Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama Part 44

The White League in Barbour and Mobile, in 1874, declared that no employment should be given to negro Radicals and no business done with white Radicals, and in Sumter County they were said to have gone on raids like the Ku Klux of former days. Military organizations of whites were enrolled and applications made to the Radical Governor Lewis for arms. He rejected the services of these companies, but they remained in organization and drilled. The Confederate gray uniforms were worn. In Tuskegee arms were purchased for the company by private subscription. By 1874 the white people of the state had become thoroughly united in the White Man's Party. There had been no compromises. The color and race line had been sharply drawn by the white counties, and the black counties later fell into line. The campaign of 1874 was the most serious of all. The whites intended to live no longer under Radical rule, and the whole state was practically a great Klan. There was but little violence, but there was a stern determination to defeat the Radicals at any cost; and if necessary, violence would have been used. At the inauguration of Governor Houston, in 1874, several of the gray-coated White League companies appeared from different parts of the state.[2026]

In several later elections the old Ku Klux methods were used, and there was much mysterious talk of "dark rainy nights and b.l.o.o.d.y moons." The "Barbour County Fever" was prevalent for many years: young men and boys would serenade the Radicals of the community and mortify them in every possible way, and their families would refuse to recognize socially the families of carpet-baggers and scalawags. They would not sit by them in church. The children at school imitated their elders.[2027]

The Ku Klux method of regulating society was nothing new; it was as old as history; it had often been used before; it may be used again; when a people find themselves persecuted by aliens or by the law, they will find some means outside the law for protecting themselves; it is certain also that such experiences will result in a great weakening of respect for law and in a return to more primitive methods of justice.

CHAPTER XXII

REORGANIZATION OF THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM

Break-up of the Ante-bellum System

The cotton planter of the South, the master of many negro slaves, organized a very efficient slave labor system. Each plantation was an industrial community almost independent of the outside world; the division of labor was minute, each servant being a.s.signed a task suited to his or her strength and training. Nothing but the most skilful management could save a planter from ruin, for, though the labor was efficient, it was very costly. The value of an overseer was judged by the general condition, health, appearance, and manners of the slaves; the amount of work done with the least punishment; the condition of stock, buildings, and plantation; and the size of the crops. All supplies were raised on the plantation,--corn, bacon, beef, and other food-stuffs; farm implements and harness were made and repaired by the skilled negroes in rainy weather when no outdoor work could be done; clothes were cut out in the "big house" and made by the negro women under the direction of the mistress.

The skilled laborers were blacks. Work was usually done by tasks, and industrious negroes were able to complete their daily allotment and have three or four hours a day to work in their own gardens and "patches." They often earned money at odd jobs, and the church records show that they contributed regularly. Negro children were trained in the arts of industry and in sobriety by elderly negroes of good judgment and firm character, usually women.[2028] Children too young to work were cared for by a competent mammy in the plantation nursery while their parents were in the fields.

In the Black Belt there was little hiring of extra labor and less renting of land. Except on the borders, nearly all whites were of the planting cla.s.s. Their greater wealth had enabled them to outbid the average farmer and secure the rich lands of the black prairies, cane-brakes, and river bottoms. The small farmer who secured a foothold in the Black Belt would find himself in a situation not altogether pleasant, and, selling out to the nearest planter, would go to poorer and cheaper land in the hills and pine woods, where most of the people were white.

In the Black Belt cotton was largely a surplus money crop, and once the labor was paid for, the planter was a very rich man.[2029] In the white counties of the cotton states about the same crops were raised as in the Black Belt, but the land was less fertile and the methods of cultivation less skilful. In the richer parts of these white counties there was something of the plantation system with some negro labor. But slavery gradually drove white labor to the hill and mountain country, the sand and pine barrens. No matter how poor a white man was, he was excessively independent in spirit and wanted to work only his own farm. This will account for the lack of renters and hired white laborers in black or in white districts, and also for the fact that the less fertile land was taken up by the whites who desired to be their own employers. Land was cheap, and any man could purchase it. There was some renting of land in the white counties, and the form it took was that now known as "third and fourth."[2030] It was then called "shares." There was little or no tenancy "on halves" or "standing rent." But the average farmer worked his own land, often with the help of from three to ten slaves.

