[2070] Address of President C. C. Thach, Dec. 29, 1903.

[2071] “Northern Alabama Illustrated,” p. 378; see article on “Immigration to the Southern States” in the Political Science Quarterly, June, 1905.

[2072] Address of President C. C. Thach, Dec. 29, 1903.

[2073] The decreasing value of the wage laborer is shown by the following table of wages:

YearMenWomenYouths, 14-20
1860$138$89$66
1865-1866150-200100-15075-100
18671177152
1868875040
189015010060-75

The figures of 1860 are based on the wages of an able-bodied negro. The statistics of 1865-1866 are taken from tables of wages prescribed by the Freedmen’s Bureau; those for 1867 and 1868 show the decline caused by the inefficiency of the free negro laborer. Yet the demand for labor was always greater than the supply. In 1860 clothing and rations were also given; in 1866-1868 rations and no clothing. In 1890 nothing was furnished. In 1866-1868 the currency was inflated, and the wages for 1868 were really much lower. Hammond, “The Cotton Industry,” p. 124; Montgomery Mail, May 16, 1865; Freedmen’s Bureau Reports, 1865-1870.

[2074] A convention held in Montgomery, in 1873, recommended that the share system be abolished and a contract wage system be inaugurated; wages should be secured by a lien on the employer’s crop; separate contracts should be made with each laborer, and the “squad” system abolished. In this way the laborer would not be responsible for bad crops. To aid the laborers, Congress was asked to pass the Sumner Civil Rights Bill, providing for the recognition of certain social rights for negroes, to exempt homesteads from tax action, and to increase the tax on property held by speculators. And the President was asked to supply bread and meat to the negro farmers. Annual Cyclopædia (1873), p. 19; Tuscaloosa Blade, Nov. 30, 1873.

[2075] See Willet, “Workers of the Nation,” Vol. II, pp. 701, 702.

[2076] Willet, Vol. II, p. 714.

[2077] Washington, in Atlantic Monthly, Vol. LXXVIII, pp. 324-326.