The ills of the south

Front matter

Glass.

Book.

v-j

Preface

My purpose in writing this book is found in the book itself. Some seventeen years ago the governor of a Southern State asked the author " what the sentiment of the people in his part of the State was concerning the lien laws." After inquiry of quite a number of furnishing merchants, the fact was revealed that all these merchants except one were opposed to the repeal of these laws. This inquiry led to investigation not only of the business system, but of related subjects. The result of this inquiry is now given to the public.

The book was written in no hostile spirit to any class of men. Its generous intent will disarm criticism. A condition of affairs exists that can not continue without serious hurt to all the people. General prosperity there is none. To call attention to the causes that underlie this condition, is the aim of the book.

I am indebted for valuable information concerning the education of the colored people in the States of Georgia, North Carolina, Florida, Arkansas, and Texas, to Hon. S. D. Bradwell, John C. Scarborough, W. N. Sheats, J. H. Shinn, and J. M. Carlisle, Superintendents of Public Instruction in these States; also to Hon. W. T. Harris, Commissioner of Education, for the latest educational statistics.

V vi Preface,

My acknowledgments are due Governors J. S. Hogg of Texas, Thos. G. Jones of Alabama, Murphy J. Foster of Louisiana, Henry L. Mitchell of Florida, J. M. Stone of Mississippi, and Hon. L. A. Whatley, Superintendent of Penitentiaries in Texas, and Hon. L. B. Wombwell, Commissioner of Agriculture in Florida, for crime statistics in their respective States.

I desire, also, to acknowledge my obligations to Judge J. B. Chrisman and Judge Wm. P. Cassedy, both of Mississippi, for reading portions of the manuscript.

C H. O.

Summit, Miss., March, 1894.

Chapter I. Page

The Condition of the South in 1865 ... i

Widespread desolation — Disadvantages — The new relation of former slaves — Whims and ignorance — Use of freedom — Attitude of the Southern people to the old relation — Encouragement — The negroes' fears easily excited — Consequences — The spell broken — Poverty of the South — Shylocks — Debts and distress — The credit system introduced.

Chapter II

Usefulness of credit — Basal elements — Wealth and capital — Value and production — Features of the credit system — Opinion of Samuel Smiles — The debtor bound — Ignorance — Carelessness — Infidelity and dishonesty — First step to bankruptcy — A bad crop year — Lost all in ten years — The covenant — Merchant Harlem's view of bad debts — General effects — Millwell — Gains on a cash basis — Remedy — A prosperous cash merchant — No general prosperity — Investments — No hostility — A serious condition.

CHAPTER III. The Lien Law Machine 33

Slow progress — Worth makes the man — Deeds of trust — Their intent — Effect on labor — Merchants became large landowners — Their grip on tenant labor — Resident farmers without labor — Decoy ducks — A big screw loose — Bitter

vii viii Contents, memories — Patrick and Black John — Depredations — Cause of violence — Credit system and cash — Lien laws, the backbone of the system — " Prettiest business in the world" — Five hundred men tied up — "Eight hundred do my bidding" — Honesty relegated to an inferior position — The galling yoke — Unscrupulous transactions — Lien laws have not benefited the negro nor the white people — Lien laws have placed a discount on all services — Strike the laws from the statutes — A large class has the experience, a small class the gold, as the fruit of these laws.

CHAPTER IV. Cotton Production 54

*' We never do " — Our business system — Henry W. Grady — Comments by the New Orleans Picayime — Debts and cotton production — " His line of credit" — The chances — Hon. B. H. Hill — Wade Sherman's experience— Canons of commerce perverted — The difference — More cotton — From Maryland, through Texas — "Superb estates" — A million bales in excess — Corn acreage, short — Live at home.

CHAPTER V. Testimony 65

Farmer Haygood and Merchant Caperton — Credit, cash, and discount — Who pay the bad debts ? — Ninety million bales could have been saved — Samuel Drew — Alexandre Dumas — Farmers handicapped — Does not know — Need of sympathy — Fifty to one hundred and twenty-five per cent. — Credit, the money-making business — High prices — Testimony in Alabama — Senator Irby — The true cancer — Raymond Gazette of Mississippi — The Selma Times of Alabama — Louisiana — Mississippi — Tennessee — Arkansas — Texas — Five million dollars lost per annum — Elements of high prices.

