EVOLUTION OF THE COTTON SYSTEM 55 



Many Negroes expected the illusionary forty acres and 

 a mule; some met with swindlers who took their money 

 in return for fraudulent deeds. Much has been made of 

 the Negro's refusal to work after emancipation. Some 

 of them no doubt spent their days hanging about the 

 towns to return to their cabins at night. The plantation 

 had inculcated habits of industry and hard work but 

 had linked these responses to the stimulus of personal 

 compulsion rather than economic competition. Such in- 

 dustry was a matter of obedience, not a matter of fore- 

 thought. Thrift had not been taught because the worker 

 had nothing that he might save. But, as has been sug- 

 gested, the plantation itself had broken down, and no 

 doubt many laborers did not stay on the plantations 

 simply because their master could not give them work. 33 

 The plantations had been returned to the planters, 

 and the high prices for cotton encouraged them to rees- 

 tablish its culture. There was a gradual return of labor- 

 ers to the plantations under the wage contract system. 

 This system met with varying success in different local- 

 ities, but as a general thing it was abandoned. There 

 were no banks left solvent after the war; the planters 

 were land-poor, and it was almost impossible for them 

 to pay a weekly or monthly wage. Attempts to bind 

 Negroes by contract failed, because they did not under- 

 stand contracts and refused to wait for yearly wages. 3 * 

 In cases of crop or price failure the whole loss thrown 

 on the planter might result in his inability to meet the 

 wages. The superior profitableness of cotton production 

 and the scarcity of labor created higher wages notably 



33 See Charles H. Wesley, Negro Labor in the United States, 

 chap. V. 



34 M. B. Hammond, The Cotton Industry, pp. 123-27. 



