Cañon City record., 1910-03-03
VACATION NOTES.
Continued from page IL

In the Spring the negro makes deal
with the owner of the land or with the
country storekeeper to supply him
with some bacon, grits, seed, and
cheap clothing, enough to run through
the year. He gives mortgage on his
crop, whatever stock and personal eff
fects he may have, in fact everything
he possesses except his soul, which is
not rated highly in Mississippi.
In the fall he brings his cotton in
and the negro is always found in debt.
1t matters not what the price of cot
ton is, or how big the crop, the negro
always comes out in debt, so he must
remain where he is and go through
the same process another year. 1t is
not considered safe for negro to get
ahead and 1t is not considered dis
honest to keep the poor devil in debt.
A banker told me: 1T does a nigger
no good to get any money. Suppose
he made hundred dollars, he would
merely move over into some other
county and spend it in a month. then
he is worse off than before. The best
way is to help them in debt" ''of
course" he added, 81 have never
cheated them out of anything, but we
find it best to keep them in debt"
Frank, wasn't It?
So the Mississippi negro goes on a
slave-tenant forever and his lot and
condition appears little better off than
that of the fine Berkshire hogs root
ing in A. R. Gumaer's alfalfa fields
east of Florence.
The Louisville owner may be pros
porous. but that part of Mississippi
from Jackson to Memphis looks about
as poverty stricken as any in the
world-and it is typical of other cot
ton sections in other negro states.
/ would hardly suggest that the
back-country negro, even the Missis-
sippi cotton negro slave-tenant, is
not better off in his present state of
freedom than he would be in slavery,
but / have a guess that he works
more hours, has less to eat, is more
poorly clothed. gets but little more
education and religious training,
bears more children out of wedlock,
and that the death rate is a great deal
higher among them today than 1t was
In lS50-or than it would be II he
were property instead of merely a
tenant. This is merely a guess. how
ever.
Cotton is a good crop. when con-
uitions and prices are good. 1t yields
from half bale to bale and half
TO the acre A bale weighs 500 pounds.
1t is worth now 15c or s75 to the bale.
1t is planted early in the spring and
picked late in the fall and 1t should |
be cultivated constantly-four times |
as much as corn. In some sections the |
crop has been practically ruined for |
a year or two by the boil weavel, a |
small insect that eats into the cotton |
buds. AS they produce nothing else in |
this section it can be easily seen that
in these sections where the boil |
weavel has struck the country is
practically paralyzed
What the South needs is a diversity
of crops. This, of course. everybody
down there knows and says. but they
don't know how to get it. The negro
is the only man who works and he
knows nothing and will plant nothing
but cotton.
It would pay a good many counties
of the South to subsidize a few prac-
teal Kansas farmers to locate down
there. 1t would pay them to give free
farms TO Kansas farmers who would
agree to work them for number OF
years But that's problem they will
have to work out for themselves-we,
here in Canon, will be too busy talk
ing up the tourist business TO bother
further with II.
A thing that !mpresses you as you
go through the South is the small
amount of building being done. Be
twee.. Memphis and New Orleans you
won't see as many buildings under
way as we have right here in Canon
City at the present tlme-and you
know that's nothing 70 brag about.
Another thing is the fact that most OF
the good school buildings you see
have been donated by some individ-
ual. At Natchez, cotton broker, Mr..
Carpenter, has given the city two
$4,000 buildings and at New Orleans