.r poor or he won't work."

This employer actually voted sixty of his Negroes against prohibition, but the excitement was so great that he dared vote no more--and prohibition carried.

A step further brings the Negro to the chain-gang. If there is no white man to pay him out, or if his crime is too serious to be paid out, he goes to the chain-gang--and in several states he is then hired out to private contractors. The private employer thus gets him sooner or later. Some of the largest farms in the South are operated by chain-gang labour. The demand for more convicts by white employers is exceedingly strong. In the Montgomery _Advertiser_ for April 10, 1907, I find an account of the sentencing of fifty-four prisoners in the city court, fifty-two of whom were Negroes. The _Advertiser_ says:

The demand for their labour is probably greater now than it ever has been before. Numerous labour agents of companies employing convict labour reached Montgomery yesterday, and were busily engaged in manoeuvring to secure part or even all of the convicts for their respective companies. The compet.i.tion for labour of all kinds, it seems, is keener than ever before known.

The natural tendency of this demand, and from the further fact that the convict system makes yearly a huge profit for the State, is to convict as many Negroes as possible, and to punish the offences charged as severely as possible. From the Atlanta _Const.i.tution_ of October 13, 1906, I have this clipping:

SIX MONTHS FOR POTATO THEFT

COLUMBUS, GA., October 12 (Special)

In the city court yesterday Charley Carter, a Negro, was sentenced to six months on the chain-gang or to pay a fine of $25 for stealing a potato valued at 5 cents.

Serious crimes are sometimes compromised. In a newspaper dispatch, October 6, 1906, from Eaton Ga., I find a report of the trial of six Negroes charged with a.s.sault with the intent to kill. All were found guilty, but upon a recommendation of mercy they were sentenced as having committed misdemeanours rather than felonies. They could therefore have their fines paid, and five were immediately released by farmers who wanted their labour. The report says that of thirty-one misdemeanours during the month it is expected that "none will reach the chain-gang," since there are "three farmers to every convict ready to pay the fine."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A TYPE OF THE COUNTRY CHAIN-GANG NEGRO]

Still other methods are pursued by certain landlords to keep their tenants on the land. In one extreme case a Negro tenant, after years of work, decided to leave the planter. He had had a place offered him where he could make more money. There was nothing against him; he simply wanted to move. But the landlord informed him that no waggon would be permitted to cross his (the planter's) land to get his household belongings. The Negro, being ignorant, supposed he could thus be prevented from moving, and although the friend who was trying to help him a.s.sured him that the landlord could not prevent his moving, he dared not go. In another instance--also extreme--a planter refused to let his tenants raise hogs, because he wanted them to buy salt pork at his store. It is, indeed, through the plantation store (which corresponds to the company or "truck"

store of Northern mining regions) that the unscrupulous planter reaps his most exorbitant profits. Negroes on some plantations, whether they work hard or not, come out at the end of the year with nothing. Part of this is due, of course, to their own improvidence; but part, in too many cases, is due to exploitation by the landlord.

_One Biscuit to Eat and no Place to Sleep_

Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton, in a letter to the Montgomery _Advertiser_ on the Negro labour problem, tells this story:

I recall that some years ago a certain white farmer asked me to secure for him a young coloured man to work about the house and to work in the field. The young man was secured, a bargain was entered into to the effect that he was to be paid a certain sum monthly and his board and lodging furnished as well. At the end of the coloured boy's first day on the farm he returned. I asked the reason, and he said that after working all the afternoon he was handed a b.u.t.tered biscuit for his supper, and no place was provided for him to sleep.

At night he was told he could find a place to sleep in the fodder loft. This white farmer, whom I know well, is not a cruel man and seeks generally to do the right thing; but in this case he simply overlooked the fact that it would have paid him in dollars and cents to give some thought and attention to the comfort of his helper.

This case is more or less typical. Had this boy been well cared for, he would have advertised the place that others would have sought work there.

Such methods mean, of course, the lowest possible efficiency of labour--ignorant, hopeless, s.h.i.+ftless. The harsh planter naturally opposes Negro education in the bitterest terms and prevents it wherever possible; for education means the doom of the system by which he thrives.

_Negro with Nineteen Children_

Life for the tenants is often not a pleasant thing to contemplate. I spent much time driving about on the great plantations and went into many of the cabins. Usually they were very poor, of logs or shacks, sometimes only one room, sometimes a room and a sort of lean-to. At one side there was a fireplace, often two beds opposite, with a few broken chairs or boxes, and a table. Sometimes the cabin was set up on posts and had a floor, sometimes it was on the ground and had no floor at all. The people are usually densely ignorant and superst.i.tious; the preachers they follow are often the worst sort of characters, dishonest and immoral; the schools, if there are any, are practically worthless. The whole family works from sunrise to sunset in the fields. Even children of six and seven years old will drop seed or carry water. Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, himself a Negro, who has made many valuable and scholarly studies of Negro life, gives this vivid glimpse into a home where the Negro and his wife had nineteen children. He says:

This family of twenty-one is a poverty stricken, reckless, dirty set.

The children are stupid and repulsive, and fight for their food at the table. They are poorly dressed, sickly and cross. The table dishes stand from one meal to another unwashed, and the house is in perpetual disorder. Now and then the father and mother engage in a hand-to-hand fight.

_Never Heard the Name of Roosevelt_

It would be impossible to over-emphasise the ignorance of many Negro farmers. It seems almost unbelievable, but after some good-humoured talk with a group of old Negroes I tried to find out how much they knew of the outside world. I finally asked them if they knew Theodore Roosevelt. They looked puzzled, and finally one old fellow scratched his head and said:

"Whah you say dis yere man libes?"

"In Was.h.i.+ngton," I said; "you've heard of the President of the United States?"

"I reckon I dunno," he said.

And yet this old man gave me a first-cla.s.s religious exhortation; and one in the group had heard of Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton, whom he described as a "pow'ful big n.i.g.g.e.r."

_Why Negroes Go to Cities_

I made inquiries among the Negroes as to why they wanted to leave the farms and go to cities. The answer I got from all sorts of sources was first, the lack of schooling in the country, and second, the lack of protection.

And I heard also many stories of ill-treatment of various sorts, the distrust of the tenant of the landlord in keeping his accounts--all of which, dimly recognised, tends to make many Negroes escape the country, if they can. Indeed, it is growing harder and harder on the great plantations, especially where the management is by overseers, to keep a sufficient labour supply. In some places the white landlords have begun to break up their plantations, selling small farms to ambitious Negroes--a significant sign, indeed, of the pa.s.sing of the feudal system. An instance of this is found near Thomaston, Ga., where Dr. C. B. Thomas has long been selling land to Negroes, and encouraging them to buy by offering easy terms. Near Dayton, Messrs. Price and Allen have broken up their "Lockhart Plantation" and are selling it out to Negroes. I found similar instances in many places I visited. Commenting on this tendency, the Thomaston _Post_ says:

This is, in part, a solution of the so-called Negro problem, for those of the race who have property interests at stake cannot afford to antagonise their white neighbours or transgress the laws. The owners.h.i.+p of land tends to make them better citizens in every way, more thoughtful of the right of others, and more ambitious for their own advancement.

At this place a number of neat and comfortable homes, a commodious high school, and a large lodge building, besides a number of churches, testify to the enterprise and thrift the best cla.s.s of our coloured population.... The tendency towards cutting up the large plantations is beginning to show itself, and when all of them are so divided, there will be no agricultural labour problem, except, perhaps, in the gathering of an especially large crop.

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