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 landlords cruel and greedy, it has increased the helplessness, hopelessness 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 in the[Pg 95] black belt without seeing enough to convince him of the terrible consequences growing out of these relationships.

[Pg 95]

The Story of a Negro Tenant

A case which came to my attention at Montgomery, Alabama, throws a vivid light on one method of dealing with the Negro tenant. Some nine miles from Montgomery lives a planter named T. L. McCullough. In December, 1903, he made a contract with a Negro named Jim Thomas to work for him. According to this contract, a copy of which I have, the landlord agreed to furnish Jim the Negro with a ration of 14 lbs. of meat and one bushel of meal a month, and to pay him besides $96 for an entire year’s labour.

On his part Jim agreed to “do good and faithful labour for the said T. L. McCullough.” “Good and faithful labour” means from sunrise to sunset every day but Sunday, and excepting Saturday afternoon.

A payment of five dollars was made to bind the bargain—just before Christmas. Jim probably spent it the next day. It is customary to furnish a cabin for the worker to live in; no such place was furnished, and Jim had to walk three or four miles morning and evening to a house on another plantation. He worked faithfully until May 15th. Then he ran away, but when he heard that the landlord was after him, threatening punishment, he came back and agreed to work twenty days for the ten he had been away. Jim stayed some time, but he was not only given no cabin and paid no money, but his food ration was cut off! So he ran away again, claiming that he could not work unless he had a place to live. The landlord went after him and had him arrested, and although the Negro had worked nearly half a year, McCullough prosecuted him for fraud because he had got $5 in cash at the signing of the contract. In such a case the Alabama law gives the landlord every advantage; it says that when a person receives money under a contract and stops work, the presumption is that he intended to defraud the landowner and that therefore he is criminally punishable. The practical effect of the law is to permit imprisonment for debt, for it 

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