On the borders of the Black Belt in Alabama dwelt a peculiar cla.s.s called "squatters." They settled down with or without permission on lots of poor and waste land, built cabins, cleared "patches," and made a precarious living by their little crops, by working as carpenters, blacksmiths, etc.

Some bought small lots of land on long-time payments and never paid for them, but simply stayed where they were. In the edge of the Black Belt in the busy season were found numbers of white hired men working alongside of negro slaves,[2031] for there was no prejudice against manual labor, that is, no more than anywhere else in the world.[2032]

As soon as the war was over the first concern of the returning soldiers was to obtain food to relieve present wants and to secure supplies to last until a crop could be made. In the white counties of the state the situation was much worse than in the Black Belt. The soil of the white counties was less fertile; the people were not wealthy before the war, and during the war they had suffered from the depredations of the enemy and from the operation of the tax-in-kind, which bore heavily upon them when they had nothing to spare. The white men went to the war and there were only women, children, and old men to work the fields. The heaviest losses among the Alabama Confederate troops were from the ranks of the white county soldiers. In these districts there was dest.i.tution after the first year of the war, and after 1862 from one-fourth to one-half of the soldiers' families received aid from the state. The bountiful Black Belt furnished enough for all, but transportation facilities were lacking. At the close of hostilities the condition of the people in the poorer regions was pitiable. Stock, fences, barns, and in many cases dwellings had disappeared; the fields were grown up in weeds; and no supplies were available. How the people managed to live was a mystery. Some walked twenty miles to get food, and there were cases of starvation. No seeds and no farm implements were to be had. The best work of the Freedmen's Bureau was done in relieving these people from want until they could make a crop.

The Black Belt was the richest as well as the least exposed section of the state and fared well until the end of the war. The laborers were negroes, and these worked as well in war time as in peace. Immense food crops were made in 1863 and 1864, and there was no suffering among whites or blacks.

Until 1865 there was no loss from Federal invasion, but with the spring of 1865 misfortune came. Four large armies marched through the central portions of the state, burning, destroying, and confiscating. In June, 1865, the Black Belt was in almost as bad condition as the white counties.

All buildings in the track of the armies had disappeared; the stores of provisions were confiscated; gin-houses and mills were burned; cattle and horses and mules were carried away; and nothing much was left except the negroes and the fertile land. The returning planter, like the farmer, found his agricultural implements worn out and broken, and in all the land there was no money to purchase the necessaries of life. But in the portions of the black counties untouched by the armies there were supplies sufficient to last the people for a few months. A few fortunate individuals had cotton, which was now bringing fabulous prices, and it was the high price received for the few bales not confiscated by the government that saved the Black Belt from suffering as did the other counties.

Neither master nor slave knew exactly how to begin anew, and for a while things simply drifted. Now that the question of slavery was settled, many of the former masters felt a great relief from responsibility, though for their former slaves they felt a profound pity. The majority of them had no faith in free negro labor, yet all were willing to give it a trial, and a few of the more strenuous ones said that the energy and strength of the white man that had made the savage negro an efficient laborer could make the free negro work fairly well; and if the free negro would work, they were willing to admit that the change might be beneficial to both races.

