The Conquest: The Story of a Negro PioneerMicheaux, Oscar
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The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer
Micheaux, Oscar
African American pioneers -- Fiction; Autobiographical fiction; South Dakota -- Fiction; Western stories
Shortly before my cessation of activities in connection with the P----n
company it had a capitalization of ninety-five million dollars, paying
eight per cent dividend annually, and about two years after I was
compelled to quit, it paid its stockholders a thirty-five million dollar
surplus which had accumulated in five years. Just recently a "melon was
cut" of about a like amount and over eight thousand colored porters
helped to accumulate it, at from twenty-five to forty dollars per month.
A wonder it is that their condition does not breed such actual
dishonesty and deception that society would be forced to take notice of
it, and the traveling public should be thankful for the attentive
services given under these near-slave conditions. As for myself, the
reader has seen how I made it "pay" and I have no apologies or regrets
to offer. When that final reckoning comes, I am sure the angel clerk
will pass all porters against whom nothing more serious appears than
what I have heretofore related.
While I was considered very fortunate by my fellow employees, the whole
thing filled me with disgust. I suffered from a nervous worry and fear
of losing my position all the time, and really felt relieved when the
end came and I was free to pursue a more commendable occupation.
In going out of the Superintendent's office on my farewell leave, the
several opportunities I had seen during my experience with the P----n
company loomed up and marched in dress parade before me; the conditions
of the Snake River valley and the constructiveness of the people who had
turned the alkali desert into valuable farms worth from fifty to five
hundred dollars an acre, thrilled me so that I had no misgivings for the
future. But Destiny had other fields in view for me and did not send me
to that land of Eden of which I had become so fond, in quest of fortune.
Such a variety of scenes was surely an incentive to serious thought.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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