The Negro Farmer Part 9

7. Keep a good supply of poultry. Set your hens. Keep your chickens until they will bring a good price.

8. Go to town on Thursday instead of Sat.u.r.day. Buy no more than you need. Stay in town no longer than necessary.

9. Starve rather than sell your crops before you raise them. Let your mind be fixed on that the first day of January, and stick to that every day in the year.

10. Buy land and build you a home.

The various states are beginning to establish inst.i.tutions in which agriculture and industrial training may be given. Among these may be mentioned that of Alabama at Normal, and of Mississippi at Westside.

Alabama has also established an experiment station in connection with the Tuskegee Inst.i.tute.

In Texas there is an interesting movement among the Negro farmers known as the "Farmers' Improvement Society." The objects are:

1. Abolition of the credit system.

2. Stimulate improvements in farming.

3. Co-operative buying.

4. Sickness and life insurance.

5. Encouragement of purchase of land and home.

The a.s.sociation holds a fair each year which is largely attended.

According to the Galveston _News_ of October 12, 1902, the society has about 3,000 members, who own some 50,000 acres of land, more than 8,000 cattle and 7,000 horses and mules. This organization, founded and maintained entirely by Negroes, promises much in many ways. In October, 1902, a fair was held in connection with the school at Calhoun, Ala., with 83 exhibitors and 416 entries, including 48 from the school and a very creditable showing of farm products and live stock.

Besides these general lines which seem to be of promise it is in place to mention a couple of attempts to get the Negroes to purchase land.

There have been not a few persons who have sold land to them on the installment plan with the expectation that later payments would be forfeited and the land revert. There are some enterprises which are above suspicion. I am not referring now to private persons or railroad companies who have sold large tracts to the Negroes, but to organizations whose objects are to aid the blacks in becoming landholders. The Land Company at Calhoun. Ala., started in 1896, buying 1,040 acres of land, which was accurately surveyed and divided into plots of fifty acres, so arranged that each farm should include different sorts of land. This was sold to the Negroes at cost price, $8 per acre, the purchasers to pay 8 per cent on deferred payments. The sums paid by the purchasers each year have been as follows:

1896--$ 741.03. Found later to be borrowed money in the main.

1897--$1,485.15. Largely borrowed money.

1898--$ 367.34. Men paying back borrowed money. Advances large.

1899--$ 374.77.

1900--$1,649.25. Money not borrowed. Advances small.

1901--$ 871.49. Bad year. Poor crops. Money not borrowed.

1902--$2,280.42. Advances very small. Outlook encouraging.

There have been some failures on part of tenants, and it has been necessary to gradually select the better men and allow the others to drop out. The company has paid all expenses and interest on its capital.

A second plantation has been purchased and is being sold. There is a manager who is a trained farmer, and by means of the farmers'

a.s.sociation already mentioned much pressure is brought to bear on the Negroes to improve their condition. The results are encouraging. In Macon County the Southern Land Company has purchased several thousand acres which it is selling in much the same way, but it is too early to speak of results. Even at Calhoun but few of the men have yet gotten deeds for their land.

A word regarding the methods of the Southern Land Company will be of interest. The land was carefully surveyed in forty-acre plots. These are sold at $8 per acre, the payments covering a period of seven years. The interest is figured in advance, and to each plot is charged a yearly fee of $5 for management. In this total is also included the cost of house and well (a three-roomed cabin is furnished for about $100, a well for $10). This sum is then divided into seven equal parts so that the purchaser knows in advance just what he must pay each year. The object of the company is to encourage home ownership. Until the place is paid for control of the planting, etc., remains with the manager of the company. Advances are in cash (except fertilizers), as no store is conducted by the company and interest is charged at 8 per cent for the money advanced and for the time said money is used.

On this place in 1902, H. W., a man aged 68, with wife and three children, owning a horse, a mule and two cows, did as follows. He and his son-in-law are buying eighty acres. They made a good showing for the first year under considerable difficulties and on land by no means rich:

Debits. Credits.

Fertilizer $ 34.88 Cotton $390.32 Whitewashing 3.00 Liming 19.76 Lease contract 180.00 Cash 130.36 Interest 3.12 ------- $371.12 ------- Balance Jan. 1, 1903 $ 19.20

This leads me to mention the question of land ownership on the part of the Negroes. This has not been mentioned hitherto for several reasons.