During the spring and summer and fall the masters came straggling home, and were met by friendly servants who gave them cordial welcome. Each one called up his servants and told them that they were free; and that they might stay with him and work for wages, or find other homes. Except in the vicinity of the towns and army posts the negroes usually chose to stay and work; and in the remote districts of the Black Belt affairs were little changed for several weeks after the surrender, which there hardly caused a ripple on the surface of society. Life and work went on as before. The staid negro coachmen sat upon their boxes on Sunday as of old; the field hands went regularly about their appointed tasks. Labor was cheerful, and the negroes went singing to the fields. "The negro knew no Appomattox. The Revolution sat lightly,--save in the presence of vacant seats at home and silent graves in the churchyard, in the memorials of destructive raids, in the wonder on the faces of a people once free, now ruled, where ruled at all, by a Bureau agent." Here it was that the master race believed that after all freedom of the negro might be well.[2033] In other sections, where the negro was more exposed to outside influences, people were not hopeful. The common opinion was that with free negro labor cotton could not be cultivated with success. The northerner often thought that it was a crop made by forced labor and that no freeman would willingly perform such labor; the southerner believed that the negro would neglect the crop too much when not under strict supervision. Yet later years have shown that free white labor is most successful in the cultivation of cotton because of the care the whites expend upon their farms; while cotton is the only crop that the free negro has cultivated with any degree of success, because some kind of a crop can be made by the most careless cultivation.

At first no one knew just how to work the free negro; innumerable plans were formed and many were tried. The old patriarchal relations were preserved as far as possible. Truman,[2034] who made a long stay in Alabama, reported that in most cases there was a genuine attachment between masters and negroes; that the masters were the best friends the negroes had; and that, though they regarded the blacks with much commiseration, they were inclined to encourage them to collect around the big house on the old slavery terms, giving food, clothes, quarters, medical attendance, and a little pay.[2035] At that time no one could understand the freedom of the negro.[2036] As one old master expressed it, he saw no "free negroes"[2037] until the fall of 1865, when the Bureau began to influence the blacks. But with the extension of the Bureau and the spread of army posts, the negroes became idle, neglected the crops that had been planted in the spring, moved from their old homes and went to town to the Bureau, or went wandering about the country. The house servants and the artisans, who were the best and most intelligent of the negroes, also began to go to the towns. Negro women desiring to be as white ladies, refused to work in the fields, to cook, to wash, or to perform other menial duties. It was years before this "freedom" prejudice of the negro women against domestic service died out.[2038] The negro would work one or two days in the week, go to town two days, and wander about the rest of the time. Under such conditions there was no hope of continuing the old patriarchal system, and new plans, modelled on what they had heard of free labor, were tried by the planters. In the white counties the ex-soldiers went to work as before the war, but they had come home from the army too late to plant full crops, and few had supplies enough to last until the crops should be gathered. In most of the white counties the negroes were so few as to escape the serious attention of the Bureau, and consequently they worked fairly well at what they could get to do.[2039]

The first work of the Bureau was to break up the labor system that had been partially constructed, and to endeavor to establish a new system based on the northern free labor system and the old slave-hiring system with the addition of a good deal of pure theory. The Bureau was to act as a labor clearing-house; it was to have entire control of labor; contracts must be written in accordance with the minute regulations of the Bureau, and must be registered by the agent, who charged large fees.[2040]

The result of these regulations was to destroy industry where an alien Bureau agent was stationed, for the planters could not afford to have their land worked on such terms. In some of the counties, where the native magistrates served as Bureau agents, no attention was paid to the rules of the Bureau, and the people floundered along, trying to develop a workable basis of existence. In the districts infested by the Bureau agents the negroes had fantastic notions of what freedom meant. On one plantation they demanded that the plantation bell be no longer rung to summon the hands to and from work, because it was too much like slavery.[2041] In various places they refused to work and congregated about the Bureau offices, awaiting the expected division of property, when they would get the "forty acres and one old gray mule." When wages were paid they believed that each should receive the same amount, whether his labor had been good or bad, whether the laborer was present or absent, sick or well.

