Vol. LXIV. No. 2893. 
NEW YORK, JULY 8, 1905. 
WEEKLY, $1.00 PER YEAR 
SOUTHERN FARM LABOR . 
Experience With Colored Workers. 
ON A LOUISIANA PLANTATION.—Within the 
last few years I have had considerable to do with south¬ 
ern farm laborers, as I have the general oversight of 
two places where they are constantly employed. One 
is in central Louisiana and the other in southern Flor¬ 
ida. On the Louisiana plantation, which is all one great 
stretch of the richest of alluvial land, where we now 
have about 800 acres in crops, principally cotton, corn 
and cow peas, there is a big force of laborers, and each 
and every one of them is a negro. There is one white 
man to attend to the management of the plaee, including 
the keeping of the books, and an assistant, and it keeps 
them both busy. There is also an engineer, whose sole 
duty is to run and keep in order the cotton gin during 
the season of ginning, which is from about September 
15 until February. The regular force of colored work¬ 
ing people of both sexes will number near a hundred, 
and in cotton picking time, when every pickaninny on 
the plantation that is big enough to handle a cotton sack 
is put in the field, this number is about doubled. The 
growing of farm crops, especially cotton, was not our 
main idea in buying and culti¬ 
vating land there, but pecan 
orcharding. 
RENTING OUT—The plan 
upon which most of our crops 
are grown is by renting the 
land to the laborers. A very 
few have teams and farm tools 
of their own, and are able to 
furnish themselves with pro¬ 
visions for man and beast, but 
they are rare. We have three 
such tenants, who have sev¬ 
eral bales of cotton of their 
own stored in their yards, 
which they can sell as needed 
and use the proceeds as they 
please. One of these three has 
a good bank account besides. 
He is the best farmer on the 
place; has the biggest crops per 
acre and the cleanest fields. 
There is a considerable propor¬ 
tion of the men, and a few 
women, to whom we either sell 
on credit or rent mules, gears 
and farm tools with which to work their crops. To 
such we charge the rent in one of two ways. We either 
require so much in cash per acre for all the land they 
engage, or such a proportion of the crop as may have 
been agreed upon. From $5 to $7 per acre, according 
to the condition of the land, is the price, or so many 
pounds per acre of the lint cotton; usually 80 pounds, 
but less is sometimes considered fair, and as much 
as 100 pounds is rarely asked and taken. There 
are other tenants to whom we rent the mules, gears, 
tools and furnish feed, c tton seed, corn and cow peas 
for seeding, and take one-third of all crops they raise, 
delivered at our gin or barn. If they furnish their 
own feed we take one-fourth of what they raise. In 
any of these cases the tenants are obliged to put about 
one-fourth of the land to corn, with cow peas planted 
between the rows when it is “laid by.” This furnishes 
feed for the plantation and enriches the land. It is 
naturally very rich, but cotton grown for a number 
of years in succession will finally impoverish it some¬ 
what. No manures of any kind are used there, although 
I think it might pay to apply them to the land that has 
been cultivated for many years. In any of the cases 
above mentioned there is no danger of the land owner 
losing the rent, if the crop is good, for the seed cotton 
is all brought to the gin on the place or to any other 
gin he may desire, and there the cotton and seed 
may be taken for the debt, even if nothing is left for 
the tenant. The law protects the landlord well. Flouse 
rent is always furnished free to all tenants and day 
hands as well. 
THE PLANTATION STORE.—It is a very com¬ 
mon thing on the big southern plantation to own and 
operate a store or commissary, for the furnishing of the 
laborers with food, clothing and other necessary sup¬ 
plies. We do not keep a general store, as some do, 
but only the things that are really necessary; such as 
meat, cornmeal, flour, soap, sugar, kerosene, working 
clothes, etc. Saturday afternoons little or no work 
is done, and rations are issued to all who need them. 
Those who show by their work that they are worthy 
of trust are given rations for a month or more at a time; 
but those who are not so, or who have large debts to 
pay for live stock, tools, etc., are rationed very guard¬ 
edly. It is not safe to give credit in excess of $5 per 
acre on the land they are tending. An ordinary fam¬ 
ily is capable of tending about 20 acres of land, 15 of 
it being in cotton and the rest in corn and cow peas. 
