CHAPTER XXII
REORGANIZATION OF THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM
Break-up of the Ante-bellum System
The cotton planter of the South, the master of many negro slaves, organized a very efficient slave labor system. Each plantation was an industrial community almost independent of the outside world; the division of labor was minute, each servant being assigned a task suited to his or her strength and training. Nothing but the most skilful management could save a planter from ruin, for, though the labor was efficient, it was very costly. The value of an overseer was judged by the general condition, health, appearance, and manners of the slaves; the amount of work done with the least punishment; the condition of stock, buildings, and plantation; and the size of the crops. All supplies were raised on the plantation,—corn, bacon, beef, and other food-stuffs; farm implements and harness were made and repaired by the skilled negroes in rainy weather when no outdoor work could be done; clothes were cut out in the “big house” and made by the negro women under the direction of the mistress. The skilled laborers were blacks. Work was usually done by tasks, and industrious negroes were able to complete their daily allotment and have three or four hours a day to work in their own gardens and “patches.” They often earned money at odd jobs, and the church records show that they contributed regularly. Negro children were trained in the arts of industry and in sobriety by elderly negroes of good judgment and firm character, usually women.[2028] Children too young to work were cared for by a competent mammy in the plantation nursery while their parents were in the fields.
In the Black Belt there was little hiring of extra labor and less renting of land. Except on the borders, nearly all whites were of the planting class. Their greater wealth had enabled them to outbid the average farmer and secure the rich lands of the black prairies, cane-brakes, and river bottoms. The small farmer who secured a foothold in the Black Belt would find himself in a situation not altogether pleasant, and, selling out to the nearest planter, would go to poorer and cheaper land in the hills and pine woods, where most of the people were white.
In the Black Belt cotton was largely a surplus money crop, and once the labor was paid for, the planter was a very rich man.[2029] In the white counties of the cotton states about the same crops were raised as in the Black Belt, but the land was less fertile and the methods of cultivation less skilful. In the richer parts of these white counties there was something of the plantation system with some negro labor. But slavery gradually drove white labor to the hill and mountain country, the sand and pine barrens. No matter how poor a white man was, he was excessively independent in spirit and wanted to work only his own farm. This will account for the lack of renters and hired white laborers in black or in white districts, and also for the fact that the less fertile land was taken up by the whites who desired to be their own employers. Land was cheap, and any man could purchase it. There was some renting of land in the white counties, and the form it took was that now known as “third and fourth.”[2030] It was then called “shares.” There was little or no tenancy “on halves” or “standing rent.” But the average farmer worked his own land, often with the help of from three to ten slaves.
On the borders of the Black Belt in Alabama dwelt a peculiar class called “squatters.” They settled down with or without permission on lots of poor and waste land, built cabins, cleared “patches,” and made a precarious living by their little crops, by working as carpenters, blacksmiths, etc. Some bought small lots of land on long-time payments and never paid for them, but simply stayed where they were. In the edge of the Black Belt in the busy season were found numbers of white hired men working alongside of negro slaves,[2031] for there was no prejudice against manual labor, that is, no more than anywhere else in the world.[2032]
As soon as the war was over the first concern of the returning soldiers was to obtain food to relieve present wants and to secure supplies to last until a crop could be made. In the white counties of the state the situation was much worse than in the Black Belt. The soil of the white counties was less fertile; the people were not wealthy before the war, and during the war they had suffered from the depredations of the enemy and from the operation of the tax-in-kind, which bore heavily upon them when they had nothing to spare. The white men went to the war and there were only women, children, and old men to work the fields. The heaviest losses among the Alabama Confederate troops were from the ranks of the white county soldiers. In these districts there was destitution after the first year of the war, and after 1862 from one-fourth to one-half of the soldiers’ families received aid from the state. The bountiful Black Belt furnished enough for all, but transportation facilities were lacking. At the close of hostilities the condition of the people in the poorer regions was pitiable. Stock, fences, barns, and in many cases dwellings had disappeared; the fields were grown up in weeds; and no supplies were available. How the people managed to live was a mystery. Some walked twenty miles to get food, and there were cases of starvation. No seeds and no farm implements were to be had. The best work of the Freedmen’s Bureau was done in relieving these people from want until they could make a crop.