In one instance a planter was paying his men in corn according to the time each had worked. The negroes objected and got an order from the Bureau agent that the division should be made equally. The planter read the order (which the negroes could not read), and at once directed the division as before. The negroes, thinking that the Bureau had so ordered, were satisfied. In the cane-brake region the agents were afraid of the great planters and did not interfere with the negroes except to organize them into Union Leagues; but elsewhere in the Black Belt the planter could not afford to hire negroes on the terms fixed by the Bureau.[2042]

Northern and Foreign Immigration

With the break-up of the slave system the planter found himself with much more land than he knew what to do with. He could get no reliable labor, he had no cash capital, so in many cases he offered his best lands for sale at low prices. The planters wanted to attract northern and foreign immigration and capital into the country; the cotton planter sought for a northern partner who could furnish the capital. Owing to the almost religious regard of the negro for his northern deliverers, many white landlords thought that northern men, especially former soldiers, might be better able than southern men to control negro labor. General Swayne, the head of the Bureau, said that the negroes had more confidence in a "bluecoat" than in a native, and that among the larger planters northern men as partners or overseers were in great demand.[2043]

For a short time after the close of the war northern men in considerable numbers planned to go into the business of cotton raising. DeBow[2044]

gives a description of the would-be cotton planters who came from the North to show the southern people how to raise cotton with free negro labor. They had note-books and guide-books full of close and exact tables of costs and profits, and from them figured out vast returns. They acknowledged that the negro might not work for the southern man, but they were sure that he would work for them. They were very self-confident, and would listen to no advice from experienced planters, whom they laughed at as old fogies, but from their note-books and tables they gave one another much information about the new machinery useful in cotton culture, about rules for cultivation, how to control labor, etc. They estimated that each laborer's family would make $1000 clear gain each year. DeBow would not say they were wrong, but he said that he thought that they should hasten a little more slowly. Northern energy and capitol flowed in; plantations were bought, and the various industries of plantation life started; and mills and factories were established. Because of the paralyzed condition of industry the southern people welcomed these enterprises, but they were very sceptical of their final success. The northern settler had confidence in the negro and gave him unlimited credit or supplies; consequently, in a few years the former was financially ruined and had to turn his attention to politics, and to exploiting the negro in that field in order to make a living.[2045] Both as employer and as manager the northern men failed to control negro labor. They expected the negro to be the equal of the Yankee white. The negroes themselves were disgusted with northern employers.

Truman reported, after an experience of one season, that "it is the almost universal testimony of the negroes themselves, who have been under the supervision of both cla.s.ses,--and I have talked with many with a view to this point,--that they prefer to labor for a southern employer."[2046]

Northern capital came in after the war, but northern labor did not, though the planters offered every inducement. Land was offered to white purchasers at ridiculously low rates, but the northern white laborer did not come. He was afraid of the South with its planters and negroes. The poorer cla.s.ses of native whites, however, profited by the low prices and secured a foothold on the better lands. So general was the unbelief in the value of the free negro as a laborer, especially in the Bureau districts, and so signally had all inducements failed to bring native white laborers from the North, that determined efforts were made to obtain white labor from abroad. Immigration societies were formed with officers in the state and headquarters in the northern cities. These societies undertook to send to the South laboring people, princ.i.p.ally German, in families at so much per head. The planter turned with hope to white labor, of the superiority of which he had so long been hearing, and he wished very much to give it a trial. The advertis.e.m.e.nts in the newspapers read much like the old slave advertis.e.m.e.nts: so many head of healthy, industrious Germans of good character delivered f.o.b. New York, at so much per head. One of the white labor agencies in Alabama undertook to furnish "immigrants of any nativity and in any quant.i.ty" to take the place of negroes. Children were priced at the rate of $50 a year; women, $100; men, $150,--they themselves providing board and clothes. One of every six Germans was warranted to speak English.[2047] Most of these agencies were frauds and only wanted an advance payment on a car load of Germans who did not exist. In a few instances some laborers were actually shipped in; but they at once demanded an advance of pay, and then deserted. Like the bounty jumpers, they played the game time and time again. The influence of the Radical press of the North was also used to discourage emigration to the South;[2048] consequently white immigration into the state did not amount to anything,[2049] and the Black Belt received no help from the North or from abroad, and had to fall back upon the free negro.

