Following the Color Line — In the Black Belt: The Negro Farmer - part 2

_Troubles of the Landlord_ Planters told me of all sorts of difficulties they had to meet with their tenants.

One of them, after he had spent a whole evening telling me of the troubles which confronted any man who tried to work Negroes, summed it all up with the remark: "You've just got to make up your mind that you are dealing with children, and handle them as firmly and kindly as you know how."

He told me how hard it was to get a Negro tenant even in the busy season to work a full week--and it was often only by withholding the weekly food allowance that it could be done.

Saturday afternoon (or "evening," as they say in the South) the Negro goes to town or visits his friends.

Often he spends all day Sunday driving about the country and his mule comes back so worn out that it cannot be used on Monday.

There are often furious religious revivals which break into the work, to say nothing of "frolics" and fish suppers at which the Negroes often remain all night long.

Many of them are careless with their tools, wasteful of supplies, irresponsible in their promises.

One planter told me how he had built neat fences around the homes of his Negroes, and fixed up their houses to encourage them in thrift and give them more comfort, only to have the fences and even parts of the houses used for firewood.

Toward fall, if the season has been bad, and the crop of cotton is short, so short that a Negro knows that he will not be able to "pay out" and have anything left for himself, he will sometimes desert the plantation entirely, leaving the cotton unpicked and a large debt to the landlord.

If he attempts that, however, he must get entirely away, else the planter will chase him down and bring him back to his work.

Illiterate, without discipline or training, with little ambition and much indolence, a large proportion of Negro tenants are looked after and driven like children or slaves.

I say "a large proportion"--but there are thousands of industrious Negro landowners and tenants who are rapidly getting ahead--as I shall show in my next chapter.

In this connection it is a noteworthy fact that a considerable number of the white tenants require almost as much attention as the Negroes, though they are, of course, treated in an entirely different way.

One planter in Alabama said to me: "Give me Negroes every time.

I wouldn't have a low-down white tenant on my place.

You can get work out of any Negro if you know how to handle him;

but there are some white men who won't work and can't be driven, because they are white."

_Race Troubles in the Country_ In short, when slavery was abolished it gave place to a sort of feudal tenantry system which continues widely to-day.

And it has worked with comparative satisfaction, at least to the landlords, until within the last few years, when the next step in the usual evolution of human society--industrial and urban development--began seriously to disturb the feudal equilibrium of the cotton country.

It was a curious idea--human enough--that men should attempt to legislate slaves immediately into freedom.

But nature takes her own methods of freeing slaves; they are slower than men's ways, but more certain.

The change now going on in the South from the feudal agricultural life to sharpened modern conditions has brought difficulties for the planter compared with which all others pale into insignificance.

I mean the scarcity of labour.

Industry is competing with agriculture for the limited supply of Negro workers.

Negroes, responding to exactly the same natural laws that control the white farmers, have been moving cityward, entering other occupations, migrating west or north--where more money is to be made.

Agricultural wages have therefore gone up and rents, relatively, have gone down, and had the South not been blessed for several years with wonderful returns from its monopoly crop, there might have been a more serious crisis.

_Cry of the South: "More Labour"_ If the South to-day could articulate its chief need, we should hear a single great shout: "More labour!"

Out of this struggle for tenants, servants, and workers has grown the chief complications of the Negro problem--and I am not forgetting race prejudice, or the crimes against women.

Indeed, it has seemed to me that the chief difficulty in understanding the Negro problem lies in showing how much of the complication in the South is due to economic readjustments and how much to instinctive race repulsion or race prejudice.

_A Tenant Stealer_ In one town I visited--not Hawkinsville--I was standing talking with some gentlemen in the street when I saw a man drive by in a buggy.

"Do you see that man?"

they asked me.

I nodded.

"Well, he is the greatest tenant-stealer in this country."

I heard a good deal about these "tenant stealers."

A whole neighbourhood will execrate one planter who, to keep his land cultivated, will lure away his neighbours' Negroes.

Sometimes he will offer more wages, sometimes he will give the tenants better houses to live in, and sometimes he succeeds by that sheer force of a masterful personality which easily controls an ignorant tenantry.

I found, moreover, that there was not only a struggle between individual planters for Negro tenants, but between states and sections.

Many of the old farms in South Carolina and Alabama have been used so long that they require a steady and heavy annual treatment of fertiliser, with the result that cotton growing costs more than it does in the rich alluvial lands of Mississippi, or the newer regions of Arkansas and Texas.

