ir mutual dependence is sufficiently illustrated by the single fact
that, after fourteen years of freedom and labor on their own account,
the great mass of the negroes depend for their living on an advance of
supplies (as they need food, clothing, or tools during the year) upon
the pledge of their growing crop. This is a generic imitation of the
white man's improvidence during the slavery times; then the planters
mortgaged their crops and negroes, and where one used the advances to
extend his plantation, ten squandered the money. The negro's necessities
have developed an offensive race, called merchants by courtesy, who keep
supply stores at the cross-roads and steamboat landings, and live upon
extortion. These people would be called sharks, harpies, and vampires in
any Northwestern agricultural community, and they would not survive more
than one season. The country merchant advances the negro tenant such
supplies as the negro wants up to a certain amount, previously fixed
by contract, and charges the negro at least double the value of every
article sold to him. There is no concealment about the extortion; every
store-keeper has his cash price and his credit price, and in nearly all
cases the latter is one hundred per cent. higher than the former. The
extortion is justified by those who practice it on the ground that
their losses by bad debts, though their advances are always secured by
mortgage on the growing crop, overbalance the profits; this assertion is
scarcely borne out by the comparative opulence of the "merchant" and
the pitiful poverty of the laborer. Some of the largest and wealthiest
planters have sought to protect their tenants from the merciless
clutches of the contrary merchant, who is more frequently than not an
Israelite, by advancing supplies of necessary articles at reasonable
prices. But the necessities of the planter, if not his greed, often
betray him into plundering the negro. The planter himself is generally a
victim to usury. He still draws on the city factor to the extent of ten
dollars a bale upon his estimated crop. He pays this factor two and one
half per cent. commission for the advance, eight per cent. interest for
the money, two and one half per cent. more for disposing of the crop
when consigned to him, and sometimes still another commission for the
purchase of the supplies. The planter who furnishes his tenants with
supplies on credit is usually paying an interest of fifteen to eighteen
p