THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW 71 



really ambitious and industrious Negro his opportunity, and 

 many thousands of them are becoming more and more inde- 

 pendent of the favor or the ill-will of the whites. And therein 

 lies a profound danger, not only to the Negro, but to the South. 

 Gradually losing the support and advice of the best type of 

 white man, the independent Negro finds himself in competition 

 with the poorer types of white man, whose jealousy he must meet. 

 He takes the penalties of being really free. Escaping the exac- 

 tions of a feudal life, he finds he must meet the sharper diffi- 

 culties of a free industrial system. And being without the po- 

 litical rights of his poor white competitor and wholly without 

 social recognition, discredited by the bestial crimes of the lower 

 class of his own race, he has, indeed, a hard struggle before him. 

 In many neighborhoods he is peculiarly at the mercy of this 

 lower class white electorate, and the self-seeking politicians 

 whose stock in trade consists in playing upon the passions of 

 race-hatred. 



When the Negro tenant takes up land or hires out to the 

 landlord, he ordinarily signs a contract, or if he cannot sign 

 (about half the Negro tenants of the black belt are wholly 

 illiterate) he makes his mark. He often has no way of know- 

 ing certainly what is in the contract, though the arrangement is 

 usually clearly understood, and he must depend on the landlord 

 to keep both the rent and the supply-store accounts. In other 

 words, he is wholly at the planter's mercy a temptation as dan- 

 gerous for the landlord as the possibilities which it presents are 

 for the tenant. It is so easy to make large profits by charging 

 immense interest percentages or outrageous prices for supplies 

 to tenants who are too ignorant or too weak to protect them- 

 selves, that the stories of the oppressive landlord in the South 

 are scarcely surprising. It is easy, when the tenant brings in 

 his cotton in the fall not only to underweigh it, but to credit it 

 at the lowest prices of the week ; and this dealing of the strong 

 with the weak is not Southern, it is human. Such a system has 

 encouraged dishonesty, and wastefulness ; it has made many land- 

 lords cruel and greedy, it has increased the helplessness, hope- 

 lessness and shiftlessness of the Negro. In many cases it has 

 meant downright degeneration, not only to the Negro, but to 

 the white man. These are strong words, but no one can travel 