In the white counties there had been little hope or desire for alien immigration. The people and the country were so desperately poor that the stranger would never think of settling there. Many of the whites in moderate circ.u.mstances, living near the Black Belt, took advantage of the low price of rich lands, and acquired small farms in the prairies, but there was no influx of white labor to the Black Belt from the white counties.[2050] Nearly every man, woman, and child in the white districts had to go to work to earn a living. Many persons--lawyers, public men, teachers, ministers, physicians, merchants, overseers, managers, and even women--who had never before worked in the fields or at manual occupations, were now forced to do so because of losses of property, or because they could not live by their former occupations.[2051]

While the number of white laborers had increased somewhat, negro labor had decreased. Several thousand negro men had gone with the armies; for various reasons thousands had drifted to the towns, where large numbers died in 1865-1866. The rural negro had a promising outlook, for at any time he could get more work than he could do; the city negro found work scarce even when he wanted it.[2052]

Attempts to organize a New System

Several attempts were made by the negroes in 1865 and 1866 to work farms and plantations on the cooperative system, that is, to club work, but with no success. They were not accustomed to independent labor, their faculty for organization had not been sufficiently developed, and the dishonesty of their leading men sometimes caused failures of the schemes.[2053]

In the summer of 1865 the Monroe County Agricultural a.s.sociation was formed to regulate labor, and to protect the interests of both employer and laborer. It was the duty of the executive committee to look after the welfare of the freedmen, to see that contracts were carried out and the freedmen protected in them, and, in cases of dispute, to act as arbitrator. The members of the a.s.sociation pledged themselves to see that the freedman received his wages, and to aid him in case his employer refused to pay. They were also to see that the freedman fulfilled his contract, unless there was good reason why he should not. Homes and the necessaries of life were to be provided by the a.s.sociation for the aged and helpless negroes, of whom there were several on every plantation. The planters declared themselves in favor of schools for the negro children, and a committee was appointed to devise a plan for their education. Every planter in Monroe County belonged to the a.s.sociation.[2054] An organization in Conecuh County adopted, word for word, the const.i.tution of the Monroe County a.s.sociation. In Clarke and Wilc.o.x counties similar organizations were formed, and in all counties where negro labor was the main dependence some such plans were devised.[2055] But it is noticeable that in those counties where the planters first undertook to reorganize the labor system, there were no regular agents of the Freedmen's Bureau and no garrisons.

The average negro quite naturally had little or no sense of the obligation of contracts. He would leave a growing crop at the most critical period, and move into another county, or, working his own crop "on shares," would leave it in the gra.s.s and go to work for some one else in order to get small "change" for tobacco, snuff, and whiskey. After three years of experience of such conduct, a meeting of citizens at Summerfield, Dallas County, decided that laborers ought to be impressed with the necessity of complying with contracts. They agreed that no laborers discharged for failure to keep contracts would be hired again by other employers. They declared it to be the duty of the whites to act in perfect good faith in their relations with freedmen, to respect and uphold their rights, and to promote good feeling.[2056]

Development of the Share System

At first the planters had demanded a system of contracts, thinking that by law they might hold the negro to his agreements. But the Bureau contracts were one-sided, and the planters could not afford to enter into them.

General Swayne early reported[2057] a general breakdown of the contract system, though he told the planters that in case of dispute, where no contract was signed, he would exact payment for the negro at the highest rates. The "share" system was discouraged, but where there were no Bureau agents it was developing. And so bad was the wage system, that even in the Bureau districts, share hiring was done. The object of "share" renting was to cause the laborer to take an interest in his crop and to relieve the planter of disputes about loss of time, etc. Some of the negroes also decided that the share system was the proper one. On the plantations near Selma the negroes demanded "shares," threatening to leave in case of refusal. General Hardee, who was living near, proposed a plan for a verbal contract; wages should be one-fourth of all crops, meat and bread to be furnished to the laborer, and his share of crop to be paid to him in kind, or the net proceeds in cash; the planter to furnish land, teams, wagons, implements, and seed to the laborer, who, in addition, had all the slavery privileges of free wood, water, and pasturage, garden lot and truck patch, teams to use on Sundays and for going to town. The absolute right of management was reserved to the planter, it being understood that this was no copartnership, but that the negro was hired for a share of the crop; consequently he had no right to interfere in the management.[2058]

On another plantation, where a share system similar to Hardee's was in operation, the planter divided the workers into squads of four men each.

