100 UNITED STATES - MISCELLANEOUS 



It was about this time that he began coming to our " Annual Negro Con- 

 ference " at " Tuskegee Institute " . There he heard the stories of the Negro 

 farmers, some of whom had worked themselves out of this condition of partial 

 slavery that I have described. As he listened to these stories, he began to 

 realise that what had been possible for others was possible for him also. He be- 

 gan to think for the first time in his life of getting a home of his own. A place, 

 as he told me, where if he drove a nail or planted a tree it would stay there 

 and could be handed down to his children. He began thinking about the land 

 on which he was working, and a passionate desire to own and improve it 

 took possession of him. He wanted to be in a position where he could afford 

 to improve his surroundings and preserve for his children the improvements 

 that he made. 



In order to get more out of the soil he arose early in the morning 

 before daybreak and he and his wife and his children were out in the field 

 all day and late at night. In the midst of his work the rented mule, which 

 he had been using to make his cotton crop, died. 



This was a terrible blow to him, but it proved his economic salv- 

 ation, for it determined him to have an ox or mule that he could call his 

 own next year. 



The old farmer talked the matter over with his wife and between them 

 they agreed upon this plan : they would do all the work they could during 

 the day with their hoes, and after dark, by the light of the moon, the old man 

 would put the harness that the mule had worn on his own back, and, while 

 his wife held the plough, he pulled it through the furrow as well as he could. 

 This method of cultivating the soil was so unusual that he did not 

 care to attract the attention of his neighbours by working in this way 

 during the day. 



At the end of the season he found that he had cleared enough to buy 

 an ox. I have heard the old man tell more than once how proud he felt 

 when he owned an ox that he could call his own, something at any rate, 

 that was absolutely free of debt and no man had a claim upon it, with the aid 

 of this ox, he and his wife and his children made the next year a larger crop 

 and, when the cotton had been picked, he had in his possession more money 

 than he ever had before in his life. With this money he bought a mule. 

 Working the mule and the ox together, he made a still larger crop and the 

 next year purchased another mule. 



Without detailing step by step the method by which the old man 

 went forward, I might say that before many years had gone by he had 

 become the owner in fee simple of over two hundred acres of land. He was 

 Hving in a good house and had surrounded himself with most of the 

 necessities and some of the comforts of life. Not only was this true, but I 

 learned afterwards that he had been able to put considerable money in 

 the local bank, of which he eventually became a stockholder. " 



Examples such as this, though of course not frequent, show how it 

 has been possible for the negroes in the Southern States to obtain and increase 

 their agricultural property. 