Contents. ix

Chapter VI. Page

Testimony continued 8i

The first step — What Alabama reports — Florida — Georgia — South Carolina — Over thirty thousand liens in eleven counties — North Carolina — The situation unchanged in' 1893 — Groping in the dark — Local disturbances — The Clarion Ledger of Mississippi on the lien laws — A practical example — Cost to record liens — Gains on cash basis at various rates — Gains on cash basis to ten men — Gains on cash basis to 2,005 nien on 10,000 bales of cotton for twenty years — Not a local condition — Joseph Baxendale.

CHAPTER Vn.

Agricultural Products 97

Arrearage in food crop — Cereals in i860 — Cereals in 1889 — After twenty-nine years, seven States had less grain than in i860— Cotton absorbed — The lesson of Table III. — Increase of the acreage and population — Increase of white and black — Persons engaged in agriculture in ten States — Cause of deficiency in grain — Shortsighted political economists — The labor cause — Laborers on farms classified — Value of negro labor in Table VI TI. — Deterioration — What they do not raise — Productions of Hayti — "The people make the country " — Productions in Jamaica — The situation in the English West Indies — The proof from three lands — Value of Southern farms — Value of ten Northern States — The experience from 1870 to 1879.

CHAPTER VIII. The Farm Leaks 121

Little things — Value of method — The live stock cause — Deficiency — Livestock in i860 and in 1890 — Balance sheet of losses — Statement of a Mississippi merchant — A long step toward independence — Food products of i860, 1870,

Contents,

PAGE

1880, 1890, and 1892 — Fertilizers and fences — Fruit of twenty-seven commercial crops — Thirty years' experience — The dawn of a better day.

CHAPTER IX. Our Broad Acres 134

Our vast domain — The ten States — Comparisons — Farm land — Ownership — European and railroad ownership- Americans — Locality of alien lands — Railroad land and the German Empire compared — Land owned by syndicates in the South — The land movement — Size of farms in iS6o and in iS8o — Number cultivated by owners — Cultivated on the rental plan — Cultivated on the share plan — Total of these, per Table VI. — Tenure of farms — Difference in twenty years — Large plantations on the increase — Ownership in i860 and in i88o — Who own these farms? — Shylock's plan — Effect of our business methods on the land question — The statement by the St. Louis Republican — England's farm tenantry, by Senator D. W. Voorhees — The patent and passport of the Anglo-Saxon race — Salaries of England's clergy — England's landlords — Opinion by Ruskin — Peril to the American estate — Opinion by the World — Galveston News — The Panhandle of Texas — Land corporations and Governor Hogg of Texas.

CHAPTER X. The Perversions in Business 165

Business, an honorable term — Moral distinctions defaced — The science of exchange — The service of the merchant class — American farmers — Bad men — Crookedness in business — The situation of the South, an invitation — The galling yoke — Ruin and riches — Might is right — Honest Mr. Hacker — The epitaph — Another pernicious doctrine — The retaliatory idea — Unscrupulous failures in business — Honest failures — Perjury — The Cretians — The Piengalee — A catalogue of lies — Negative goodness — The lack of indi-

Contents. xi

PAGE

vidual responsibility— Public opinion — Its power — The value of prudence — The demand of duty — Dr. J. G. Holland — The true man — William Temple — Value of moral forces — Sentiments of a Southern statesman — The nation's wealth — Fairness — M illionaire condition — Causes.

CHAPTER XI. Towns — Their Influence 187

Object of towns — Chief employment — The boast — Townships that lost population — Effect on towns — Indifference — What can be done ? — Six square miles — The town's workshop — Education — High-sounding names — Too much and too little — Effects— High schools — Confusion — The counterfeit and the true — Moral influence of towns — Value of the influential class — The subordination of moral considerations to business — Responsibility of prominent men — No life isolated — The town a political centre — The government of a dozen.