The result is that the planters of the West, being able to pay more wages and give the tenants better terms, lure away the Negroes of the East.

Georgia and other states have met this competitive disadvantage in the usual way in which such disadvantages, when first felt but not fully understood, are met, by counteracting legislation.

Georgia has made the most stringent laws to keep her Negroes on the land.

The Georgian code (Section 601) says: Any person who shall solicit or procure emigrants, or shall attempt to do so, without first procuring a licence as required by law, shall be guilty of a misdemeanour.

Ex-Congressman William H. Fleming, one of the ablest statesmen of Georgia, said: "Land and other forms of capital cannot spare the Negro and will not give him up until a substitute is found.

His labour is worth millions upon millions.

In Georgia we now make it a crime for anyone to solicit emigrants without taking out a licence, and then we make the licence as nearly prohibitive as possible.

One of the most dangerous occupations for any one to follow in this state would be that of an emigrant agent--as some have found by experience."

In this connection I have an account published in April, 1907, in an Augusta newspaper of just such a case: The heaviest fine given in the city court of Richmond County within the last two years was imposed upon E. F.

Arnett yesterday morning.

He was sentenced to pay a fine of one thousand dollars or serve six months in the county jail.

Arnett was convicted of violating the state emigration laws regarding the carrying of labour out of the state.

He was alleged to have employed thirteen Negroes to work on the Georgia and Atlantic Railroad, which operates in this state and Alabama.

The jury on the case returned a verdict of guilty when court convened yesterday, although it had been reported that a mistrial was probable.

_"Peg Leg" Williams_ A famous railroad emigration agent called "Peg Leg" Williams, who promoted Negro emigration from Georgia to Mississippi and Texas a few years ago, was repeatedly prosecuted and finally driven out of business.

In a letter which he wrote some time ago to the Atlanta _Constitution_ he said: I know of several counties not a hundred miles from Atlanta where it's more than a man's life is worth to go in to get Negroes to move to some other state.

There are farmers that would not hesitate to shoot their brother were he to come from Mississippi to get "his niggers," as he calls them, even though he had no contract with them.

I know personally numbers of Negro men who have moved West and after accumulating a little, return to get a brother, sister, or an old father or mother, and they were compelled to return without them, their lives being imperilled; they had to leave and leave quick.

In view of such a feeling it may be imagined how futile is the talk of the deportation of the Negro race.

What the Southern planter wants to-day is not fewer Negroes but more Negroes--Negroes who will "keep their place."

_Laws to Make the Negro Work_ Many other laws have been passed in the Southern states which are designed to keep the Negro on the land, and having him there, to make him work.

The contract law, the abuses of which lead to peonage and debt slavery, is an excellent example--which I shall discuss more fully in the next chapter.

The criminal laws, the chain-gang system, and the hiring of Negro convicts to private individuals are all, in one way or another, devices to keep the Negro at work on farms, in brick-yards and in mines.

The vagrancy laws, not unlike those of the North and excellent in their purpose, are here sometimes executed with great severity.

In Alabama the last legislature passed a law under which a Negro arrested for vagrancy must prove that he is not a vagrant.

In short, the old rule of law that a man is innocent until proved guilty is here reversed for the Negro so that the burden of proving that he is not guilty of vagrancy rests upon him, not upon the state.

The last Alabama legislature also passed a stringent game law, one argument in its favour being that by preventing the Negro from pot-hunting it would force him to work more steadily in the cotton fields.

_Race Hatred Versus Economic Necessity_ One of the most significant things I saw in the South--and I saw it everywhere--was the way in which the white people were torn between their feeling of race prejudice and their downright economic needs.

Hating and fearing the Negro as a race (though often loving individual Negroes), they yet want him to work for them; they can't get along without him.

In one impulse a community will rise to mob Negroes or to drive them out of the country because of Negro crime or Negro vagrancy, or because the Negro is becoming educated, acquiring property and "getting out of his place"; and in the next impulse laws are passed or other remarkable measures taken to keep him at work--because the South can't get along without him.

From the Atlanta _Georgian_ I cut recently a letter which well illustrates the way in which racial hatred clashes with economic necessity.

TROUBLES OF COUNTRY FOLK

But aren't there two sides to every question?

