Unfortunately many negroes when deprived of alcohol began to use drugs, such as cocaine, and the effect morally and physically was worse than that of liquor. The "coke fiend" became a familiar sight in the police courts of Southern cities, and the underground traffic in the drug is still a serious problem. The new Federal law has helped to control the evil, but both cocaine and alcohol are still sold to negroes, sometimes by pedlars of their own race, sometimes by unscrupulous white men. The consumption of both is less, however, than before the restrictive legislation. The South has traveled far from its old opposition to sumptuary laws. Like State Rights, this principle is only invoked when convenient. Starting largely as a movement to keep whiskey from the negro and, to a somewhat less extent, from the white laborer, prohibition has become popular. On the whole it has worked well in the South though "moonshining" is undoubtedly increasing. The enormous price eagerly paid for whiskey in the "bone-dry" States has led to a revival of the illicit distillery, which had been almost stamped out.
[CHAPTER IV.]
The Farmer and the Land
The end of Reconstruction found the tenant system and the "crop lien" firmly fastened upon the South. The plantation system had broken down since the owner no longer had slaves to work his land, capital to pay wages, or credit on which to borrow the necessary funds. Many of the great plantations had already been broken up and sold, while others, divided into tracts of convenient size, had been rented to white or negro tenants. What had been one plantation became a dozen farms, a score, or even more. Men who owned smaller tracts found it difficult to hire or to keep labor, and many retained only the land which they or their sons could work and rented the remainder of their farms. This system is still characteristic of Southern agriculture.
Few of the landless whites and practically none of the negroes had sufficient money reserve to maintain themselves for a year and hence no capital to apply to the land on which they were tenants. Yet the land was there ready to produce, the labor was there, more or less willing to work if it could but live while the crop was growing. The country merchant had already assumed the office of banker to the tenant farmer, and this position he still holds in spite of all efforts to dislodge him. His customers include not only tenants but some landowners, white or black. They buy from him, during the months before the crop is gathered, the food, clothing, and other supplies necessary for existence, and as many simple luxuries as he will permit. When the crops are gathered, he buys them, or at least the share of them belonging to the tenant, subtracts the store accounts, and turns over the surplus, if any, to the farmers.
Unlike other bankers, the merchant charges no interest upon the capital he advances, but he is paid nevertheless. For every pound of bacon, meal, and flour, for every gallon of molasses, for every yard of cloth, for every plug of tobacco or tin of snuff which the customer consumes during the spring and summer, an advanced price is charged to him on the merchant's books. With thousands of these merchants selling to hundreds of thousands of farmers over a wide area, it is of course impossible to state the average difference between credit and cash prices. Investigations made in different sections show a wide variation depending upon custom, competition, the reliability and industry of the customer, the amount of advances, and the length of credit. Since a large part of the advances are made during the six, or even four months before the crops are gathered, the difference between cash and credit prices amounts often to an interest charge of forty to one hundred per cent or even more a year. These advanced credit prices, and consequently the high interest rates, may be paid not only upon food, clothing, and other personal goods, but also, occasionally, upon tools, farming implements, fertilizers, and work animals.
The merchant is supposed to be protected against loss by the institution of the crop lien and the chattel mortgage. By one or the other of these the farmer is enabled to mortgage his growing, or even his unplanted crops, his farming implements, his cattle, and horses, if he owns them. If he is a landowner, the land may be included in a mortgage as additional security. The crop is conveyed to the mortgagee as in an ordinary land mortgage, and the tenant cannot hold back his crop for a better price, or seek a better market for any part of it, until all his obligations have been settled. Disposing of mortgaged property is a serious offense and no one not desirous of abetting fraud will buy property which he has reason to suspect has been mortgaged. As a result of this system in some sections, years ago, nine-tenths of the farmers were in debt. Undoubtedly the prices credited for the crops have been less than might have been obtained in a market absolutely free. If the crops a farmer raises bring less than the advances, the balance is carried over to the next year and no other merchant will give credit to a man whose accounts with his former creditor are not clear. In the past the signing of one of these legal instruments has often reduced the farmer to a state of peonage.
Naturally the merchant who has begun to extend credit, sometimes before the seed is in the ground, has a voice in deciding what crops shall be planted. The favorite crops in the past have been tobacco and cotton, particularly the latter. Both contain comparatively large value in small bulk; both can be stored conveniently, with little danger of deterioration; neither is liable to a total failure; a ready market for both is always available; and neither tempts the thief until it is ripe. Only winter wheat, sown in the fall and reaped in early summer, is grown in the South, and the crop is somewhat uncertain. A tenant who has secured advances on a crop of wheat during the fall and winter may easily move to an adjoining county or State in the spring and plant cotton there. Half a crop of corn may easily be stolen, eaten by animals, or consumed by the tenant while still green. A further reason for not encouraging the production of corn and wheat is the profit the merchant makes by the sale of imported flour, meal, and bacon. Cotton is therefore almost the only product of sections admirably suited to the growing of corn or to the raising of hogs. The country merchant has helped to keep the South poor.
Yet in spite of the apparently exorbitant percentage of profit, few country merchants become rich. In a year of drouth, or of flood, many of their debtors may not be able to pay their accounts, even though their intentions are of the best. Others may prove shiftless and neglect their fields. Still others may be deliberately dishonest and, after getting as large advances as possible, abandon their crops leaving both the landowner and the merchant in the lurch. These creditors must then either attempt to harvest the crop by hired labor, with the hope of reducing their loss, or else charge the whole to profit and loss. The illness or death of the debtor may also prevent the proper cultivation of the crop he has planted. For these different reasons every country merchant is likely to accumulate many bad debts which may finally throw him into bankruptcy. Those who succeed are exceptionally shrewd or very fortunate.