Freed persons; Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877); Southern States -- Politics and government -- 1865-1950
circumstances, combined with the want of confidence in northern men, were
well calculated to have an influence upon the conduct of the negro as a
laborer.
I have heard it said that money is no inducement which will make a negro
work. It is certain that many of them, immediately after emancipation, had
but a crude conception of the value of money and the uses it can be put
to. It may, however, be stated as the general rule, that whenever they are
at liberty to choose between wages in money and a share in the crop, they
will choose the former and work better. Many cases of negroes engaged in
little industrial pursuits came to my notice, in which they showed
considerable aptness not only for gaining money, but also for saving and
judiciously employing it. Some were even surprisingly successful. I
visited some of the plantations divided up among freedmen and cultivated
by them independently without the supervision of white men. In some
instances I found very good crops and indications of general thrift and
good management; in others the corn and cotton crops were in a neglected
and unpromising state. The excuse made was in most cases that they had
obtained possession of the ground too late in the season, and that, until
the regular crops could be harvested, they were obliged to devote much of
their time to the raising and sale of vegetables, watermelons, &c., for
the purpose of making a living in the meantime.
On the whole I feel warranted in making the following statement: Many
freedmen--not single individuals, but whole "plantation gangs"--are
working well; others do not. The difference in their efficiency coincides
in a great measure with a certain difference in the conditions under which
they live. The conclusion lies near, that if the conditions under which
they work well become general, their efficiency as free laborers will
become general also, aside from individual exceptions. Certain it is, that
by far the larger portion of the work done in the south is done by
freedmen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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