“Are you farming elsewhere, Mr. Turpin?”
“No, suh, I have been wuking for several yeahs for the Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company, as their station agent at Coosa, but I was raised on a cotton plantation, and I know all about the wuk. I have two likely boys; one is twenty and the othah eighteen. My wife is a wohkah, and so is our daughtah. We all want to go on the old plantation and live thar.”
“Will $3,000 clear the land and stock it?”
“Yes, suh. It will buy us mules and fahm implements, and seed, and supply us with provisions and foddah, and pay the wages of such niggahs as we will hiah to help us.”
“How soon could you repay the $3,000.”
“Well, in the old times we could moh than pay it with one crap, but thar ain’t the money in cotton that thar used to be. Cotton is powerful low, I do allow.”
“And it costs more to raise it now than it did when you had slaves to work for you, does it not, Mr. Turpin?”
“Well, I allow that don’t make much diffahence, suh. I can hiah niggahs now for $16 a month, and they find their own keep, while befoh the wah we had to pay that much and moah, and feed them beside. The interest on the value of a good niggah then was nigh onto as much as we pay him now foh wages. The niggah don’t get much moah now than he did when he was in slavery. He just gets his keep and a few clothes: No, suh, I can raise cotton now cheaper than I could befoh the wah, but cotton kain’t be sold foh no such prices. Still, thar is some money in cotton, and my boys and I can pay off the $3,000 with interest, out of the profits on the craps, in three yeahs, and if we live powerful close mebbe we can do it in two yeahs.”
“Why do you not get the money you want from the bank at Huntsville?”
“Well, suh, I went thar before I kem yeah, and the kashyea thar tole me that they wah not fixed to make any but shote loans. He said as how they wah a nayshunal bank, and couldn’t loan money on land nohow, and he advised me to come heah, suh.”