Use of Cocaine Among Negroes

As I have said before, the white landlord who really tries to treat his Negroes well, often has a hard time of it. Many of those (not all) he deals with are densely ignorant, irresponsible, indolent—and often rendered more careless from knowing that the white man must have labour. Many of them will not keep up the fences, or take care of their tools, or pick the cotton even after it is ready, without steady attention. A prominent Mississippi planter gave me an illustration of one of the troubles he just then had to meet. An eighteen-year-old Negro left his plantation to work in a railroad camp. There he learned to use cocaine, and when he came back to the plantation he taught the habit to a dozen of the best Negroes there, to their complete ruin. The planter had the entire crowd arrested, searched for cocaine and kept in jail until the habit was broken. Then he prosecuted the white druggist who sold the cocaine.

Some Southern planters, to prevent the Negroes from leaving, have built churches for them, and in one instance I heard of a school-house as well.

Another point of the utmost importance—for it strikes at the selfish interest of the landlord—lies in the treatment of the Negro, who, by industry or ability, can “get ahead.” A good landlord not only places no obstacles in the way of such tenants, but takes a real pride in their successes. Mr. Brown said:

“If a tenant sees that other Negroes on the same plantation have been able to save money and get land of their own, it tends to make them more industrious. It pays the planter to treat his tenants well.”

Negro with $1,000 in the Bank

The result is that a number of Mr. Brown’s tenants have bought and own good farms near the greater plantation. The plantation, indeed, becomes a sort of central sun around which revolves like planets the lesser life of the Negro landowner.[Pg 90] Mr. Brown told me with no little pride of the successes of several Negroes. We met one farmer driving to town in a top buggy with a Negro school-teacher. His name was Robert Polhill—a good type of the self-respecting, vigorous, industrious Negro. Afterward we visited his farm. He had an excellent house with four rooms. In front there were vines and decorative “chicken-corn”; a fence surrounded the place and it was really in good repair. Inside the house everything was scrupulously neat, from the clean rag rugs to the huge post beds with their gay coverlets. The wife evidently had some Indian blood in her veins; 

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