It may be granted that experience has shown all this verbiage to be necessary. In the hands of an honest landlord it is as meaningless as that in the ordinary contract we sign in renting a house. In the hands of a dishonest landlord or merchant it practically enables him to make a serf of the Negro. The mortgage is supposed to be filed at once, but it is sometimes held to see if there is any other security which might be included. The rascally creditor watches the crop and if the Negro may have a surplus he easily tempts him to buy more, or more simply still, he charges to his account imaginary purchases, so that at the end of the year the Negro is still in debt. The Negro has no redress. He can not prove that he has not purchased the goods and his word will not stand against the merchant's. Practically he is tied down to the land, for no one else will advance him under these conditions. Sometimes he escapes by getting another merchant to settle his account and by becoming the tenant of the new man. When it is remembered that land is abundant and good labor rare, the temptation to hold a man on the land by fair means or foul is apparent. Moreover, the merchant by specious reasoning often justifies his own conduct. He says that the Negro will spend his money at the first opportunity and that he might just as well have it as some other merchant. I would not be understood as saying that this action is anything but the great exception but there are dishonest men everywhere who are ready to take advantage of their weaker fellows and the Negro suffers as a result, just as the ignorant foreigner does in the cities of the North. The interest may also be reckoned into the face of the mortgage. In any case it begins the day the paper is signed, although the money or its equivalent is only received at intervals and a full year's interest is paid, often on the face of the mortgage, even if only two-thirds of it has actually been advanced to the Negro, no matter when the account is settled. The helplessness of the Negro who finds himself in the hands of a sharper is obvious when that sharper has practical control of the situation. In many and curious ways the landlord seeks to hold his tenants. He is expected to stand by them in time of trouble, to protect them against the aggressions of other blacks and of whites as well. This paternalism is often carried to surprising lengths.