Here we are out here in the country, right in the midst of hundreds of Negroes, and do you know, sir, that all this talk about lynching and ku-kluxing is frightening the farm hands to such an extent we begin to fear that soon the farmers will sustain a great loss of labour, by their running away?

Already it is beginning to have its effect.

After night the Negroes are afraid to leave their farm to go anywhere on errands of business.

Why, sir, two miles from this town, the Negroes are afraid to come here to trade at night.

The country merchants are feeling the force of it very sorely, and if this foolishness isn't stopped their losses in fall trade will be very heavy.

Even some of the ladies of our community are complaining of this rashness.

That it is demoralising the labour in the home department.

So in conclusion, in behalf of my community and other country communities, I feel it my duty to raise a warning voice against all such new foolish ku-kluxism.

Mableton, Ga.

T.

J.

LOWE.

While I was in Georgia a case came up which threw a flood of light upon the inner complexities of this problem.

In the county of Habersham in North Georgia the population is largely of the type known as "poor white"--the famous mountain folk who were never slave-owners and many of whom fought in the Union army during the Civil War.

Habersham is one of the "white counties" which is growing whiter.

It has about 2,000 Negroes and 12,000 whites--many of the latter having come in from the North to grow peaches and raise sheep.

One of the Negroes of Habersham County was Frank Grant, described by a white neighbour as "a Negro of good character, a property owner, setting an example of thrift and honesty that ought to have made his example a benefit to any community."

Grant had saved money from his labour and bought a home.

He was such a good worker that people were willing sometimes to pay him twice the wages of the average labourer, white or black.

On the night of December 16, 1906, the Negro's house was fired into by a party of white men who then went to the house of his tenant, Henry Scism, also a Negro, and shot promiscuously around Scism's house, and warned him to leave the country in one week, threatening him with severe penalties if he did not go.

As a result Grant had to sell out his little home, won after such hard work, and he and his tenant Scism with their families both fled the county.

"In Grant," said his white neighbour, "the county lost a capable labourer--in its present situation, a most valuable asset--and a good citizen."

Here, then, we have race hatred versus economic necessity.

The important citizens and employers of Habersham County came to Atlanta and presented a petition to Governor Terrell, January 18, 1907, as follows: TO HIS EXCELLENCY, J.

M. TERRELL,

GOVERNOR OF GEORGIA, ATLANTA:

Whereas, on the night of December 16, 1906, parties unknown came to the quiet home of one Frank Grant, coloured, a citizen of this county, and shot into his residence, and then went to the home of Henry Scism, coloured, a tenant of said Frank Grant, and shot promiscuously around his (the said Scism's) house, and demanded of him to leave the county under severe penalty.

This has caused the tenant, Henry Scism, to leave, and Frank Grant to sell his little house at a sacrifice and leave.

It comes to us that Frank Grant is a quiet, innocent, hard-working citizen.

Therefore, we, the undersigned officers and citizens of Habersham County, Georgia, pray you to offer a liberal reward for the arrest and conviction or these unknown parties--say for the first and for each succeeding one.

(Signed) C. W.

GRANT,

_County School Commissioner_.

J.

A.

ERWIN CLERK, S.

C.

, M.

FRANKLIN, Ordinary J.

D. HILL, T.

C. H.

C.

But, of course, nothing could be done that would keep the Negroes on the land under such conditions.

_Why Negroes Are Driven Out_ What does it all mean?

Listen to the explanation given by a prominent white man of Habersham County--not to me--but to the Atlanta _Georgian_, where it was published: "It is not a problem of Negro labour, because there is little of that kind there.

The white labour will not work for the fruit growers at prices they can afford, even when it is a good fruit year.

Often they decline to work at any price.

They have many admirable qualities; among them is a spirit of pride and independence, which, rightly directed, would uplift and make them prosperous, but which misguided and blind, as it sometimes is, keeps them in poverty and puts the region in which they live at great disadvantage.

"Landowners and employers, native, and new, are indignant but helpless.

They are in the power of the shiftless element of the whites, who say, 'I will work or not, as I please, and when I please, and at my own price; and I will not have Negroes taking my work away from me.'

This is not a race question, pure and simple; it is an industrial question, a labour issue, not confined to one part of the country."

Here, it will be observed, the same complaint is made against the "poor white" as against the Negro--that he is shiftless and that he won't work even for high wages.

Generally speaking, the race hatred in the South comes chiefly from the poorer class of whites who either own land which they work themselves or are tenant farmers in competition with Negroes and from politicians who seek to win the votes of this class of white men.