In the first place the data for any detailed knowledge of the subject are not to be had. Few states make separate record of land owned by the blacks as distinct from general ownership. The census has to depend upon the statements of the men themselves, and I have heard tenants solemnly argue that they owned the land. Again a very considerable proportion of the land owned is also heavily mortgaged, and these mortgages are not always for improvements. Nor is it by any means self evident that land ownership necessarily means a more advanced condition than where land is rented. Moreover, a considerable proportion of the _farms_ owned are so small that they do not suffice to support the owners. Conditions vary in different districts. In Virginia it has been possible to buy a few acres at a very low price. In parts of Alabama, or wherever the land has been held in large estates in recent years, it has often been impossible for the Negro to purchase land in small lots. Thus, though I believe heartily in land ownership for the blacks and believe that well conducted land a.s.sociations will be beneficial, I cannot think that this alone will solve the questions confronting us. Retrogression is possible even with land ownership. Other things are necessary. On the basis of existing data the best article with which I am acquainted on this subject appeared in the _Southern Workman_ for January, 1903, written by Dr. G. S. d.i.c.kerman, in which he showed that among the Negro farmers the owners and managers formed 59.8 per cent of the total in Virginia, 57.6 per cent in Maryland, 48.6 per cent in Kentucky, falling as we go South to 15.1 per cent in Alabama, 16.4 per cent in Mississippi, and 16.2 per cent in Louisiana, rising to 30.9 per cent in Texas. Evidently the forces at work are various.

Within a few months, at the suggestion of Mr. Horace Plunkett, of the Irish Agricultural Organization Society, a new work has been taken up, whose course will be watched with great interest. I quote from a letter of Mr. Plunkett to Dr. Wallace b.u.t.trick, of the General Education Board:

From what I have seen of the negro character, my own impression is that the race has those leader-following propensities which characterize the Irish people. It has, too, I suspect, in its mental composition the same vein of idealism which my own countrymen possess, and which makes them susceptible to organization, and especially to those forms of organization which require the display of the social qualities to which I have alluded and which you will have to develop. These characteristics which express themselves largely, the old plantation songs, in the form of religions exercises, and in the maintenance of a staff of preachers out of all proportion I should think, to the spiritual requirements, should, in my opinion, lend themselves to a.s.sociative action for practical ends if the organizing machinery necessary to initiate such action were provided.

What, then, is my practical suggestion? It is that your board, if it generally approves of the idea, should take one, two, or, at the most, three communities, such as that we inquired about, and organize them on the Irish plan. The farmers should at first he advised to confine their efforts to some simple object, such as the joint purchase of their immediate agricultural requirements. * * * I would at first deal solely with the colored people, beginning in a very small way, leaving larger developments for the future to decide.

Hampton Inst.i.tute has taken up the suggestion and is planning to organize a community. Everything will, of course, depend on the management as well as on the people. If the results are as satisfactory as they have been in Ireland the efforts will be well expended.

With this brief and incomplete account we must take leave of the Negro farmer. Throughout the thesis I have attempted to keep two or three fundamental propositions constantly in sight. Briefly summarized these are that we have to do with a race whose inherited characteristics are largely of African origin; that these have been somewhat modified under American influences, but are still potent; that the economic environment in America is not a unit and must finally result in the creation of different types among the blacks; that the needs of the different habitats are various; that the segregation from the ma.s.s of the whites is fraught with serious consequences; that measures of wider application must be adopted if the Negro is to bear his proper part in the progress of the country; that owing to the great race differences the whites must take an active interest in the blacks; that in spite of the many handicaps under which the Negro struggles the outlook is not hopeless if his willingness to work can so be directed that a surplus will result.

To my mind the Negro must work out his salvation, economic and social.

It cannot be given without destroying the very thing we seek to strengthen--character. This is the justification for the emphasis now laid upon industrial training. This training and the resulting character are the pre-requisites of all race progress. Industrial education is thus not a fad nor a mere expedient to satisfy the selfish demands of southern whites. It is the foundation without which the superstructure is in vain. If I have fairly stated the difficulties in the way and have shown the possibility of ultimate success, I am content. For the future I am hopeful.

MAPS SHOWING THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE NEGROES IN THE SOUTHERN STATES

These maps are particularly referred to in Chapter II. The chief geological districts are indicated. The figures are based upon the census of 1900. The maps are here included in the hope that they may prove of value to students of the problems herein discussed.

=VIRGINIA

NEGRO PERCENTAGE OF POPULATION, 1900

Total Negroes 660,722 Total Whites 1,192,855 Negroes form 35.6% of total=

=VIRGINIA

NEGROES PER SQUARE MILE, 1900

Square Miles in State 40,125 Average Negroes per Mile 16.4 Average Whites per Mile 29.7=

=NORTH CAROLINA

NEGRO PERCENTAGE OF POPULATION, 1900

Total Negroes 624,469 Total Whites 1,263,603 Negroes form 33% of total=

=NORTH CAROLINA

NEGROES PER SQUARE MILE, 1900

Square Miles in State 48,580 Average Negroes per Mile 12.8 Average Whites per Mile 26=