INDUSTRIAL REORGANIZATION IN ALABAMA 499
grass and weeds, cotton not half as good as under slavery these were the reports from travelers in the Black Belt toward the close of Reconstruction. 59 Other plantations were leased to managers who also kept plantation stores, whence the negroes were fur- nished with supplies. The manager has succeeded the planter; the great supply houses in the cities own numerous plantations. The money-lenders often Jews came into possession of many plantations. By the crop lien and blanket mortgage the negro became an industrial serf. The "big house" fell into decay. For these and other reasons, the former masters, who were the best friends of the negro, left the Black Belt, and the black steadily declined. 80 The unaided negro has steadily grown worse; but Tuskegee, Normal, Calhoun, and similar bodies are endeavoring to assist the negro of the black counties to become an efficient member of society. In the success of such efforts lies the only hope of the negro, and also of the white of the Black Belt, if the negro is to remain. 61
WALTER L. FLEMING.
WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY.
" Somers, op. cit., pp. 159, 272; Harper's Monthly, January, 1874; King, The Great South, passim ; C. C. Smith, " Colonization of Negroes in Central Ala- bama," Southern Magazine, January, 1874; Forum, Vol. XXI, p. 341; Hoffman, op. cit., 261 ; Hammond, op. cit., 191.
- A northern traveler in the Alabama Black Belt in recent years says : " The
white population is rapidly on the decrease and the negro population on the
increase There are hundreds of the ' old mansion houses ' going to decay,
the glass broken in the windows, the doors off the hinges, the siding long unused to paint, the columns of the verandas rotting away, and the bramble thickets encroaching to the very doors. The people have sold their land for what little they could get, and moved to the cities and towns, that they may educate their children and escape the intolerable conditions surrounding them at their old
beloved homes These friends have largely gone from the negro's life, and
he is left alone in the wilderness," held down by crop liens and mortgages given to the alien. Land rent is half its value ; the tenant must purchase from the creditor's store, and raise cotton to pay for what he has already eaten and worn. (C. C. Smith, Colonisation of Negroes in Central Alabama, published by the Christian Woman's Board of Missions, Indianapolis, Ind.)
61 See also Edmonds in Review of Reviews, September, 1900; Dillingham in Yale Review, Vol. V, p. 190; Stone, The Negro in the Yazoo Mississippi Delta; Dowd in Gunton's Magazine, September, 1902 ; Census of /poo, Vol. VI, Part a, pp. 406-16; Harper's Monthly, January, 1874; Grady, ibid., 1881 ; Kelsey, The