The larger landowners and employers of labour, while they do not love the Negro, want him to work and work steadily, and will do almost anything to keep him on the land--so long as he is a faithful, obedient, unambitious worker.

When he becomes prosperous, or educated, or owns land, many white people no longer "have any use for him" and turn upon him with hostility, but the best type of the Southern white men is not only glad to see the Negro become a prosperous and independent farmer but will do much to help him.

_Vivid Illustration of Race Feeling_ I have had innumerable illustrations of the extremes to which race feeling reaches among a certain class of Southerners.

In a letter to the Atlanta _Constitution_, November 5, 1906, a writer who signs himself Mark Johnson, says: The only use we have for the Negro is as a labourer.

It is only as such that we need him; it is only as such that we can use him.

If the North wants to take him and educate him we will bid him godspeed and contribute to his education if schools are located on the other side of the line.

And here are extracts from a remarkable letter from a Southern white working man signing himself Forrest Pope and published in the Atlanta _Georgian_, October 22, 1906: When the skilled negro appears and begins to elbow the white man in the struggle for existence, don't you know the white man rebels and won't have it so?

If you don't it won't take you long to find it out;

just go out and ask a few of them, those who tell you the whole truth, and see what you will find out about it.

_What Is the Negro's Place?

_ All the genuine Southern people like the Negro as a servant, and so long as he remains the hewer of wood and carrier of water, and remains strictly in what we choose to call his place, everything is all right, but when ambition, prompted by real education, causes the Negro to grow restless and he bestir himself to get out of that servile condition, then there is, or at least there will be, trouble, sure enough trouble, that all the great editors, parsons and philosophers can no more check than they can now state the whole truth and nothing but the truth, about this all-absorbing, far-reaching miserable race question.

There are those among Southern editors and other public men who have been shouting into the ears of the North for twenty-five years that education would solve the Negro question; there is not an honest, fearless, thinking man in the South but who knows that to be a bare-faced lie.

Take a young Negro of little more than ordinary intelligence, even, get hold of him in time, train him thoroughly as to books, and finish him up with a good industrial education, send him out into the South with ever so good intentions both on the part of his benefactor and himself, send him to take my work away from me and I will kill him.

[Illustration: COMPANION PICTURES Old and new cabins for Negro tenants on the Brown plantation] The writer says in another part of this remarkable letter, giving as it does a glimpse of the bare bones of the economic struggle for existence: I am, I believe, a typical Southern white workingman of the skilled variety, and I'll tell the whole world, including Drs.

Abbott and Eliot, that I don't want any educated property-owning Negro around me.

The Negro would be desirable to me for what I could get out of him in the way of labour that I don't want to have to perform myself, and I have no other uses for him.

_Who Will Do the Dirty Work?

_ One illustration more and I am through.

I met at Montgomery, Alabama, a lawyer named Gustav Frederick Mertins.

We were discussing the "problem," and Mr. Mertins finally made a striking remark, not at all expressing the view that I heard from some of the strongest citizens of Montgomery, but excellently voicing the position of many Southerners.

"It's a question," he said, "who will do the dirty work.

In this country the white man won't: the Negro must.

There's got to be a mudsill somewhere.

If you educate the Negroes they won't stay where they belong;

and you must consider them as a race, because if you let a few rise it makes the others discontented."

Mr. Mertins presented me with a copy of his novel called "The Storm Signal," in which he further develops the idea (p. 342): The Negro is the mudsill of the social and industrial South to-day.

Upon his labour in the field, in the forest, and in the mine, the whole structure rests.

Slip the mudsill out and the system must be reorganised....

Educate him and he quits the field.

Instruct him in the trades and sciences and he enters into active competition with the white man in what are called the higher planes of life.

That competition brings on friction, and that friction in the end means the Negroe's undoing.

Is not this mudsill stirring to-day, and is not that the deep reason for many of the troubles in the South--and in the North as well, where the Negro has appeared in large numbers?

The friction of competition has arrived, and despite the demand for justice by many of the best class of the Southern whites, the struggle is certainly of growing intensity.

And out of this economic struggle of whites and blacks grows an ethical struggle far more significant.

It is the struggle of the white man with himself.

How shall he, who is supreme in the South as in the North, treat the Negro?

That is the _real_ struggle!

CHAPTER V RACE RELATIONSHIPS IN THE SOUTH