“Did you raise much last year?”
“I begun too late. Den de drought hit us bad. Heap of places didn’t raise much. But I got a little.”
Observing a strange looking thing of skin and bones standing in the weeds, I asked, “Is that a horse?”
“Dat’s a piece o’ one. When he gits tired, I can take my arms; I’ve good strong arms.”
Upon that one of the women struck in vehemently:
“I can plough land same as a hoss. Wid dese hands I raise cotton dis year, buy two hosses!”
Seeing the immense disadvantage under which these poor people labored, without teams, without capital, and even without security in the possession of their little homesteads, I urged them to consider well what the planters had to offer.
“If I contract, what good does my forty acres do me?”
“But you are not sure of your forty acres. This year or next they may be given back to the former owner. Then you will have nothing; for you will have spent all your time and strength in trying to get a start. But if you work for wages, you will have, if you are prudent, a hundred and fifty dollars in clear cash at the end of the year. At that rate it will not be long before you will be able to buy a little place and stock it handsomely; when you will probably be much better off than you would be working here in this way.”
I could see that this argument was not without its weight with the men. They appeared troubled by it, but not convinced. The women clamored against it, and almost made me feel that I was an enemy, giving them insidious ill advice. And when I saw the almost religious attachment of these people to their homes, and their hope and ambition bearing up resolutely against poverty and every discouragement, it would have caused me a pang of remorse to know that I had persuaded any of them to give up their humble but worthy and honest aims. Then the children came around us, carrying primers, out of which they read with pleased eagerness, either for the fun of the thing, or to show us what they could do. The parents, forgetting the disheartening words we had spoken, said cheerily, “Richard, Helen, time for school!” and the little ones scampered away; the older ones resumed their work, and we walked on.