Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1919-07-06

Time" Some careless readers may
have got such an impression from the
narratives Of the Rambler. but it has
never been his purpose to so mislead
those who are kind enough to follow
him. The Rambler knows very well
how the belief gained currency that
all old-timers were rich and pros
porous. Whenever a story or an an
ecdote or "Reminiscences or what not is
told Of any man who lived in the days
when the United States was young
that man Is nearly always. IL not al
ways, described as "a large landholder
and slave owner" The idea becomes
Embedded in the mind OF the man OF
today that every man who lived In
Maryland and Virginia in the pre-
revolutionary, post revolutionary.
early republican or "ante-bellum"
period owned large tracts of land and
numerous slaves. And the inference
Is that he was rich.
The inference is wrong Only
+ small percentage Of the white people
living in the country around WASH
ington owned negro slaves. Only
small percentage of the land owners
held large tracts. And it did not al
ways follow that they were rich just
because they owned large tracts of
land and numerous slaves. Sometimes
such things were a liability instead
of an asset. 1t required then, as it re-
quires now. certain degree of bust
ness or executive ability to make
farm pay A man had to be some sort
OF manager to make slave holding
pay. without proper direction slave
labor might be very expensive labor.
A man with a talent for buying land
and making it pay would build up "A
large estate. At his death it might
be divided among his heirs. Some of
those heirs would probably, or almost
certainly. fail to manage their portion
well enough to make n living from
it, or build up an estate large enough
to give their heirs a big enough por-
tion to support them. Heirs in those
days, as heirs in these days, had a
most uncomfortable way of running
through" or dissipating their in
heritance. SO. man was often
classed as a landholder and slave
owner when instead of making money
he was losing it, and later he would
Join the great majority who neither
owned land nor slaves. Tax sales and
trustees sales were numerous in the
golden age" II one can form an es-
Tina fa a ady leo nj in ho
old gazettes and the court records
there are few parcels OF land in the
counties adjacent to Washington
which at one time or another or per-
haps many times. have not been sold
for debt Of one kind or another.
The great majority of revolution
airy and early republican land owners
were not owners of big tracts. Many
owned small patch" and some were
tenant farmers. Some of those who
owned small patch of land had quite
as much ready money and lived as
comfortably as some of those who
lived on a large estate and were
haunted by debt and harassed by cred
itors.
Not all the people who appear in the
old records as non shareholders We're
poor. Many of them We're we'll do.
A large number of people in Mary
land had religious and conscientious
scruples against owning slaves. Many
others who perhaps had no such
scruples considered it cheaper to have
their work done by free labor or by
hiring slaves from other men. To as
sumo that because man owned
slaves he was rich is rash assump-
tion, and to assume that he was poor
because he did not own slaves is
equally rash assumption The ratio
OF poor to rich was perhaps greater a
hundred years ago than it is now.
The man who writes this believes that
the percentage of poor people meas
pred against the whole population
was greater century ago than it is
now.
The Rambler has a feeling that the
poor man of today Is not so hopeless
~ and miserably poor as the poor
man of century ago. but that is a
debatable question which the Ram