CHAPTER XII. The Progress of the Negroes 201

Their passive nature — W^hat have they done for themselves ? — Kinds of negroes — Classes on American soil — Pure and mixed — Kind in each section — Movement — Leaders — Progress — Racial qualities — Rev. Dr. E. T. Winkler — Negroes in the West Indies — The South's endeavor to educate compared — Organized benevolence — State contributions—Crime — In six Northern States — In six Southern States — The difference between white and black — Increase of crime — Burden in the South — Mr. Everett's statement in 1833 — The Legislature of Connecticut in 1834 — Vermont — Resolution by the Legislature of Ohio in 1835 — Transformation in the South — Rev. Dr. MacVicar — Alabama — Mississippi — Pike County — Idleness and vices — Court expense — Effect of education — Fruitage of churches and schools — Relation of the whites to the blacks.

xii Contents,

Chapter XIII. Page

Result of the incentives to work — Degrees in the work of the old and new generation — Condition now and then — Not self-sustaining — Non-productive classes — Workers — Prospect of the educated Hamite — A pauper race — White labor increasing — Difference between white and black labor — Without supervision, black labor is a failure — Cotton production by white labor, and the Commissioner of Agriculture for 1876 — The Centujy Magazine — Gain of white labor per annum — Mr, Edward Atkinson — " The old nonsense " in reference to white labor — Attention to the race question demanded.

CHAPTER XIV. Negro Colonization 248

The historic record — The common opinion — The outlook of the English West Indies— Judgment of United States Senator Hammond in 1845 — Thomas Jefferson — Senator J. J. Ingalls — Mr. Lincoln — The even chance to the negroes, North and South — The veto of history — Hemmed in by a Chinese wall — The path of safety — Opinions of prominent colored men — Colonization ends the strife — Dr. M. R. Delany, a negro of pure blood — The colored Cleveland Convention in 1854 — The Great Congo Basin of Africa — A feasible deportation plan — Advantages — Deal justly with the black man.

THE ILLS OF THE SOUTH.

Chapter I. The Condition Of The South In 1 865

The Past but lives in words ; a thousand ages were blank if books had not evoked their ghosts and kept the pale embodied shades to warn us from fleshless lips. — Bulwer.

WIDESPREAD desolation reigned in every portion of the South in 1865. The war of the States was ended. The South had staked all — lives and fortunes — upon a principle, and lost. The four years' struggle, with its hopes and its fears, was behind them ; defeat, with all its vast significance, was before them. The Southern soldiers returned to their homes. It is not too much to say, that a large majority of the soldiers of the Confederate armies had homes. But these homes of comfort and plenty in 1861 were not those to which they returned after the surrender. A great change had swept over them. Four years' ruthless war had left indelible marks. Time with its ravages, the mismanagement of farms and plantations left largely in charge of the negroes, the vandalism of armies in the destruction of property, had made hideous alterations in the condition of the country. Dilapi-

The Ills of the South.

dated dwellings, fences out of repair and in many instances burned, sugar-houses and gin-houses damaged or in ruins, were seen everywhere. Farms once producing profitable crops were now grown up in broom-sage. The chimneys of hundreds of comfortable dwellings furnished the only evidence that these places were once the abodes of human habitation. Cattle and live-stock of every description were largely diminished. Everywhere devastation met the eye.

The Southern farmers commenced life anew under many and disheartening disadvantages. Not a few were well advanced in years, and had large families. There was mourning throughout the Southland. Many husbands, fathers, and sons slept on distant battlefields, never to return. Thousands of widows were left penniless. The gloom was appalling, and the people were poor. Those that had something left were ill-prepared to help their poorer neighbors. Hundreds returned maimed in body. There was nothing to relieve these scenes of ruin, save the brave, resolute determination to commence the hard struggle for existence.

