Part 17 (1/2)

Q. All seasons of the year?

--A. Generally in all seasons of the year. In the summer time a laboring man hardly ever wears a coat at all.

Q. What do you think an average colored Southern laborer expends per annum for his clothing, say the head of the family, the man--what does it cost him for clothing a year?

--A. I cannot give you a definite answer. I will only say that we who are the producers of cotton are very glad to see them get in a prosperous condition in order that there may be more consumption, and when a man is prosperous he will buy two suits of clothes, where if he is not prosperous he will make one do.

Q. We have had a good deal of testimony as to what it actually costs a Northern laborer a year for clothing. I have no desire to show that any laborers dress cheaply or poorly; I merely want to get an idea of the relative cost of the laboring man living North or South, in the item of clothing?

--A. I can sell and do sell a man a pair of jeans pants and a coat from $7 to $12 per suit.

Q. How many suits will he want in a year?

--A. That will depend on his condition and his ability to pay me. If he is a prosperous man and beginning to acc.u.mulate he will make one do. Whenever a negro begins to acc.u.mulate he goes to extremes; he does not want to buy anything; he wants to acc.u.mulate rapidly. Where a man is not doing so well, and there is little doubt of his ability to pay, he would probably want several suits; but I would confine him to one or two.

Q. The same is true, I suppose, of his wife and children?

--A. Yes, sir.

Q. But you look on the matter of clothing as a much less expensive item in the laborer's account in your country than here in the North where the climate is colder, I suppose?

--A. Yes, sir. What absorbs the profit of the laborers with us is their want of providence; that is, if they get surplus money they throw it away for useless articles.

Q. It has been suggested that a postal savings bank might be a good thing as a place of deposit of the savings of the colored population of the South; they might feel some confidence in an inst.i.tution of that kind, and that it would be a beneficial thing to them. What is your own judgment?

--A. I advocate it and approve it, and indeed propose to start a savings bank in our own neighborhood. In this connection I will mention another important feature. In the Mississippi Valley--and when I speak of the Mississippi Valley I mean both sides of the river, Arkansas and Louisiana on one side and Mississippi on the other--there are numbers of negroes who have considerable acc.u.mulations and use their surplus to advance to other negroes. For instance, there are negroes right on our property who have acc.u.mulated enough to help out certain others, as they express it, and they use their money as an investment in that way. For instance one negro who has got something will advance it to another negro and take a mortgage on his crop.

Consequently there are numbers of them who are getting advances from their co-laborers, and I always give them that opportunity when they want it. My idea of the adjustment in the Mississippi Valley, seeing what I can make from the mercantile portion of my business, is that it is simply my revenue that I get from the rent of my land as an investment on my capital; and whenever a negro can get his own merchant in New Orleans--a number of them have very good factors in New Orleans and s.h.i.+p their cotton direct--I encourage it.

When one negro wants to help out another, I give him the privilege of doing it and encourage it. There are several negroes, a great many, not a few in Chicot County to-day who have their own factors in New Orleans, s.h.i.+p their own goods, and receive their own accounts of sales.

Q. They are not owners of alluvial lands?

--A. They are not owners at all; they are tenants.

Q. I suppose some time they will be liable to make some acc.u.mulations, and they will now and then own a plantation?

--A. I do know of one instance on the river below Vicksburg where the old property of Mr. Davis was bought by a former slave of his.

Q. Is that the only instance?

--A. The only instance I know of.

Q. One question we have been accustomed to put is as to the actual personal feeling that exists between the laborers and capitalists of different parts of the country. What is the feeling between the laborers, colored and white, and the owners of the land and of capital at the South?

--A. I confine my replies to my own section, because I am not familiar with the others. I have answered that question in the written answers. The feeling is harmonious and good, as I have expressed it there. The negro naturally looks to the planter for advice and for a.s.sistance, and the planter looks to his laborers for the development of his property.

Consequently their interests are identical and their feelings good.

Q. You have alluded once or twice to the pressure of outside, and I suppose Northern, opinion; I a.s.sume that you mean political opinion in the past and the desirability that it should cease. What is the fact as to a progressive disintegration of the solid Republican or solid negro vote of the South? What are the chances of its dividing, and of the white vote dividing? We hear now of a ”solid South,”

colored on the one side and white on the other. What prospect is there of a division in that regard; to what extent does it exist, or is it going on?

--A. The negroes of the South are already divided in their votes. There are a great many who vote with the proprietors of the properties. There are instances where they vote with what they call their Republican friends. A few years ago in the South any man who was an escaped convict from one of your penitentiaries here who would come down to that country and tell the negroes that he was one of General Grant's soldiers, and fought to free him, would vote the last one out; but any of those negroes would come to me at that very time with his money and get me to save it for him, and take care of it for him. He would put all his confidence in me so far as his money was concerned, but when it would come to politics he would vote with this man, who probably did not own the coat he had on his back. Those kind of inferences were what did do us in the South very material damage. Let me ill.u.s.trate that by a riot in my own county. In Chicot County, in 1872, there was a proposition to impose upon the county a railroad tax of $250,000 for the purpose of building a railroad.

