The advance system is complicated by a system of "Christmas Money." You hear planters bitterly cursing the Negroes who have demanded $25, $50, or $100 to spend at Christmas time, as though the money were not charged against the Negro to be deducted at the end of the year; and as though it were not so advanced in order to induce the Negro to make a contract with them. Many planters refuse to give Christmas money and yet fill up their plantation houses. It is all part of a vicious system; the wage hands have to be paid somehow, though often not completely paid up till the end of the year; the share hands and renters are carried by the planter because they always have been carried; and because bad planters can take advantage of this opportunity to squeeze their hands. The difficulty is one known in other lands; in Ceylon, for instance, the laborers on tea and rubber estates draw advances, carry debts which have to be assumed by a new employer, trade at a "caddy," which is the same thing as a commissary, and complain of the accounts. The system is just as vicious for the small land owners both negro and white. Most Southern states under their crop lien law allow the growing crop to be mortgaged for cash or advances, and hence any farmer has credit for supplies or loans up to the probable value of the crop when marketed. That value is variable, the advances are clogged with interest and overcharges, and the whole system is a heavy draft on the country. There are money sharks in the Southern country as well as in the Northern cities, and many scandalous transactions. One man in Alabama has 2,500 Negroes on his books for loans, in some cases for a loan of $5 with interest charges of $1.50 a month. Cases have been known where a Negro brought to a plantation his mules and stock, worked a season, and at the end saw all his crop of cotton taken, and his property swept up, including the mules, which are exempt by law. Many back plantations take the seed for the ginning--that is, they exact more than twice what the service is worth. A Negro has been known to borrow say $200; when it was not paid, the white lender seized on all his possessions, and without going through any legal formality gave him credit for $100, leaving the balance of the debt hanging over his head. A peddler has been known to insist on leaving a clock at the house of a poor colored woman who protested that she did not want a clock, could not afford a clock and would not take a clock. The man drove off, returned some months later, demanded payment for the clock which was just where he left it, never having been started, and when the money was not forthcoming proceeded to take away the woman's chickens--her poor little livelihood. She ran to a white neighbor, who came back with her and turned the scoundrel out. There is first and last much of this advantage taken of the ignorance and poverty of the Negro; a certain type