Their former slaves were freedmen. Four million negroes were not only free, but were invested with civil rights. What a novel condition ! What a tremendous experiment ! Nearly a million negro families commenced the business of housekeeping without a dollar in their possession. Their masters were poor. The negro was ignorant ; he could neither read nor write. In all knowledge pertaining to the management of business, or relating to political matters, he was a child. He was made the

The Cofidition of the South in iS6^. 3

• victim of cruel impositions on the part of designing men. His truest friends found it impossible to reason with him. He was shy of his old master. The stranger who made him large promises and fulfilled none, had influence with him. The dishonest man, playing upon the negro's ignorance, could secure his work for one-fifth of the crop made. The old master's of¥er of one-third was rejected. This ignorance of the negro complicated matters seriously. The immediate effect was, that the farmer who had worked twenty-five hands, commenced his year's work with five or ten croppers, and they inferior laborers, while men who had never owned a slave had twenty. Negro labor was a gambling commodity. In a majority of these latter cases nothing was made, and in a few years these men, who expected to work freedmen as they had seen them work when slaves, found themselves hopelessly involved in debt. The negro was emancipated from servitude and from wholesome restraints. He enjoyed his newborn freedom in full measure. Saturday was a holiday. To visit the towns on this day was paradise on earth.

His whims were marvelous. To attend a negro funeral, ten miles distant, was a duty; to help the sick man in distress was another matter. Political meetings had a peculiar fascination for him. Carpetbaggers arranged these gatherings during the reconstruction period. The time for such meetings was usually at night, when the political ofiice seeker, generally a stranger to the Southern people, made preposterous promises to his dusky hearers. The division of the white folks* property was a charming theme. " Forty acres and a mule " v/as not a myth, but a genuine promise made by a genuine impostor. A solid negro vote for such a friend was as certain as the negro's credulity in the delusion. It widened the gulf between the negro and his former master. He became thoroughly estranged from his old master. Neither kindness nor reason could control him. Suspicion misconstrued the fairest acts and the most disinterested motives of his friends. Behind these motives the negro saw some fell purpose to re-enslave him. A hint to this effect from his political boss was sufificient to awaken his worst fears. His alarm took fire. The dreadful intimation of such a possibility — a return to slavery — spread like wildfire. In twenty-four hours the horrible news was conveyed from cabin to cabin, and whispered with bated breath. On election day he came to vote, not as an individual, but in companies of fifty, one hundred, two hundred strong, provided with tickets ; and without breaking ranks, each man waited with patience for the time to deposit a vote for his friend. Such was the travesty for years on the high privilege of an American citizen. The despotism of fear, secretly and artfully fanned by this class of adventurers, was stronger than the purest endeavors of honest men to serve the credulous freedmen.

Attendance on religious meetings, protracted for a week at a time, was a species of mania with the negro. The large crowd, the exciting harangue of the preacher, the singing of several hundred voices,

The Condition of the South in iS6^. 5

the shouts of the most impressible natures, made these gatherings irresistible in their attractions. The wild, weird scene captivated his fancy. He felt good. His feelings were deeply stirred. Here he was conscious, too, of freedom. He could stay till midnight, and this was a common occurrence. No authority could command: "It is time to ^o home." If husband and wife and children trudged through rain and mud, and reached home by two o'clock in the morning, it was all right. Wasn't Dick a freedman? Wasn't his family free? Freedom made him a fool during these early years after the war. What else could be expected? The negro could not appreciate its meaning. To him it was license. It meant to do as he pleased. He could rise no higher in his conception. If he stretched his freedom to the robbing of a hen-roost, the killing of a shote or a yearling that did not belong to him, he felt no shame ; he knew no compunction of conscience. If, after a sleepless night, he went sulkily to work, and did his work generally wrong, and then in a fit of passion knocked his employer's mule in the head, and that employer asserted his authority in the use of the cane argument across Dick's back, promptly the case was reported to the carpet-bag sheriff. The sheriff was the boss of the county— the friend of the negro. A fine of ten dollars by the justice of the peace, the loss of a hundred and fifty dollar mule, and the decamping of Dick and his family, made up the finale of the protracted meeting or of the nocturnal political gathering. Such was the earliest fruit of freedom. That amid these perplexities, forced to deal with the negro incapable of understanding his own interest, the white people should occasionally resort to extreme measures, was but the natural outgrowth of this relationship.

Let it be stated here that the Southern people are a unit in their cheerful approval of the accomplished fact — the freedom of the negro. Negro slavery is dead forever.

The Christian people of the South offered every encouragement to the negroes for regular religious worship. They counseled them, and in every way cultivated friendly relations. When they desired men of their own color as preachers, and houses of worship of their own, the white people aided them. That these gatherings soon after the war were often abused, and the hours of service extended to unreasonable length, are well-known facts.

