seed and a
week's rations. As soon as the green cotton-leaves appear above the
ground, another mortgage is given on the "crop." Every Saturday, or at
longer intervals, Sam calls upon the merchant for his "rations"; a
family of five usually gets about thirty pounds of fat side-pork and a
couple of bushels of cornmeal a month. Besides this, clothing and
shoes must be furnished; if Sam or his family is sick, there are orders
on the druggist and doctor; if the mule wants shoeing, an order on the
blacksmith, etc. If Sam is a hard worker and crops promise well, he is
often encouraged to buy more,--sugar, extra clothes, perhaps a buggy.
But he is seldom encouraged to save. When cotton rose to ten cents
last fall, the shrewd merchants of Dougherty County sold a thousand
buggies in one season, mostly to black men.

The security offered for such transactions--a crop and chattel
mortgage--may at first seem slight. And, indeed, the merchants tell
many a true tale of shiftlessness and cheating; of cotton picked at
night, mules disappearing, and tenants absconding. But on the whole
the merchant of the Black Belt is the most prosperous man in the
section. So skilfully and so closely has he drawn the bonds of the law
about the tenant, that the black man has often simply to choose between
pauperism and crime; he "waives" all homestead exemptions in his
contract; he cannot touch his own mortgaged crop, which the laws put
almost in the full control of the land-owner and of the merchant. When
the crop is growing the merchant watches it like a hawk; as soon as it
is ready for market he takes possession of it, sells it, pays the
landowner his rent, subtracts his bill for supplies, and if, as
sometimes happens, there is anything left, he hands it over to the
black serf for his Christmas celebration.

The direct result of this system is an all-cotton scheme of agriculture
and the continued bankruptcy of the tenant. The currency of the Black
Belt is cotton. It is a crop always salable for ready money, not
usually subject to great yearly fluctuations in price, and one which
the Negroes know how to raise. The landlord therefore demands his rent
in cotton, and the merchant will accept mortgages on no other crop.
There is no use asking the black tenant, then, to diversify his
crops,--he cannot under this system. Moreover, the system is bound to
bankrupt the tenant. I remember once meeting a little one-mule wagon
on the River road.