A family usually can “make” more cotton than they 
can pick, and the hiring of extra labor to pick out cot¬ 
ton is difficult and expensive, because it is not often to 
be had at that busy season. There is no machine, as 
yet, for picking cotton but the human hand. We also 
have a set of “day hands,” which we often call “the 
wages squad.” It is composed of men and women hired 
by the day; with them we work a crop of cotton and 
other things, including a pecan nursery. They are paid 
75 cents per day for men and 50 to 60 cents for women, 
and work under a colored foreman, who gets $t per 
day. I hired one of the best cotton farmers on the 
plantation, gave him a horse to ride and orders not only 
to look after the wages squad but all who are working 
the entire cotton crop growing on the plantation. Of 
course he works under the manager, who has supreme 
command on the plantation. It is necessary to see that 
everyone on the place, whether renter or day hand, is 
out on time and doing his duty. The final test at the 
cotton gin is at stake. If a tenant is sick he must be 
helped along with his crop by a substitute, either with 
or without his consent. A lazy or trifling fellow may 
have to be persuaded or even forced into the field. 
HOURS OF LABOR.—The hours of labor are long 
on the big southern farms. One planter told me that 
he followed “the eight-hour system—eight hours before 
noon and eight hours after it.” That is too much to 
.isk of any laborer, but it is done on some plantations. 
Our big bell rings the first time before daylight, and 
an hour later it sounds the call to start to the field. 
About sunrise the breakfast is taken to the hands by 
women or children and eaten while sitting on the 
plow beams. At 12, noon, the bell rings them in, and 
again at 1 P. M. it calls all to start for their teams; 
hut about half an hour is allowed to get ready for the 
field. At sundown the last call of the day is sounded, 
and the plows are cleaned and turned upside-down. 
I HE NEGRO WORKER.—The negro of the South 
is a good laborer, under proper management. Lie is rea¬ 
sonably industrious, if he has an assurance of being 
fairly treated; which, I am sorry to say, is often not 
the case. Fie is often robbed of a considerable share 
of his earnings by his employer or landlord. He is 
generally charged an enormous interest for all advances 
in the way of money, rations, clothing, stock, imple¬ 
ments, etc., and his share of the crops is not always 
reckoned fairly. A man from Ohio, but now living in 
Louisiana, told me that lie once asked a big cotton 
planter there, when they were conversing about the 
labor question, what proportion of the crops grown on 
his plantation he got? The bluff reply came at once: 
By- I get it all.” Flowever, this is not the rule, 
and many of the tenants or work hands are treated 
fairly, and get all they earn, and sometimes more. They 
often have good clothes, horses, 
buggies and live well. But the 
negroes, as a race, are a shift¬ 
less, improvident set. If they 
were not guided by wiser 
heads and often with stronger 
hands they would make noth¬ 
ing for either their employers 
or themselves. They really 
need the white man to oversee 
them, and sometimes to com¬ 
pel them to work. Many of 
them are glad to have it so. 
They are much like a “pack 
of children,” as our manager 
said one day. It requires a 
great store of patience, as well 
as tact, to get them to do any¬ 
where near their duty. When 
I was trying to hire our best 
tenant to act as foreman, he 
said: “No, boss, I couldn’t 
do it. I wouldn’t work them 
lazy, triflin’ niggas for $50 a 
month. I’d have to kill some 
of ’em befo’ de crop season 
was ovah. You don’t know these niggas like I does.” 
They are often untrustworthy and proverbially deceit¬ 
ful. They will steal anything they can find. We have 
often had the plow lines, collars, clevises, etc., taken 
by those who were working with them, or from each 
other’s outfits. To show how sly they are, let me tell 
what occurred while we were planting the pecan nur¬ 
sery last March. There were seven women dropping 
pecans, while the men and mules were opening the 
furrows and covering them. I noticed that one of the 
women was putting some of the pecans in her bosom 
while she was filling her bucket out of a sack, but she 
did not know it. So I thought I would look over the 
entire squad. There was one other who looked too full 
in front, but I never said a word until noon. Then the 
droppers all came to the end of the rows and were 
ordered to empty what they had in all their buckets 
into two of them, so they could be taken to the com¬ 
missary for safe keeping until after dinner. When all 
were emptied, I said, pointing to the two who had ^ 
unnaturally full bosoms: “Now you may put what 
you have in your clothes into the buckets.” They tried 
to look astonished and ignorant of what I meant. But 
I reached to one of them and poked her dress waist 
so the pecans rattled, and said: “Oh, shell them out, 
you’re too full here.” Without a word they slowly and 
sneakingly reached in next the skin and brought out 
* 
WORK SCENE ON A SOUTFIERN PLANTATION. Fig. 216 . 
