The white districts, which had previously fought a losing competition with the efficiently managed and inexpensive slave labor of the Black Belt, were affected most disastrously by war and its aftermath. They were distant from transportation lines and markets; they employed poor farming methods; they had no fertilizers; they raised no staple crops on their infertile land; and in addition they now had to face the destitution that follows fighting. Yet these regions had formerly been almost self-supporting, although the farms were small and no elaborate labor system had been developed.
In the planting districts where the owner was land-poor he made an attempt to bring in Northern capital and Northern or foreign labor. In the belief that the negroes would work better for a Northern man, every planter who could do so secured a Northern partner or manager, frequently a soldier. Nevertheless these imported managers nearly always failed because they did not understand cotton, rice, or sugar planting, and because they were either too severe or too easy upon the blacks.
No Northern labor was to be had, and the South could not retain even all its own native whites. Union soldiers and others seeking to better their prospects moved west and northwest to fill the newly opened lands, while the Confederates, kept out of the homestead region by the test oath, swarmed into Texas, which owned its own public lands, or went North to other occupations. Nor could the desperate planters hire foreign immigrants. Several States, among them South Carolina, Alabama, and Louisiana, advertised for laborers and established labor bureaus, but without avail. The negro politicians in 1867 declared themselves opposed to all movements to foster immigration. So in the Black Belt the negro had, for forty years, a monopoly of farm labor.
The share system of tenantry, with its attendant evils of credit and crop lien, was soon established in the Southern States, mainly in the Black Belt, but to some extent also in the white districts. The landlord furnished land, house, fuel, water, and all or a part of the seed, fertilizer, farm implements, and farm animals. In return he received a "half," or a "third and fourth," his share depending upon how much he had furnished. The best class of tenants would rent for cash or a fixed rental, the poorest laborers would work for wages only.
The "privileges" brought over from slavery, which were included in the share renting, astonished outside observers. To the laborer was usually given a house, a water supply, wood for fuel, pasture for pigs or cows, a "patch" for vegetables and fruit, and the right to hunt and fish. These were all that some needed in order to live. Somers, the English traveler already quoted, pronounced this generous custom "outrageously absurd," for the negroes had so many privileges that they refused to make use of their opportunities. "The soul is often crushed out of labor by penury and oppression," he said, "but here a soul cannot begin to be infused into it through the sheer excess of privilege and license with which it is surrounded."
The credit system which was developed beside the share system made a bad condition worse. On the 1st of January, a planter could mortgage his future crop to a merchant or landlord in exchange for subsistence until the harvest. Since, as a rule, neither tenant nor landlord had any surplus funds, the latter would be supplied by the banker or banker merchant, who would then dictate the crops to be planted and the time of sale. As a result of these conditions, the planter or farmer was held to staple crops, high prices for necessities, high interest rate, and frequently unfair bookkeeping. The system was excellent for a thrifty, industrious, and intelligent man, for it enabled him to get a start. It worked to the advantage of a bankrupt landlord, who could in this way get banking facilities. But it had a mischievous effect upon the average tenant, who had too small a share of the crop to feel a strong sense of responsibility as well as too many "privileges" and too little supervision to make him anxious to produce the best results.
The negroes entered into their freedom with several advantages: they were trained to labor; they were occupying the most fertile soil and could purchase land at low prices; the tenant system was most liberal; cotton, sugar, and rice were bringing high prices; and access to markets was easy. In the white districts land was cheap, and prices of commodities were high, but otherwise the negroes seemed to have the better position. Yet as early as 1870, keen observers called attention to the fact that the hill and mountain whites were thriving as compared with their former condition, and that the negroes were no longer their serious competitors. In the white districts better methods were coming into use, labor was steady, fertilizers were used, and conditions of transportation were improving. The whites were also encroaching on the Black Belt; they were opening new lands in the Southwest; and within the border of the Black Belt they were bringing negro labor under some control. In the South Carolina rice lands, crowds of Irish were imported to do the ditching which the negroes refused to do and were carried back North when the job was finished. ¹ President Thach of the Alabama Agricultural College has thus described the situation:
By the use of commercial fertilizers, vast regions once considered barren have been brought into profitable cultivation, and really afford a more reliable and constant crop than the rich alluvial lands of the old slave plantations. In nearly every agricultural county in the South there is to be observed, on the one hand, this section of fertile soils, once the heart of the old civilization, now abandoned by the whites, held in tenantry by a dense negro population, full of dilapidation and ruin; while on the other hand, there is the region of light, thin soils, occupied by the small white freeholder, filled with schools, churches, and good roads, and all the elements of a happy, enlightened country life.
¹ The Census of 1880 gave proof of the superiority of the whites in cotton production. For purposes of comparison the cotton area may be divided into three regions: first, the Black Belt, in which the farmers were black, the soil fertile, the plantations large, the credit evil at its worst, and the yield of cotton per acre the least; second, the white districts, where the soil was the poorest, the farms small, the workers nearly all white, and the yield per acre better than on the fertile Black Belt lands; third, the regions in which the races were nearly equal in numbers or where the whites were in a slight majority, with soil of medium fertility, good methods of agriculture, and, owing to better controlled labor, the best yield. In other words, negroes, fertile soil, and poor crops went together; and on the other hand the whites got better crops on less fertile soil. The Black Belt has never again reached the level of production it had in 1860. But the white district kept improving slowly.
All the systems devised for handling negro labor proved to be only partially successful. The laborer was migratory, wanted easy work, with one or two holidays a week, and the privilege of attending political meetings, camp meetings, and circuses. A thrifty negro could not make headway because his fellows stole from him or his less energetic relations and friends visited him and ate up his substance. One Alabama planter declared that he could not raise a turkey, a chicken, a hog, or a cow; and another asserted that "a hog has no more chance to live among these thieving negro farmers than a June bug in a gang of puddle ducks." Lands were mortgaged to the supply houses in the towns, the whites gradually deserted the country, and many rice and cotton fields grew up in weeds. Crop stealing at night became a business which no legislation could ever completely stop.