The Negro Farmer

by Carl Kelsey

The owners have been unable to carry out their efforts in full, but the result has been very creditable. The lease is much preferable to the one given on page 46.

If, as I believe, the families above reported are average and are living under ordinary conditions, it seems evident that a considerable surplus results from their labors each year. I wish I could add that the money were being either wisely spent or saved and invested. This does not seem to be the case and it is generally stated that the amount of money wasted in the fall of the year by the blacks of the Delta is enormous. In the cabins the great catalogs of the mail order houses of Montgomery Ward & Co., and Sears, Roebuck & Co., of Chicago are often found, and the express agents say that large shipments of goods are made to the Negroes. Patent medicines form no inconsiderable proportion of these purchases, while "Stutson" hats, as the Negro says, are required by the young bloods. The general improvidence of the people is well illustrated by the following story related by a friend of the writer. At the close of one season an old Negro woman came to his wife for advice as to the use to be made of her savings, some $125. She was advised to buy some household necessities and to put the remainder in a bank, above all she was cautioned to beware of any who sought to get her to squander the money. The woman left but in about two weeks' time returned to borrow some money. It developed that as she went down the street a Jewess invited her to come in and have a cup of coffee. The invitation was accepted and during the conversation she was advised to spend the money. This she did, and when the transactions were over the woman had one barrel of flour, one hundred pounds of meat, ten dollars or so worth of cheap jewelry, some candy and other incidentals and no money. Foolish expenditures alone, according to the belief of the planters, prevent the Negroes from owning the entire land in a generation. I would not give the impression that there are no Negro land owners in this region. Thousands of acres have been purchased and are held by them, but we are speaking of average families.

Some curious customs prevail. The planters generally pay the Negroes in cash for their cotton seed and this money the blacks consider as something peculiarly theirs, not to be used for any debts they may have. Although the prices for goods advanced are higher than cash prices, the Negroes will often, when spring comes, insist that they be advanced, so have the goods charged even at the higher prices, even though they have the cash on hand. This great over-appreciation of present goods is a drawback to their progress.

In this district I found little dissatisfaction among the Negro farmers. They felt that their opportunities were good. Those who come from the hills can scarce believe their eyes at the crops produced and constantly ask when the cotton plants are going to turn yellow and droop. That there is little migration back to the hills is good evidence of the relative standing of the two districts in their eyes.

Wages for day labor range from 60 to 75 cents, but the extra labor imported for cotton picking makes over double this.

The Sugar Region.

CABINS ON SUGAR PLANTATION.

South of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the alluvial district is largely given over to the growing of sugar cane with occasional fields of rice. The district under cultivation stretches back from the river a couple of miles or so to the edge of the woods beyond which at present there is no tillable ground, though drainage will gradually push back the line of the forest. These sugar lands are valued highly, $100 or so an acre, and the capital invested in the great sugar houses is enormous. Probably nowhere in agricultural pursuits is there a more thorough system of bookkeeping than on these plantations. This land is cultivated by hired hands, who work immediately under the eye of overseers. Nowhere is the land let out in small lots to tenants. Conditions are radically different from those prevailing in the cotton regions. The work season, it is claimed, begins on the first day of January and ends on the 31st of December, and every day between when the weather permits work in the fields there is work to be done.

These plantations present an attractive appearance. The cabins are not scattered as in the cotton country, but are usually ranged on either side of a broad street, with rows of trees in front. The cabins are often for two families and each has a plot of ground for a garden. The planters say the Negroes will not live in the houses unless the garden plots are provided, even if they make no use of them. To each family is allotted a house so long as they are employed on the place. Wood is free and teams are provided for hauling it from the forest. Free pasture for stock is often provided.