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CHAPTER XVI.

THE NEGRO AND THE LAND.

NFORTUNATELY for all, the rich and the poor, the powers that be began thinking seriously on the "land question" in Ireland a few centuries too late for their peace. Had they known two or three hundred years ago what they know to-day, they would have managed better. Then might there have been a "lengthening of their tranquillity." Is it not the part of wisdom for the people of the South-may be the question might be widened in its application-to take this "land question" in hand while it is still manageable?

It is not a subject to be dismissed with a sneer or a snarl. Sneers and snarls never change facts. Here are two facts: 1. There are now over six millions of negroes in the Southern States. They will some day be ten millions, and many more; the mass of them are here to stay. 2. They do and they will, of necessity, sustain some relation to the land.

If we begin in time, and employ good sense, we of the present generation may do much to make their relation to the land a useful and happy one. On the other hand, if we wait too long-missing

our best opportunities—and act foolishly, we will hand down to our children an inheritance of embarrassments, burdens, and troubles without end.

We have been dealing, in a tentative sort of way, for fifteen years with the questions that grew out of emancipation, but we have done next to nothing toward a satisfactory adjustment of the relation of the freedmen to the land. Some do not seem to know that there are relations to be adjusted--they just go on the same way, from year to year, till they die. Axle-deep in ruts, they neither learn nor forget.

As a rule each year among us is experimental. As a class the land owners of the South have absolutely no defined policy. Every year we make a sort of "trial trip." Possibly all this experimenting has been for the best; certainly it could not be otherwise. We had to learn-whites and blacks alike. Neither the land owners nor the negroes could take any other land system bodily and transfer it to Southern fields. The English system, even if it suited the English, might fail utterly in the South-a large, thinly-settled country of cheap lands, with two races so singularly related in their past history and present connections. No system of any country was based on natural or social conditions like those of the Southern people. It was our equation-never yet "worked out;" we could not "copy" from another's slate; there were un

known quantities many. The time element was necessary; there was nothing we could do but make experiments to find out what best suited us. But has not this tentative work gone on long enough? Is it not time to look beyond the coming Christmas? I ardently wish to keep to facts, and I will not affirm, but I express the opinion, that there are not in my county ten landlords or ten tenants, white or black, who have any "understanding"-to say nothing of a "contract "-that goes further than the end of this present year; and this county is much like the rest. There may be some tenants who expect to stay where they are next year; hardly any even think about the third year; but "contracts" are "for the next crop."

There are several varieties of landlord.

There

are the "planters," as they are called, who own large bodies of land, some few owning several plantations. For instance, a gentleman was in my office the second week in January, whose family residence is in Atlanta, Georgia. He owns, perhaps, half a dozen plantations-two or three in Alabama; he has lands in Stewart, also in Randolph, County in this State. Some of the large land owners, as, for instance, a most successful planter in Hancock County, Georgia, live upon their plantations. This gentleman owns thousands of acres, renting them to a small army of tenants, some white and some black. There is a very

large class of "farmers" owning from a few hundred to a thousand acres. These, as a rule, cultivate part of their land with hired labor and rent part to tenants. White and black tenants "take land" on

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the same basis. Three plans, with unimportant exceptions, cover the entire tenant system among us. 1. Some lands are worked by tenants who pay ‘a fixed sum.” Thus: A. rents, for the year, a field, or fields, to B., for so much money, B. taking the chances of the crop. It is nearly always “a lumping trade;" that is, B. does not pay so much per acre, but so much for the whole. 2. Lands are rented for part of the crop. In Georgia the tenant generally pays the landlord "one third of the corn and "one fourth of the cotton." 3. Some combine the plans. There are many modifications growing out of side issues; as "fixing fences," " "clearing lands," "furnishing fertilizers," "making advances," and many other such matters. And, as all must see, the greater the number of modifications, the larger the margin, and the more numerous the occasions for misunderstandings when final settlements are made. But in any case, with the fewest possible exceptions, it is "a one-year" system through and through. It all has to be gone over and contracted about at the beginning of each year.

The "lease" system has hardly been tried at all; it is practically unknown among us. It is, perhaps, true that hitherto the conditions of this whole

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question have made it impracticable to make long contracts or leases. But is this sort of thing-this everlasting flux-this annual change (or at best renewal, optional with both parties) of landlords and tenants, to go on always? Then, year by year, our difficulties and embarrassments will increase. As it seems to me, if there is no help for it, there is no help for us-whether this "us" means tenants or landlords.

Is it not time to study "leases "-long leases? If a planter is afraid to commit himself too far, might he not, while holding on to this "year-byyear" plan of renting as to a portion of his lands, try a long lease on another portion, that he may make a fair comparison of methods? People learn by trying experiments.

Is it not reasonably certain that a judicious lease system would, in the long run, be better for both parties to this question? This one-year system puts both parties in a position that landlord and tenant ought never to occupy; namely, to give as little and get as much as possible, but without reference to that which is vital to the money interests of both the improvement of the farm. Let us see whether this is an overstatement.

1. A. rents B. for this year fifty acres, we will say, for one third of the corn and one fourth of the cotton. B. lays all his plans as to this field for this year. His thought is, I will get out of it all

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