SOUTHERN AGRICULTURE. 247 



crude department store dealing in every article from medicines to 

 wagons that he is likely to need in his simple existence. He requests 

 the merchant to 'run' him during the year, that is to say, to sell him 

 supplies on credit until the crop is harvested. He promises the mer- 

 chant to plant a certain acreage of cotton and signs a mortgage upon 

 this yet unplanted crop. He is now at liberty to buy on credit from this 

 particular merchant anything he requires ; but he can not buy anywhere 

 else, for he has no cash, and his credit and security are all pledged to 

 his patron merchant. The merchant has two scales of prices, cash 

 and credit, the latter much higher than the former, the excess consti- 

 tuting interest which the lien farmer must pay. With a few mer- 

 chants the credit prices are scaled down each month, so that the rate 

 of interest remains approximately the same on all goods purchased on 

 lien; but ordinarily the prices remain unchanged up to the last day 

 before settlement, so that the rate of interest rapidly increases as the 

 time before settlement diminishes. On goods which the farmer gets 

 late in the summer, he frequently pays interest above the cash price at 

 the rate of 200 per cent, per annum. For the whole term of credit, ex- 

 tending from February to October, he pays on the average, in different 

 localities, from 40 to 80 per cent, per annum. The usury law forbids 

 the bank to lend him money at a higher rate than 8 per cent., but 

 'protects' him by allowing the merchant to charge him 200 per cent., 

 on the principle, apparently, that a man may consent to pay any price 

 he chooses for capital in the form of merchandise, but that he is not 

 at liberty to offer more than a moderate price for capital in the form 

 of money, no matter how badly he may need it or how great the benefit 

 to be derived from its possession. 



Some large merchants employ a sort of traveling inspector of se- 

 curities, on whose report of the condition of each customer's crop 

 the question of further advances is determined. Possibly by July the 

 farmer has so much charged against him that the merchant considers 

 it unsafe, in view of the uncertainty of seasons, to allow the crop to 

 cover any further credits, and accordingly declares himself under the 

 painful necessity of declining further sales except on additional se- 

 curity. The farmer then gives a mortgage on his slight furniture, 

 bedding, cows, everything. The law does not allow him to give a 

 mortgage on his wife and children. 



Late in the summer the crop is sold. Not to lay the price upon the 

 counter of the lien merchant is, in law, a misdemeanor ; but in farm- 

 ing it is starvation for the next year — or at least, the farmer thinks 

 so. Very commonly in good years, and as a general rule in bad ones, 

 the price of the crop does not equal the amount on the merchant's 

 books against the farmer. Sometimes the sheriff is called in to supply 

 the deficit from the real and chattel additional securitv: but not 