The negro was excited by every bauble. This racial quality made him the dupe of the political adventurer ; the victim of every unscrupulous man who wished to use him. He was easily affected by his hopes and fears. Any absurd story to re-enslave him placed him at the disposal of his informer, to do his bidding. Fearful where there was nothing to fear, unable to detect the imposition, spurning the advice of Southern men, the situation during the first ten years after the war was full of turmoil. The negroes, destitute of the rudiments of political knowledge, controlled the affairs of the Southern States. Ignorance governed intelligence. Black and tan legislatures imposed heavy burdens upon the people. Taxes were high. A summons to the

The Co7tdztion of the South 771 186^. 7

negroes to attend a political club, at night or in the day, must be obeyed. Protestations were vain. No matter how urgent the work was on the farm, even if the cotton and corn were in the grass, their presence at the club was imperative. During an approaching election, to lose two days in a week at political meetings, besides Saturday, no matter how much the growing crop suffered, did not concern the negroes. To meet a crowd of tv/o or three hundred negroes, all mounted on mules and horses the property of their employers, was not an uncommon sight. Such crowds, led by a single white man, were often met riding through the country. These negroes were in many instances instructed to oppose the white people— their old masters— by men who had no interest in the welfare of the country. They used the negroes for their own selfish purposes, burdened the country with heavy taxes, played upon the groundless fears of this ignorant people, and each year sunk the farming community deeper in debt. As long as the negroes could be influenced by the great bugbear re-enslavement, they voted solidly for this class of men.. They believed the adventurer omnipotent to save^them. But this state of affairs could not continue. The condition of the Southern States was desperate. A crisis was approaching. The South could not then, can not now, be made a Hayti. Ten years' woe-begone experience of iniquitous misrule had tested the patience of the Southern people to the utmost. The hour of deliverance must come. The white people determined to rid the land of these bad men. The majority of these men had one ambition — to fatten upon the country. They cared nothing for the negro, and in the welfare of the people they had neither part nor lot. The inexorable law of self-preservation demanded their expulsion. Necessity urged it every day. They were nearly to a man, with some noble exceptions, firebrands to society, haters of social order, and their misrule was augmenting the debts of the farmer every year. With this riddance, the negro's bugbear of re-enslavement soon died the death. He was disenchanted. The illusion which bound him so long, vanished. Since then, thousands have entered the Democratic fold, and a vast number care nothing for politics. They have discovered that " forty acres and a mule " is a hoax. Another discovery has been made, that the Anglo-Saxon race must rule this country. The superioV race must dominate. All the high interests of the South demand it. Such domination is mercy to the negro in his present condition. The affairs of government cannot be intrusted with any degree of safety into the hands of an ignorant and inferior race. It can not be done in the South. It is not done in the North. To do so, means anarchy and ruin to the negro.

It should be observed that the situation of the Southern States, here described, was the retrograde and ruinous movement of the country, immediately after the close of hostilities. That condition in 1865 was unique. In all these Southern States there was not an inland village or town containing a single store that could furnish a barrel of flour

The Condition of the Sotcth in i86^. 9

or sugar, a sack of coffee or salt, a pair of shoes or boots, a yard of calico or a yard of domestic, a hat, a cap, or a suit of clothes. Not a knife, a spade, a garden rake, a hoe, or a plow could be found. The destitution of every needful domestic article was general, and the people were in need of everything. But if the stores had been full of every variety of merchandise to supply every want, the people had no money. Confederate money was plentiful, but current money there was none. Here and there a little gold may have been found. The great body of the people had no money. Neither had a large percentage of the people anything with which to procure money. Those who had cotton sold it at a high price, and were able to provide their home wants. Speculators in cotton who were able to remain at home during the war on account of their age, or the ability to secure substitutes, fared well. This class of men, who in 1861 were worth nothing, or at best a few thousand dollars, were in 1866 rich. A hundred bales of cotton represented forty thousand dollars. Men who were poor at the beginning of the struggle, were wealthy at its termination, representing fifty, a hundred, and two hundred thousand dollars in cash. They became the money lenders of the country. Some few were moderate and reasonable in their terms in aiding their unfortunate neighbors. Others were hard and exacting — veritable Shylocks. Their opportunity had come, and they proposed to use it in full measure. It was the feast day for moneyed tyranny. The situation was deplorable to the poor lo The Ills of the South.

and the unfortunate. The times were out of joint.

