The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-01-07
WHERE THE TROUBLE Is.

At the moment when the conviction is
almost universal that it will not pay for South
ern agriculturists to produce cotton with negro
labor, General Howard proposes that Con-
gress provide relief for the destitute at the
South, by means of government loan of
twenty-six millions Of dollars based on the
hypothecation of property and crops The
deslitution which it is desired to relieve is
confined almost wholly to freedmen in the
agricultural districts, and to those who have
depended upon the results of freedmen labor
] on plantations and farms. General Howard
would have the government try an expert
ment which has already proved a disastrous
| failure The projected loan of twenty-six
millions is much less than the sum which was
actually advanced within the past two years
on basis substantially the same as that on
which it is proposed to place this loan. Bank
ers and cotton factors would not have accom-
modated the cotton planting interest with
money unless reasonably assured. that the
crops in which it was invested would be de-
voted to its repayment. And the calculations
| of the planters who received, as well as of the
bankers and factors who extended the loan,
rested On the assumed capacity of freedmen
value to cover borrowed capital and leave
an excess for net profit and home wants.
The problem was a fair and promising one to
look at But it has not been resolved 60 ex-
perience as it was to anticipation. And there
is but one explanation Of this woful difference
between the anticipated and the experimental
result. The industrial sufficieney of freedmen
laborers, assumed as the fundamental element
Of the problem, proved to be an illusion. 1t
is found that this labor, under existing condi-
tons and influences, is not only inadequate
to secure investments in cotton planting, but
is incapable of producing bare subsistence
for the laborers and their families. This
general lesson of too costly experience is
signally illustrated in the fact that in almost
every instance in which freedmen worked for
a share of the crop they have come out at
the end Of the year realizing nothing, in debt,
destitute, and with no provision whatever for
the future. Those of them who worked for
wages can be hut little better off. For.
whether they contracted to be paid in
some sense partners in the planting |
business, and it must be, in the long |
run, about as bad for them when they fail 70 |
earn their wages as when they fail to produce |
a remunerative crop. In either case, so far as
they are concerned, the business is Knocked
in the head, and that resource for an honest
living is dried Up. And such is precisely the
situation now in respect to several hundred
thousand freedmen to whom Gen. Howard
wishes the government to distribute not less
than twenty millions of dollars, perhaps, as a
loan secured by lien on the prospective
fruits of their agricultural labors. The trouble
has been that these same people have hereto
ore manifested keen alacrity for consuming
unds advanced on a like security, along with
1 serene indifference to industrial requisites
10 make the security good. The trouble now
is, in the relations of planters to both capital
md labor, that this security has proved ut
terly worthless. Planters could readily OBJ
tain money for paying or subsisting freedmen
aborers, if the industrial qualities of the
after had been demonstrated to be such as
% impart to the hypothecation of crops to be
made by freedmen labor the character of
'ankable security. Gen. Howard might as
veil strike from his eleemosynary project the
condition of lien on crops. 1t is quite a
uperhuous feature. The freedmen who should
brow themselves on such charity for the
oming year, would have nothing to show at
he end of it that would pay the expenses of a
agency for enforcing theproposed
len in application to crops, the brunt of which
would, therefore, fall upon those planters who
hould have unwisely made themselves agri-
ultural partners with the recipients of this
conditional bounty. The upshot of the plan,
With regard to planters who should have be-
ome complicated with it, would be to make
hem the victims of an indirect and disguised
onfscation for the benefit of the most indo-
ent, unthrifty, and unworthy portion of the
population.