Historical voices

Nor does it altogether satisfy the conscience of the modern world to be told complacently that all this has been right and proper, the fated triumph of strength over weakness, of righteousness over evil, of superiors over inferiors.

War, murder, slavery, extermination, and debauchery,—this has again and again been the result of carrying civilization and the blessed gospel to the isles of the sea and the heathen without the law.

Whatever we may say of the results of such contact in the past, it certainly forms a chapter in human action not pleasant to look back upon.

Indeed, the characteristic of our age is the contact of European civilization with the world’s undeveloped peoples.

The sin of the country districts is visited on the town, and the social sores of city life to-day may, here in Dougherty County, and perhaps in many places near and far, look for their final healing without the city walls.

And for every land-owner who has thus hurried away from the narrow and hard conditions of country life, how many field-hands, how many tenants, how many ruined renters, have joined that long procession?

Fully ninety-four per cent have struggled for land and failed, and half of them sit in hopeless serfdom.

The rise of a nation, the pressing forward of a social class, means a bitter struggle, a hard and soul-sickening battle with the world such as few of the more favored classes know or appreciate.

But for a few thousand poor ignorant field-hands, in the face of poverty, a falling market, and social stress, to save and capitalize two hundred thousand dollars in a generation has meant a tremendous effort.

If they had been given an economic start at Emancipation, if they had been in an enlightened and rich community which really desired their best good, then we might perhaps call such a result small or even insignificant.

And yet these fifteen thousand acres are a creditable showing,—a proof of no little weight of the worth and ability of the Negro people.

And thus the land-owners, despite their marvellous efforts, are really a transient class, continually being depleted by those who fall back into the class of renters or metayers, and augmented by newcomers from the masses.

They have little to tide over a few years of economic depression, and are at the mercy of the cotton-market far more than the whites.

The men who conduct such farms do not long remain renters; either they sink to metayers, or with a successful series of harvests rise to be land-owners.

The sole advantage of this small class is their freedom to choose their crops, and the increased responsibility which comes through having money transactions.

The result of such rack-rent can only be evil,—abuse and neglect of the soil, deterioration in the character of the laborers, and a widespread sense of injustice.

There were, of course, exceptions to this,—cases of personal kindness and forbearance; but in the vast majority of cases the rule was to extract the uttermost farthing from the mass of the black farm laborers.

If the tenant worked hard and raised a large crop, his rent was raised the next year; if that year the crop failed, his corn was confiscated and his mule sold for debt.

If cotton rose in price, the rent rose even higher; if cotton fell, the rent remained or followed reluctantly.

But with the carrying out of the crop-lien system, the deterioration of the land, and the slavery of debt, the position of the metayers has sunk to a dead level of practically unrewarded toil.

Thus we have a laborer without capital and without wages, and an employer whose capital is largely his employees’ wages.

All social struggle is evidenced by the rise, first of economic, then of social classes, among a homogeneous population.

Above all, they cannot see why they should take unusual pains to make the white man’s land better, or to fatten his mule, or save his corn.

They are careless because they have not found that it pays to be careful; they are improvident because the improvident ones of their acquaintance get on about as well as the provident.