To each squad he a.s.signed a hundred acres of cotton and corn, in the proportion of five acres of cotton to three of corn, and forty acres of cotton for the women and children of the four families. The squads were united to hoe and plough and to pick the cotton, because they worked better in gangs. Wage laborers were kept to look after fences and ditches, and to perform odd jobs. A frequent source of trouble was the custom of allowing the negro, as part of his pay, several acres of "outside crop,"

to be worked on certain days of the week, as Fridays and Sat.u.r.days. The planter was supposed to settle disputes among the negroes, give them advice on every subject except politics and religion, on which they had other advisers, pay their fines and get them out of jail when arrested, and sometimes to thrash the recalcitrant.[2059]

Several kinds of share systems were finally evolved from the industrial chaos. They were much the same in black or white districts, and the usual designations were "on halves," "third and fourth," and "standing rent."

The tenant "on halves" received one-half the crop, did all the work, and furnished his own provisions. The planter furnished land, houses to live in, seed, ploughs, hoes, teams, wagons, ginned the cotton, paid for half the fertilizer, and "went security" for the negro for a year's credit at the supply store in town, or he furnished the supplies himself, and charged them against the negro's share of the crop. The "third and fourth"

plan varied according to locality and time, and depended upon what the tenant furnished. Sometimes the planter furnished everything, while the negro gave only his labor and received one-fourth of the crop; again, the planter furnished all except provisions and labor, and gave the negro one-third of the crop. In such cases "third and fourth" was a lower grade of tenancy than "on halves." Later it developed to a higher grade: the tenant furnished teams and farming implements, and the planter the rest, in which case the planter received a third of the cotton, and a fourth of the corn raised. "Standing rent" was the highest form of tenancy, and only responsible persons, white or black, could rent under that system. It called for a fixed or "standing" rent for each acre or farm, to be paid in money or in cotton. The unit of value in cotton was a 500-pound bale of middling grade on October 1st. Tenants who had farm stock, farming implements, and supplies or good credit would nearly always cultivate for "standing rent." The planter exercised a controlling direction over the labor and cultivation of a crop worked "on halves"; he exercised less direction over "third and fourth" tenants, and was supposed to exercise no control over tenants who paid "standing rent." In all cases the planter furnished a dwelling-house free, wood and water (paid for digging wells), and pasture for the pigs and cows of the tenants. In all cases the renter had a plot of ground of from one to three acres, rent free, for a vegetable garden and "truck patch." Here could be raised watermelons, sugar-cane, potatoes, sorghum, cabbage, and other vegetables. Every tenant could keep a few pigs and a cow, chickens, turkeys, and guineas, and especially dogs, and could hunt in all the woods around and fish in all the waters. "On halves" was considered the safest form of tenancy for both planter and tenant, for the latter was only an average man, and this method allowed the superior direction of the planter.[2060] Many negroes worked for wages; the less intelligent and the unreliable could find no other way to work; and some of the best of them preferred to work for wages paid at the end of each week or month. Wage laborers worked under the immediate oversight of the farmer or tenant who hired them. They received $8 to $12 a month and were "found," that is, furnished with rations. In the white counties the negro hired man was often fed in the farmer's kitchen. The laborer, if hired by the year, had a house, vegetable garden, truck patch, chickens, a pig perhaps, always a dog, and he could hunt and fish anywhere in the vicinity. Sometimes he was "found"; sometimes he "found" himself. When he was "found," the allowance for a week was three and a half pounds of bacon, a peck of meal, half a gallon of syrup, and a plug of tobacco; his garden and truck patch furnished vegetables. This allowance could be varied and commuted. The system was worked out in the few years immediately following the war, and has lasted almost without change. Where the negroes are found, the larger plantations have not been broken up into small farms, the census statistics to the contrary notwithstanding.[2061] The negro tenant or laborer had too many privileges for his own good and for the good of the planter. The negro should have been paid more money or given a larger proportion of the crop, and fewer privileges. He needed more control and supervision, and the result of giving him a vegetable garden, a truck patch, a pasture, and the right of hunting and fishing, was that the negro took less interest in the crop; the privileges were about all he wanted. Agricultural industry was never brought to a real business basis.[2062]

