64 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE 



crop lien should be used to secure supplies advanced by 

 the merchant or to secure the rent to the landlord. In 

 many cases the landlord settled the problem by taking 

 the crop lien and standing good for the store bill. In 

 other cases the landlord contented himself with taking a 

 second lien on the crop. As they were in a rather risky 

 business the supply merchants tended to sell their sup- 

 plies on time at interest rates of approximately 20 per 

 cent. Many of them lost money, no doubt, but it is very 

 likely that the earliest fortunes to grow up in the South 

 out of the dead level of poverty left by reconstruction 

 were made by men who combined the functions of supply 

 merchant and cotton buyer. Said one observer, "the road 

 to wealth in the South, outside of the cities and apart 

 from manufactures, is merchandising." 52 



The supply merchant, forced by the nature of his po- 

 sition to exercise supervision, assumed a paternalistic at- 

 titude toward his tenants. "The merchant who has a lien 

 on the tenant's share of the crop," writes an observer, 

 "pays his taxes, buries his wife or child, buys him a mule 

 if he needs one, and feeds and clothes him and his fam- 

 ily." ! * The crop lien system opened a way to owner- 

 ship for the Negroes who started without land or credit. 

 On the other hand, no doubt many of them were more or 

 less victimized. Says W. E. B. Du Bois : 



A thrifty Negro in the hands of well-disposed landlords 

 and honest merchants early became an independent land- 

 owner. A shiftless, ignorant Negro, in the hands of un- 

 scrupulous landlords or Shylocks, became something worse 



52 G. K. Holmes, "The Peons of the South," Annals of the Amer- 

 ican Academy, IV (Sept., 1893), 266-74. 

 Loc. cit. 



