The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1902-11-07

Ihoush MOI ioE LohB-As H
Insurance, Too, and Is VIetimized-
Rage for Eyeglasses and False Teeth
The Excursions.
This is the time of year down South
when most things happen and even the
humblest country citizen develops an
en- enthusiasm for business.
To dweIlers in bustling centers used
to business every day in the year it
may have it's humdrum aspects. Not
so to the cotton growers who, since
February, has been thinking hard
about the soil, the weather and the par
tieular depths of ploughing.
With October days and the high tide
of the cotton harvest he gets his hands
on actual cash and enjoys the feeling
of being able to buy from whatever
store he pleases, and of being indie
pendent of the merchant from whom he
get his advances. The whole country
shows the effect of these loosened purse
strings and the black plantation folk
most of all enjoy being free to indulge
their fads.
Just now the possession of a bank
book is the latest pet foible of the
country darby. To start an account
of few dollars and have pass book
which he can display to neighbors and
keep in his insidec oat pocket, to be
looked at as often as he chooses, is
bliss unspeakable.
At the most, after his land rent is
paid in cotton and the rent for his mule
settled and the account for his years
advances with the stOrekeeper made
straight, he may have a matter of $50
or $40 left with which to get winter
clothing and supplies for himself and
his family. He may mean to devote
part Of this sum to a payment on
buggy or to pay it out on cow or an
OK, or for caneg rinder and boiler or
other. farm necessities.
But before he uses it at all he must
first put it in the bank Whatever the
sum or however soon he intends to
withdraw it after the deposit is made,
the deposit must be made in order that
that precious bank book may be his to
show and to thumb over for a certain
number Of DAYS.
Some depositors put in dollar or
two one week only to have the pleas
K uF6 OF tdhlHS IL Out li1c IIcAL anu VI
thus tran-scting business. No people
on earth enjoy so much as these the
doing of things purely for the sake of
the doing, regardless Of any advantage
to accrue.
Indeed so proud and pleased are these
customers with theiT pass books that
they would not forego having them
even if they must pay for thep rivilege.
But the banks appreciate this quality
in their ebon customers, and, realizing
the transformers of their deposits pro-
vide them with little thin-leafed pass
books inexpensively gotten up.
The radiant face of the plantation
tenant who has money in the bank
during these October days is worth see
ing. In secret he may wrinkle his fore
head and rub his woolly pate bewilder-
eddy over the printed rulings in his
passbook, printed words being trou-
BILE to him. But in public he is con-
fident and smilingly alive to the i'm
portance that his business dealings
confer.
The taking out of life insurance pa
pers is another fad that has lately
spread among the plantation hands.
In the fall in the cotton selling season
is the time that they have money to
devote to the purpose and the agents
make new converts in this hitherto un-
worked field every day.
The possession of papers, legal docu-
ments that put the possessor somehow
In touch with big doings, Is the bait
that catches them And those who have
made the first payment on their po;:c:os
hov ha show =
happy as a child in the possession Of
new toy.
There is something odd in the fact
that these hand-to-mouth scramblers
for living should take precautions
for the future The very next year
after they have taken out their policy,
their address may be changed, or they
be SO far withdrawn from postoffice or
from public knowledge as to be beyond
the agents finding.
Numbers among them change their
names or part of their names from
time to time, according to fancy going
by certain name one year and hav-
ing their letters directed in some other
fashion the next. A negro will be
known on one plantation as Sam Moore
and on another as Moore Haynes, or
Moore anything else that seemed to
him agreeable.
Under these conditions even the
scrupulous agents of sound insurance
companies might fail to keep up to
their bargain. And it often happens
that the companies that issue the poll
cies go to pieces shortly after the
initiatory transactions.
Be that as it may the prospective
beneficiaries feel no i'll will in the mat
ter They understood from the start,
when they took out the policy, that it
was about something to happen after
they were dead and SO it is Of no use
to grieve about it while alive.
Tt is the having of the papers and
the doing business with people way off
in q big city that constitute the charm
of the investment. They are a proud
people-proud Of being associated with
affairs.
Lately an aged negro was found dead
III his cabin. He was a lone old soul
whose children had married and gone
off long before, and he had no knowl-
edge of their whereabouts. Able
bodied to the last he had ploughed up
to the day he died, but as he worked
for a. younger negro, he had been able
to secure only the merest necessaries
of existence