An essential part of the share system was the custom of advancing supplies to the tenant with the future crop as security. The universal lack of capital after the war forced an extension of the old ante-bellum credit or supply system. The merchant, who was also a cotton buyer, advanced money or supplies until the crop was gathered. Before the war his security was crop, land, and slaves; after the war the crop was the princ.i.p.al security, for land was a drug in the market. Consequently, the crop was more important to the creditor. Cotton was the only good cash staple, and the high prices encouraged all to raise it. It was to the interest of the merchant, even when prices were low, to insist that his debtors raise cotton to the exclusion of food crops, since much of his money was made by selling food supplies to them. Before the war the planter alone had much credit, and a successful one did not make use of the system; but after the war all cla.s.ses of cotton raisers had to have advances of supplies.

The credit or crop lien system was good to put an ambitious farmer on the way to independence, but it was no incentive to the shiftless. Cotton became the universal crop under the credit system, and even when the farmer became independent, he seldom planted less of his staple crop, or raised more supplies at home.

Negro Farmers and White Farmers

At the end of the war everything was in favor of the negro cotton raiser; and everything except the high price of cotton was against the white farmer in the poorer counties. The soil had been used most destructively in the white districts, and it had to be improved before cotton could be raised successfully.[2063] The high price of cotton caused the white farmer, who had formerly had only small cotton patches, to plant large fields, and for several years the negro was not a serious compet.i.tor. The building of railroads through the mineral regions afforded transportation to the white farmer for crops and fertilizers,--an advantage that before this time had been enjoyed only by the Black Belt,--and improved methods gradually supplanted the wasteful frontier system of cultivation. The gradual increase[2064] of the cotton production after 1869 was due entirely to white labor in the white counties, the black counties never again reaching their former production, though the population of those counties has doubled. Governor Lindsay said, in 1871, that the white people of north Alabama, where but little had been produced before the war, were becoming prosperous by raising cotton, and at the same time raising supplies that the planter on the rich lands with negro labor had to buy from the West. This prosperity, he thought, had done more than anything else to put an end to Ku Klux disturbances. Somers reported, as early as 1871, that the bulk of the cotton crop in the Tennessee valley was made by white labor, not by black.[2065] As long as there was plenty of cheap, thin land to be had, the poor but independent white would not work the fertile land belonging to some one else; and before and long after the war there was plenty of practically free land.[2066] Therefore the tendency of the whites was to remain on the less fertile land. Dr. E.

A. Smith, in the Alabama Geological Survey of 1881-1882, and in the Report on Cotton Production in Alabama (1884), shows the relation between race and cotton production, and race location, with respect to fertility of soil: (1) On the most fertile lands the laboring population was black; the farmers were shiftless, and no fertilizers were used; there the credit evil was worse, and the yield per acre was less than on the poorest soils cultivated by whites. (2) Where the races were about equal the best system was found; the soils were medium, the farms were small but well cultivated, and fertilizers were used. (3) On the poorest soils only whites were found. These by industry and use of fertilizers could produce about as much as the blacks on the rich soils.