Q. What proportion of the taxable property of the county would that have been?

--A. Our whole a.s.sessed valuation was about $1,500,000 at that time. This was brought out by a promise that if the appropriation was made, the levees on our river should be built and this road would run on the levees. At that time the whole of the local government in Chicot County was in the hands of men who did not own any property in the county, and had just come down there and been elected by the negroes, who have a very large majority in that county. This tax was a very great imposition upon us. At that time there was a negro attorney at Lake Village, who was one of the prime movers in this thing. The planters knew that this was only intended as a speculation upon the county, for the vote was afterwards taken, the appropriation was made, and not one foot of levee was put up, and not one foot of that railroad was built in Chicot County. Still we are mandamused now for the interest on that debt that was put on us by that kind of influence. One of our planters was remonstrating with this negro attorney about this debt and told him it was an imposition on the property owners, and that the thing ought not to be done, when the man became violent and insolent, and it resulted in a difficulty between this planter and the negro. The planter had a little pen-knife in his pocket, the blade not longer than my little finger; he struck the negro with it and it happened accidentally to hit him on a vital point and killed him. The sheriff of the county was a negro. The planter, with two innocent parties in whose house this occurrence took place at the county-seat, in Lake Village, was arrested and lodged in jail. A few days afterwards--probably not more than two or three--nearly every negro in the county was summoned to Lake Village, and they rose like so many locusts, coming in from every direction, took those three men out of jail shot them to pieces, murdered them. It was such an outrage that the people from Memphis and Vicksburg and from the hill countries, commenced to come in there with companies, started down with companies. On investigation we found out that the sheriff of the county had exercised his authority to send out to the ignorant negroes of the county and summon them to the village, and these fellows went because they were afraid not to obey the mandate of the sheriff. At that time feeling was running very high, and these people were anxious to come in and quell this riot, but a few of us who were more prudent, a few of the leading planters of the county, got together, sent these different companies word not to come there, that we did not want them in the county; some of the companies were already on their way to Chicot County, thinking the people there were going to be ma.s.sacred. A great many of our people had to run away from their homes for several days; but we took the ground that we would let the thing take its natural course. As soon as things quieted down, which they did so partially in three or four days, some of our gentlemen who had gone off with their families returned, and it resulted in our arresting a few of the ringleaders in the county. The courts and the administration were all at that time in the hands of persons not identified with the interests of the county, and it was impossible for us to get justice meted out. We saved a ma.s.sacre of the negroes of the county, but we never could bring those men to any kind of punishment before the courts, and finally we came to a compromise with them, that if they would leave the county we would withdraw the suit against them, and that was the way the thing was ended. Now, I do not believe you could get up a riot in Chicot County because I think there are many intelligent negroes there who would not permit it. Those are the kind of race issues that I referred to. Relieve us of that sort of thing, and leave our government to ourselves and our people, and give to the negro the same protection the white man has, but do not give him any more. Do not let him feel that he has the United States Government standing behind him, and that he is the child of the United States Government to be taken care of, but that he must rely on his own resources and energy for his living, and time will solve the question, and the demand for his labor will protect him.

Q. Do you find that the feeling among the negroes which resulted in the exodus of a few years ago has been allayed and perhaps has disappeared?

--A. I will tell you something that is rather amusing about that. The first that I heard of a negro exodus in my section of the country--it was to Kansas--was my manager coming into my room one morning and saying that the negroes were going out to the river to go to Kansas. I said, ”It is several miles to the river; how are they going?” Said he, ”They are toting their things out on their heads.” Said I, ”Go right at once there and offer them the wagons on the plantation to haul the things. What is the matter?” Said he, ”I don't know; I went out this morning and summoned the hands to the field, but they say they are all going to Kansas.” I got on my horse and rode out and met a negro who had been my engineer. I said to him, ”What is the matter, where are you all going?” He stopped right on the road and said, ”Mr.

Calhoun, you never have deceived me, and I am going to tell you what is the matter. There were two men came through here last week, one night, and said 'You see this picture?' There is a picture of a farm in Kansas for me that General Grant has bought out there for me. That is so because my name is on the back of it, and here is my ticket; that carries me to Kansas.” Said I, ”Let me see it.” He showed me a piece of pasteboard that had printed on it ”Good for one trip to Kansas.” Said I, ”What did you pay him for this?” He said, ”We paid him $2 a piece.” ”How many of you are in this thing?” ”Over eighty of us are in this thing.” Said I, ”That man then swindled you out of $160; he is an imposter; there is no farm bought for you in Kansas.” I saw that the time for me to remonstrate with them was not then; they were on their way to the Mississippi River, and I let them all go.

After they got out there I went and expostulated with them; told them of the difference in climate, soil, and everything else that they were accustomed to, and that if they went there many of them would lose their families and children.

They would not listen to me. They went on to the river bank, and those negroes who went out there owed me over $109,000.

Q. How many of them were there? Eighty I think you said?