Add to these troubles the fact that quite a number of men whose solvency was unquestioned in 1861, had old debts to pay, and they had nothing with which to pay them. Some of these claims were security debts ; others were for negroes bought when the war commenced. Hard, relentless creditors demanded payment with an urgency and a teasing persistency that drove the debtor to borrow money at exorbitant rates, and secured the same by a mortgage on his land. The foreclosure of such mortgage was in many instances a foreseen fact. A place worth ten thousand dollars was sold for half, and even one-fourth, of that sum. Hundreds of families that had never known what poverty meant, and unaccustomed to its pinching and humiliating distress, were homeless and beggars in the land of their birth. Many families nurtured in all the elegant refinements of life, were reduced to the hard necessity of doing the drudgery which a few short years ago was the work of slaves. The distress was bitter and keen. Others shifted their debts from one creditor to another, and, after years of hard toil, paid the principal and twice and three times that sum in interest. What a hard struggle it was! The milk of charity — the humane feelings — had soured in many a bosom.

This condition of affairs in the South introduced a vast credit system whose tremendous evils and exorbitant exactions have brought poverty and bankruptcy to thousands of families. As a policy.

The Condition of the South in i86^. 1 1

it is vindictive in its subtile sophistry ; as a system, it has crushed out all independence and reduced its victims to a coarse species of servile slavery ; as a relief measure, it is cruel in its deception and in its demands.

It is proposed, in these pages, to portray the evils not of credit, but of the credit system, with such other concomitant evils as menace many vital interests of the Southern people. A crisis is approaching. The future is dark with storm-clouds.

Chapter II. The Credit System

" Of what a hideous progeny is debt the father ! What lies, what meanness, what invasions on self-respect, what cares, what double dealing ! How, in due season, it will carve the frank, open face into wrinkles! How, like a knife, it will stab the honest heart " — D. Jerrold.

/'CREDIT is useful in an eminent degree. The ^-^ business system prevailing with such hurtful and dangerous tendencies in the Southern States, is enslaving the people, and, by its insidious operations, concentrating productive wealth in the hands of the few. It reduces a large body of people to a state of beggary, fosters a discontented spirit, checks consumption, produces recklessness on the part of the consumer, places a discount on honesty, and converts commerce into a vast pawning shop where farmers pledge their lands for hominy and bacon upon ruinous terms in harmony with the pawning system.

The doctrine of credit is, that it is confidence in the integrity and truthfulness of our fellow-men. These qualities form a strong basis of trust. Where they exist, doubt as to the fulfillment of a promise loses its sickly hue. Ability to perform the promise made is the foundation upon which confidence must rest. These three basal elements — ability, integrity, and truthfulness— ^x^ the strong ribs of genuine credit.

When they are impaired by whatever circumstances, misfortunes and providential dispensations excepted, confidence is damaged. Where these qualities exist, trust is their normal outgrowth. It is natural to trust when all the conditions upon which it depends are favorable. Trust in our fellow-men must be measured by the essential elements that give it birth.

The basis of confidence is wealth, and wealth is composed of all those objects which can be used and exchanged for other useful things. Food, clothing, houses, land, and whatever object can gratify human desire and that can be appropriated, constitute wealth. Money in itself is not wealth. It has nothing to gratify human desires. It can satisfy no human want. The money of the civilized world could not have kept Robinson Crusoe from starvation. The silver of Peru, had it been coined into money, could not procure for Pizarro a pound of bread or a pound of iron. Money measures wealth; this is its function. Neither does wealth consist in mortgages, bonds, and stocks. They are mere title-deeds to wealth. A mortgage upon a farm divides the ownership. These commercial instruments are the mere symbols of genuine wealth. A five-thousand-dollar United States bond is a lien on the wealth of the whole country. Should production cease, the bond would be worth less than the paper upon which it is written. None of these things can in themselves gratify human desires, and unless there is wealth, which they are supposed to symbolize, they can not be exchanged.