the colored laborer and the poor white. The profit to be delivered from such an occupation, in which total ignorance had to compete with panoplied intelligence, soon caused numerous small merchants. . to set up small stores on every plantation. cultivated. In most instances the merchant was also landlord, and in this combination commenced a system of usury, unrivalled by the Jews of Lombardy in ancient times. The poor, ignorant colored and white man, renting small farms and relying on the merchant for advances to make his crop, were and still are compelled to pay the exorbitant interest, frequently of fifty per cent and not unusually of seventy or ninety per cent. A coat which cost the merchant one dollar, was frequently sold for two; a pound of meat that cost six cents was sold for twelve; a hat which cost fifty cents was sold for $1.50; so likewise with shoes and other things. . . I have seen colored men who, having a large family, rent a small farm and take advances for a year to make a crop, and at the end of said year, after paying such debts to the merchant as were incurred in making said. crop, [do] not have money enough to buy a suit of clothing for any one of the family. I have also seen the taking of all the crop by the merchant, and also, the horse or mule and other chattels which were given as collateral security for the debt in making a crop in one year. The "Dead-Fall" Evil Henry D. Clayton, Charge to Barbour County, Alabama, Grand Jury, November 16, 1874. After the overthrow of the Reconstruction régime the "Sunset" law was enacted in most of the Southern states. It prohibited the purchase of produce after sunset unless complete records were kept. This broke up night sales of stolen produce. [1874] In addition to the causes already enumerated as having more or less affected the material condition of the State, the so-called "dead falls" are, in a great measure, responsible for the existing poverty. A "Dead-fall" is simply a small shop or store where for a few pounds of stolen cotton or a measure of corn, white thieves give whisky to black ones. All over Alabama, in sly nooks and corners, these places have been established, and the harm they are doing is almost beyond belief. Since the war the negroes have acquired an uncontrollable appetite for strong drink, and still believing that "what's massa's is mine," they have for years been in the habit of selling whatever of value they could steal without fear of detection, and from the proceeds buying whisky and tobacco. Some time after reconstruction [1868] in order to derive profit from this system of petty thievery, unprincipled men throughout the State established the stores mentioned. They receive any quantity of cotton or corn in exchange for bad spirits or poisonous candy, and . . encourage the negroes to steal as large quantities as they can secure. They give from four to five glasses of whisky for a bundle of cotton which is worth a dollar, and in this way many of them are making fortunes. The amount of loss to the planter cannot fail to reach as high as one-fifth per cent [20 per cent] of his entire crop. Most of the business of the "dead-falls" is done at night, and owing to the large tract of land which is covered with cotton it is almost impossible for the planters to throw any safeguard around their property. It Last winter [1873] a bill was introduced in the legislature which had for its object the breaking up of these stores. provided that wherever a shop was situated outside of the corporate limits of the cities the proprietor should keep an account of all articles brought to him for sale, the price paid for them, and the name of the seller. The passage of this bill was asked for by the best men in the State, but the so-called republican majority in the house denounced it as class legislation, the negroes were all opposed to it, and it was defeated, only two members of the assembly voting in favor of it. This harvest the "dead-fall" keepers are more numerous than ever before, and the loss of the farmer is proportionately great. One gentleman who lives near Snowden, this county, assures me that there has been no less than five bales of cotton stolen from him since he began picking. Other farmers make similar state I was told in Montgomery lately that a keeper of one of these dirty dead-falls at the opening of the cotton season came within a few hours of having the first bale of cotton in market! Thirty, forty and fifty bales of cotton in a season is a small crop for one of these one-horse doggeries, and I have heard, upon what I regarded as good authority, that one, within a short distance of this place, made eighty-three bales of cotton in one season, besides innumerable loads of corn and other produce. A Northern Estimate of Negro Industry Charles Nordhoff, The Cotton States in 1875, pp. 21, 107. Nordhoff traveled through Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and North Carolina. He was correspondent of the New York Herald. [1875] 1 THE system of planting on shares, which prevails in most of the cotton regions I have seen, appears to me admirable in every respect. It tends to make the laborer independent and self-helpful, by throwing him on his own resources. He gets the reward of his own skill and industry, and has the greatest motive to impel him to steadfast labor and self-denial. I have satisfied myself, too, that the black man gets, wherever