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VIII: Mudsills and Bottom Rails
- Louisiana State University Press
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C H A P T E R V I I I MUDSILLS AND BOTTOM RAILS IF RECONSTRUCTION ever set the bottom rail on top, it was not for long and never securely. Redemption seemed to leave little doubt that the bottom rail was again on the bottom —whatever its temporary dislocation. It remained for the New South to find what Reconstruction had failed to find: the measure of the emancipated slave's freedom and a definition of free labor, both black and white; for the white worker's place in the New Order would be vitally conditioned by the place assigned the free black worker. Much discussion about the Negro's civil rights, his political significance, his social status, and his aspirations can be shortened and simplified by a clear understanding of the economic status assigned him in the New Order. Emancipation and Reconstruction had done little to change that picture. The lives of theoverwhelming majority of Negroes were still circumscribed by the farm and plantation. The samewastrue of the whitepeople, but the Negroes, with few exceptions, were farmers without land. Questionnaires from the census of 1880 revealed that in thirty-three counties of Georgia where Negro population was thick, "not more than one in one hundred" Negro farmers owned land; the same proportion was reported from seventeen black Mississippi counties; twelve others reported not one in twenty, and many not one in fifty. From Tennessee as a whole the report was that only "a very small part of the Negroes own land or even the houses in which they live"; also from Louisiana and Alabama came report of "very few"owners .1 i Tenth Census, 1880, V, Cotton Production, "Mississippi," 154-55; "Tennessee," 104-105, "Louisiana," 83-84; VI, Cotton Production, "Georgia," 172-73. 205 ORIGINS OF THE NEW SOUTH More specific information is provided for one state by the report of the Comptroller General of Georgia for the year ending October i, 1880. Of a total of some $88,000,000 in land value, the Negroes, who made up nearly half the state's population, owned around $1,500 ,000. Of a total of some $23,000,000 value put upon cattle and farm animals, the Negroes owned about $2,000,000, and of some $3,200,000 in agricultural tools, the Negroes reported a little more than $i63,ooo.2 It is pretty clear that as a rule the Negro farmer not only worked the white man's land but worked it with a white man's plow drawn by a white man's mule. In the next two decades the race's landholdings improved slightly, but in 1900 black Georgians had taxable titles to only one twenty-fifth of the land; only 14 per cent of the Negro farmers owned their farms, and in 1910 only 13 per cent.8 In the South as a whole, by 1900, 75.3 per cent of the Negro farmers were croppers or tenants.4 The landless Negro farmers, like the landless whites, worked either for wages or for shares, under any of several arrangements. When the Alabama planter furnished tools, animals, and feed, as well as the land, his share was one half of all crops; when he furnished only the land he took one fourth of the cotton and one third of the corn. There were numerous variations, including the "twoday system" on Edisto Island, where the tenant worked two days of the week for the landlord in the feudal manner.5 The impression of uniformity in the labor system that replaced slavery would seem to have been exaggerated. As late as 1881 it was reported that in Alabama "you can hardly find any two farmers in a community who are carrying on their business alike," and frequently one planter might use several methods at once: "To one he rents, to another he gives a contract for working on shares, to another he pays wages in money, and with another he swaps work, and soad infinitum." Whatever system was used "there follows the same failure , or partial failure." 6 The share system called forth especially severe criticism from 2 Quoted in Rainey, "Negro and the Independent Movement/' Chap. I.» Brooks, Agrarian Revolution in Georgia, 44,122. * United States Census Bureau, Negro Population in the United States, 1790-79/5 (Washington, 1918), 571-72. 6 Tenth Census, 1880, V, Cotton Production,60-66; VI, Cotton Production, 154-55. * Montgomery Advertiser,August 12, 1881. 206 [54.204.117.206] Project...