A Woman Rice Planter

by Elizabeth W. Allston Pringle

January 4.

I am puzzled beyond measure to know what to do for another year. It is impossible to go on planting rice if it is to sell at 40 cents per bushel. It is an expensive crop, and if one borrows money, as I did last year, at a high rate of interest, and puts a mortgage on the plantation, it very soon means ruin. I have no idea how I am to pay off that mortgage of $1000 this year, but hope the bank will be willing to renew.

Instead of being anxious to have the usual first of January powwow over, as I generally am, I shall do all I can to put it off, for how can one do one's share in a powwow when one does not know what to say? I have absolutely nothing to propose. As far as my seed rice will go I will rent rice land to the negroes, and if I had money of my own I would go on and plant, for it seems to me the complete giving up of the staple industry in a country is really a revolution. Our labor understands no other cultivation; the whole population lives on rice, white and black, especially black. It is a wonderfully nutritious and sustaining food, and if suddenly its cultivation ceases there will be much suffering. Our cattle live on the straw, it being the strongest and most palatable of the straws. My horses will not touch fresh oat straw while there is a wisp of old rice straw to be had; the cows and pigs are fed on the flour, a gray substance that comes from the grain as the chaff is removed in the pounding mill. Mr. Studebake, a great Hereford cattle man, told me that rice flour and pea-vine hay make a perfect ration for cows, one supplying exactly what the other lacks. If rice is given up the cattle and pigs will have to go too.

January 10.

To-day I went down to Casa Bianca to receive Marcus's resignation of his place as foreman. He is going to move "to town," to enjoy the money he has made in my service and planting rice. He has bought land there and built four houses, which he rents out. He is a preacher, or, as he says, "an ordain minister." I have wondered he stayed these last few years, but he has made so good an income that his wife was willing to forego the joys of the town; he owns a horse and buggy, three very fine cows and calves, and three splendid oxen.

I feel very sad at parting with him; he has been here so long, and as foreman he has been most satisfactory in every way. When he turned over the keys of the barn to me I almost broke down, for I hate change anyway, and I really do not know to whom I can give the keys.

King came to beg me to give him a house. He is absolutely worthless and unreliable, but he spoke of his large family and how necessary it was for him to get where he could pursue his business of shadding, and Casa Bianca was the very best pitch of tide for the shad fishing. He gave me an idea, and I told him he could have the house if he would give me two shad a week during the shad season, two and a half months. This he most willingly agreed to do. I never have been able to get any tribute at all from the shad nets, which are set in front of my doors all winter. Five or six men shad there regularly, but they elude all demands, and I rarely eat a shad, as they are too great a luxury for me to buy unless I have company; they are like the wild ducks which swarm in the rice fields at night in the winter, "so near and yet so far."

After much thought and uncertainty I decided to give the keys to Nat; he is willing and knows all the sheep and cattle well, and on the whole is the best one on the place. It is a mere form, for there is nothing left in the barn, but Nat is very proud and happy and the other men very sulky.

January 12.

Cæsar came up from Casa Bianca with Jonas and King to say they could not stand Nat as head man and to indicate that he, Cæsar, was the man for the place. I said to them: "Do you know why I chose Nat? I looked over my book and found he was the only man who for years has paid his debts to me. Every one else on the place has borrowed money when in distress, or got a cow from me on time and left the debt hanging, in spite of my reminding them from time to time that I needed the money; but every time Nat has borrowed money from me or bought an ox he has paid up promptly as soon as his crop came in. Now, this shows fidelity and honesty, and, therefore, I have given the keys to Nat, and if you do not like it you can all leave."