CHAPTER XI 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."