33 
COTTON 
Let us look for a minute at our typical negro 
tenant. He moves in December to a new farm, we 
will say — for he has a roving instinct that prevents 
his remaining long at any place. He probably 
rents horse, land and tools from the farm owner, 
taking half the crop for his labor, and the farmer 
stands his security for supplies at the nearest store. 
Or he may rent land only, paying one-fourth the 
crop for the land, and mortgage his unplanted 
crop to the merchant for advance supplies. At 
any rate, the negro's recklessness, coupled with the 
exorbitant "time prices" charged, leads him perhaps 
to buy more than his crop pays for — so that the mer- 
chant's reckoning when the negro brings in his 
three or four bales of cotton in the fall, has been 
pretty accurately set forth in the popular couplet: 
"Naught's a naught, figger's a figger, 
All for the white man, and none for the nigger." 
Heretofore it has been true in most cases per- 
haps that the negro actually ended the year owing 
the merchant a balance on the year's supplies — the 
merchant not allowing the balance, however, to be- 
come more than just large enough to insure the 
negro's becoming his bondservant for another year. 
If, however, the negro finds himself burdened 
with an unexpected cash surplus after paying his 
debts, he probably relieves the burden aforesaid by 
buying an organ (which no member of his family 
can play) or a calendar clock (the dates of which 
he can barely read) or a magnificent range (on 
which his wife will experiment with side meat and 
corn bread until she becomes disgusted and goes 
back to the family fire-place). 