The average product per acre of the fertile Black Belt is lower than the lowest in the poorest white counties. Only the best of soil, as in Clarke, Monroe, and Wilc.o.x counties, is able to overcome the bad labor system, and produce an average equal to that made by the whites in Winston, the least fertile county in the state. In white counties, where the average product per acre falls below the average for the surrounding region, the fact is always explained by the presence of blacks, segregated on the best soils, keeping down the average product. For example, Madison County in 1880 had a majority of blacks, and the average product per acre was 0.28 bale, as compared with 0.32 bale for the Tennessee valley, of which Madison was the richest county; in Talladega, the most fertile county of the Coosa valley, the average production per acre was 0.32, as compared with 0.40 for the rest of the valley; in Autauga, where the blacks outnumbered the whites two to one, the average fell below that of the country around, though the Autauga soil was the best in the region.

The average product of the rich prairie region cultivated by the blacks was 0.27 bale per acre; the average product in the poor mineral region cultivated by the whites was 0.26 to 0.28; in the short-leaf pine region the whites outnumber the blacks two to one, and the average production is 0.34 bale, while in the gravelly hill region, where the blacks are twice as numerous as the whites, the production is 0.30, the soil in the two sections being about equal. In general, the fertility of the soil being equal, the production varies inversely as the proportion of colored population to white. Density of colored population is a sure sign of fertile soil; predominance of white a sign of medium or poor soil. Outside of the Black Belt, white owners cultivate small farms, looking closely after them. The negro seldom owns the land he cultivates, and is more efficient when working under direction on the small farm in the white county. In the Black Belt, nearly all land is fertile and capable of cultivation, but in the white counties a large percentage is rocky, in hills, forests, mountains, etc. Many soils in southeast and in north Alabama, formerly considered unproductive, have been brought into cultivation by the use of fertilizers, hauled in wagons, in many cases, from twenty to a hundred miles. Fertilizers have not yet come into general use in the Black Belt. In the negro districts are still found horse-power gins and old wooden cotton presses; in the white counties, steam and water power and the latest machinery. In the white counties it has always been a general custom to raise a part of the supplies on the farm; in the Black Belt this has not been done since the war.[2067] Though many of the white farmers remained under the crop lien bondage, there was a steady gain toward independence on the part of the more industrious and economical. But not until toward the close of the century did emanc.i.p.ation come for many of the struggling whites.

In other directions the whites did better. They opened the mines of north Alabama, cut the timber of south Alabama, built the railroads and factories, and to some extent engaged in commerce.[2068] Market gardening became a common occupation. Negro labor in factories failed. It was the negro rather than slavery that prevented and still prevents the establishment of manufactures.[2069] The development of manufactures in recent years has benefited princ.i.p.ally the poor people of the white counties. "For this mill people is not drawn from foreign immigrants, nor from distant states, but it is drawn from the native-born white population, the poor whites, that belated hill-folk from the ridges and hollows and coves of the silent hills."[2070] The negro artisan is giving way to the white; even in the towns of the Black Belt, the occupations once securely held by the negro are pa.s.sing into the hands of the whites.

In the white counties, during Reconstruction, the relations between the races became more strained than in the Black Belt. One of the manifestations of the Ku Klux movement in the white counties was the driving away of negro tenants from the more fertile districts by the poorer cla.s.ses of whites who wanted these lands. For years immigration was discouraged by the northern press. Foreigners were afraid to come to the "benighted and savage South."[2071] But in the '80's the railroad companies began to induce Germans to settle on their lands in the poorest of the white counties. Later there has been a slow movement from the Northwest. As a rule, where the northerners and the Germans settle the wilderness blossoms, and the negro leaves.

After ploughing their hilltops until the soil was exhausted, the whites, even before the war, decided that only by clearing the swamps in the poorer districts could they get land worth cultivating. This required much labor and money. After the war, with the increase of transportation facilities, fertilizers came into use, the swamps were deserted, and the farmers went back to the uplands. "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 largely 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."[2072]