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 ments. . . 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! cerned among the rubbish of the old. The change from former days most noticeable now is the multiplication, increased energy, and continually growing trade of the smaller towns. This is due to the decay of planting, which was a wholesale system, and the coming-in of farming, which is a small trading system using much less concentrated capital. The large moneyed man, for evident economical reasons, buys in com mercial centres in cities but the small purchaser must needs buy in the nearest market. Allowing for the great increase of farmers, and the control by the negroes of their earnings, there are many thousands more of small buyers in the south than there were before the war, and towns build up to sell to them. There is another fact, not so noticeable as the rapidly grow ing local trade, but still more important. A class of new planters, consisting mainly of [white] men too young to have be come fixed in the methods and habits of former days, is springing up... They have remodelled their domestic economy, accommodating it to their smaller incomes and to the uncer tainty of household help. They have discarded the outside kitchen, have substituted the cooking stove for the old voracious fireplace, and have brought the well with a pump in it, instead of the old windlass and bucket, under the roof of the dwelling, so that the household duties may be more easily despatched by their wives and children. And they have also remodelled their planting. They diversify their crops and products, raising more grain, and introducing clover and new forage plants. Some abandon entirely the cultivation of the old slave crops, and supply the nearest towns with feed and provisions. These planters of the New South till less land, and strive to improve it; they study the superiority and economy of machinery; they provide themselves with better cotton-gins, often using steam to work them; they have presses which require fewer hands than the old packing-screw; better plows are used; and harrows, reapers, and mowers, which, in many parts of the south, were seldom known before the war, are now common. . . They struggle with a new order of things, having to think for them selves at every turn, and often misstep and fall in the dark, but they pick themselves up, and find the way again. Cotton Production by Whites and Blacks E. A. Smith, Report on Cotton Production of the State of Alabama (census of 1880). It shows the relation between race and location and cotton production. The tendencies here outlined are the reverse of those prevailing before 1860 and have continued. [1880] THE central cotton belt is generally a region of large farms or plantations, in which the laborers are chiefly negroes, as seen in the tables. As a rule, these laborers do not own the land, have no interest in it beyond getting a crop from a portion of it, which they rent either for a sum of money or for a share of the crop, and are not interested in keeping up the fertility, at least not to the extent of being led to make any attempt at the permanent improvement of the same. In the case of the owner of the land, while the conditions are different, the result is the same. He is, of course, interested in the improvement of his land; but to supply the fertilizers for a large plantation, when he cultivates it by hired labor, would cost more than he usually has to expend, and where the share system, or that of renting, prevails he is still further removed from personal care of the land; and thus from all causes there is an exhaustive cultivation of the land, without any attempt at maintenance or restoration of its lost fertility. In addition to these, the system of advances or credit, so prevalent throughout the cotton-producing parts of the state, is not without its evil influence, for the laborer, and too often the owner of the land, is obliged to get advances of provisions from their merchants, for the payment of which the crop is mortgaged; and as cotton is the only crop which will always bring ready money, its planting is usually insisted on by the merchants making the advances and selected by the farmer as a means of providing for payment. In this way cotton comes to be the paramount crop, and there is little chance for rotation with other things. . In the other agricultural regions of the state, and in most of the counties also of the Tennessee and Coosa valleys, the farms are, as a rule, small, and cultivated by their owners, with the assistance of such labor as may be hired from time to time. In all these cases provisions are produced on the farm, and cotton is planted as a secondary crop. There is thus some chance for selection of the soils and for rotation of crops; and when a man cultivates his own farm fertilizers are in more general use, so that with the soils naturally much inferior to those of the main cotton-producing regions the average per acre is much higher in these regions of small cultivation. . . To recapitulate, the following conclusions seem, therefore, to be plainly taught by the discussion of the data contained in the tables presented: . . I. 1. That where the blacks are in excess of the whites there are the originally most fertile lands of the state. The natural advantages of the soils are, however, more than counterbalanced by the bad system prevailing in such sections, viz., large farms rented out in patches to laborers who are too poor and too much in debt to merchants to have any interest in keeping up the fertility of the soil, or rather the ability to keep it up, with the natural consequences of its rapid exhaustion and a product per acre on these, the best lands of the state, lower than that which is realized from the very poorest. 2. Where the two races are in nearly equal proportions, or where the whites are in only slight excess over the blacks, as is the case in all the sections where the soils are of average fertility, there is found the system of small farms worked generally by the owners, a consequently better cultivation, a more general use of commercial fertilizers, a correspondingly high product per acre, and a partial maintenance of the fertility of the soils. 3. Where the whites are greatly in excess of the blacks (three to one and above), the soils are almost certain to be below the average in fertility, and the product per acre is low from this cause, notwithstanding the redeeming influences of a comparatively rational system of cultivation. 4. The exceptions to these general rules are nearly always due to local causes, which are not far to seek, and which afford generally a satisfactory explanation of the discrepancies. |