All these are only palliatives; the net effect of the system of advances to hands is to accentuate the industrial character of the cotton plantation. A big plantation in central Alabama or the Delta of Mississippi cannot be compared with any Northern farms, nor even with the great ranches of California; it is very like a coal mine back in a cove of the mountains of Pennsylvania; the same forlorn houses, the same company store, the same system of store orders and charges; only the coal mine sells its product from day to day and pays any differences in cash at the end of the month, while the cotton hand must wait till his particular bale is sold at the end of the season, before he can draw his profit. The Negro is therefore less likely than the miner to lay tip money, and is even more at the mercy of the company's bookkeeper. Here is an actual annual account of a plantation family in the Delta of Mississippi, two adults and one child, poor workers: -------------------------------------------- | Debit | | Credit ------------|--------|-------------|-------- Doctor | $24.45 | Cotton | $498.57 Mule | 33.00 | Cotton seed | 91.00 Clothing | 53.40 | | Rations | 60.00 | |-------- Feed | 11.25 | | $589.57 Rent | 130.50 | | Extra labor | 179.45 | |-------- Seed | 11.90 | | Ginning | 43.50 | | Cash down | 53.50 | Debit. | $11.38 |--------| | | 600.95 | | $600.95 -------------------------------------------- These people got their living and sixty-six dollars in cash and credit during the year; but the charge for extra labor shows that they were shiftless and did not work out their own crop. On the same plantation an industrious family of three adults and one child earned in a year $974, of which $450 was net cash. An examination of various plantation accounts reveals the fact that the actual earnings of the negro hands, if industrious, are considerably greater than the average for the Pennsylvania miners, but of course the whole family works in the fields. The renters could do still better if they had money enough to carry them through the year; on a prosperous plantation in Arkansas, only about one fortieth of all the negro gangs kept off the books of the company and drew their earnings in cash at the end of the year, while two thirds of the Italians employed on the same plantation had no store accounts. In fact there is some complaint that the Italians club together and buy their provisions at wholesale.