Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1883-10-04
The Negro Share Farm.

The changes wrought by the civil
war in the South have produced one
character whom we found one of the
most interesting studies of recent
trip through the South. We allude to
the Negro Share Farmer. At home, in
his ramshackle cabin, among his lean
pigs, his bony cattle and his always
numerous family, or in the market
place, with his spike team, often CON-
posed of mule and COW, which he
has driven long days journey to sell
a dollars worth of wood or couple
OF bushels of potatoes, he presents
grotesque and interesting type. 1t
would be difficult, probably, to get
down to poorer and less profitable
agriculture than the share farmer prac-
tees. But he manages to scrape liy-
ing out of the ground, exactly how he
would perhaps sometimes find it diff
cult to explain himself.
You come upon his cabin among the
pine woods, with patch of scraggy
corn behind it, and the ground around
strewn with faggots, among which pick
a struggling crew of rusty fowls. A
couple of ours bark furiously at you,
and couple of pigs, which look like
dogs, they are so bony and long legged,
trot grunting away into the brush.
The messy roof is sagging on its yield
ing beams; there are great assures in
the mud-plastered chimney, and the
wind finds ingress through the cracks
between the slabs and logs of the wa lis,
from which the mud has fallen. The
commotion your approach has aroused
brings troop of children tumbling
over one another out into the road, to
watch you with wide open mouths and
eyes. and shrinking back when you
look at them. A sturdy negress, with
a cob pipe, gives you curtsey in the
doorway; behind her you see figure
like the witch of fairy tale covering
in the big fireplace; the figure of some
old grandfather or grandmother, carry
ing the weight of nearly a century on
bent back. As you ride on, you per-
haps come upon the farmer, sturdy and
uncouth. hoeing in his potato patch, or
wandering among his corn or cotton.
The share farmer obtains his title
from the tenure by which he holds his
land. He rents it at the simple price
of half its yield. 1t is commonly a
portion of some large plantation, often
OF the same one on which he once la
bored.
The system of share farming has given
existence to another type besides the
farmer himself This is the banker, as
he calls himself; the usurIous money
lender as he really is. This worthy,
like the class he thrives off of, is me-
gro. He is in a small way capitalist,
and his business is simply lending
money on the security of the share
farmers crop. Few of the thriftless
blacks can resist the temptation of anti
cipating their gains, and the banker is
an obliging friend, where he considers
1t safe to be so. In business he is, by
all accounts, desperately hard and
grinding, otherwise he is eminently res
pectable, and not infrequently preach
er OF no little local fame. Between the
money he owes the creditor and his
store account for molasses, tobacco,
ETC., also secured by his crop, the share
farmer is often saved the trouble of
handling any money at all for it, when
it has been gathered.
Such as it is, the existence of the
negro share farmer is not devoid of ele-
ments OF picturesqueness. His labor is
hard and his fare coarse, but he is
tough, rude man, and has no craving
for unknown luxuries. Among the fogs
of early day he is at work, when night
falls he fiddles or croons his simple
melodies before the yawning fireplace
Of his cabin. He generally has an old
gun and wages war upon such game
as the woods around him shelter. What
little leisure he enjoys he spends in
sleep. In the scale of education he
ranks very low. He cannot read or
write. His ideas are frequently clouded
by superstition, though quite often he
exhibits puculiarly keen native wit
and cunning. which make him a great
bargainer, and stand him in good stead
in his dealings with men of better
knowledge. His dress is a mass of
patches and of rags. But he is as well
dressed as his neighbors, and has no
ambition to Guido them. His children
wear single garment, a shirt of coarse
cotton, apparently never washed. The
women folks own dress of calico each,
and a snowy cotton handkerchief and
shoes for state occasions. If the farmer
has any money he ties it up in old rags
and hides it in holes in his fireplace or
under the hearth. Raking out his money
at night and counting it by the freight
is his greatest, perhaps his only luxury
american Agriculturist for October.