I have been, a fair share of the crop he makes. If anywhere he suffers wrong, it is at the hands of poor farmers, who cultivate a thin soil, and are themselves poor and generally ignorant. It is a curious evidence of the real security of the negro, even in the rudest parts of the South, that some thousands of them have emigrated from Alabama and Georgia into the Yazoo bottom in Mississippi, and into the cotton regions of Arkansas and Louisiana parts of the South where, if we might believe the general reports which have been spread through the North, no negro's rights and life are safe. The black laborer earns enough, but he does not save his money. In the heart of the cotton country, a negro depending on his own labor alone, with the help of his wife in the picking season, may live and have from seventy-five to one hundred and twenty-five dollars clear money in hand at the close of the If he has several half-grown boys to help him in the field, he may support his family during the year, and have from one hundred and seventy-five to two hundred dollars clear season. 1. Most economists consider it a bad system. money at the year's end. Few laborers as ignorant as the average plantation negro can do as well anywhere in the world. Conditions in 1876 John C. Reed, The Old South and the New (pamphlet). permission of Mr. Reed. Used by [1876] THE great economical interest of the south is her agriculture; and in this industry, as well as among those who conduct it, a constant transition has been taking place during the ten years since emancipation. There is a melancholy change in the homes of landholders. . . The neat inclosures have fallen; the pleasant grounds and the flower-gardens. . are a waste. . Change at home is accompanied by still greater change without. The negroes and they constitute the great bulk of the laboring population tend to become a tenantry, cultivating the land, in some instances, for a part of the produce, but oftener for a fixed sum of money. Many of these realize from their labors little more than enough to pay a moderate rent. Others work for wages, either in money or in some portion of the crop made by their labor. As the negroes are scarce, and their labor so important, they have often, directly or indirectly, a voice in the area of land cultivated, the mode of cultivation, and the kind of crop raised. The result, in many places, is retrogression. . . Only a small part of the land, as compared with that tilled before the war, is under cultivation, the remainder becomes wild. . . Nearly every man of average business ability could control his slaves. . with little trouble; but it now requires far more than ordinary capacity to find and keep good tenants, to employ laborers amid the present scarcity, and to retain and make them remunerative when employed. The freedman is a different character from his former slave self, and is to be governed by different methods; and the true art of managing him is cabalism to many who were prosperous planters before the war. Multitudes of these show great despondency, for there have been thousands of failures among them... A new system is slowly developing, and can be plainly dis the colored laborer and the poor white. The profit to be delivered from such an occupation, in which total ignorance had to compete with panoplied intelligence, soon caused numerous small merchants. . to set up small stores on every plantation cultivated. In most instances the merchant was also landlord, and in this combination commenced a system of usury, unrivalled by the Jews of Lombardy in ancient times. The poor, ignorant colored and white man, renting small farms and rely ing on the merchant for advances to make his crop, were and still are compelled to pay the exorbitant interest, frequently of fifty per cent and not unusually of seventy or ninety per cent. A coat which cost the merchant one dollar, was frequently sold for two; a pound of meat that cost six cents was sold for twelve; a hat which cost fifty cents was sold for $1.50; so likewise with shoes and other things. . . I have seen colored men who, having a large family, rent a small farm and take advances for a year to make a crop, and at the end of said year, after paying such debts to the merchant as were incurred in making said crop, [do] not have money enough to buy a suit of clothing for any one of the family. I have also seen the taking of all the crop by the merchant, and also, the horse or mule and other chattels which were given as collateral security for the debt in making a crop in one year. The "Dead-Fall" Evil Henry D. Clayton, Charge to Barbour County, Alabama, Grand Jury, November 16, 1874. After the overthrow of the Reconstruction régime the "Sunset" law was enacted in most of the Southern states. It prohibited the purchase of produce after sunset unless complete records were kept. This broke up night sales of stolen produce. [1874] IN addition to the causes already enumerated as having more or less affected the material condition of the State, the so-called "dead falls" are, in a great measure, responsible for the existing poverty. A "Dead-fall" is simply a small shop or store where for a few pounds of stolen cotton or a measure of corn, white thieves give whisky to black ones. All over Alabama, in sly nooks and corners, these places have been established, and the harm they are doing is almost beyond belief. Since the war |