Biographical and historical memoirs of Mississippi, embracing an authentic and comprehensive account of the chief events in the history of the state and a record of the lives of many of the most worthy and illustrious families and individuals, Vol. II, Part 15

Author: Goodspeed Brothers
Publication date: 1891
Publisher: Chicago, Goodspeed
Number of Pages: 1314

USA > Mississippi > Biographical and historical memoirs of Mississippi, embracing an authentic and comprehensive account of the chief events in the history of the state and a record of the lives of many of the most worthy and illustrious families and individuals, Vol. II > Part 15

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comes in, with the rush of a flood, all the previously pent-up energies of the masses of the people. The hundred customers of the new order of things demand the competition that was cut off by the system which placed the demand of that hundred customers at the disposition of an individual. And thus does the regime of freedom in Mississippi appeal to the man of small means to spring into the field of that commercial activity from which he had been excluded pre- viously by a system that carried with it, as one of its coincident evils, a business of long credits. Because of its direct bearing on the increase of merchant stores, I ask you to glance back to the agricultural summary given above for that novelty in our industry, a system of wages. In six counties, containing at the present time a total population of seventy-six thousand eight hundred and forty, the amount of wages paid out for the crops of 1869 was $1,355,203; this would give an annual wage in the whole state to the amount of $11,000,000 or $12,000,000. Forty per cent. of this may be set down as offsetting the board which the returns of the census include. Deducting that, the balance placed in the hands of our laborers may be estimated, annually, at $6,000,000 or $7,000,000. The necessities of our present want of capital once superseded, we may look confidently for that activity of mercantile business, with the 'quick sales and light profits' incident to cash custom, which is sure to follow wherever labor throws ont into trade, as the heart throws out, supplies of blood into the system, a weekly wage of from $120,000 to $140,000. And as we observe business growing in all the towns of the state to dimensions that are expanding those towns into cities, so we may look for a continued increase of the number of our merchant-stores until competition shall have pressed to the limits of a moderate profit all the energies placed at its service by a system of universal liberty. The freedom of the negro, throwing thus open new fields of investment and energy, has expanded largely the freedom of the whites."

In mechanic trades two results of the transition were remarkable. Colored shoemaker shops for the five years beginning with 1865 in seventeen counties ran: Twenty-one, twenty- eight, twenty-four, forty nine, fifty-four, sixty-three, and the blacksmiths: forty, sixty three, seventy-four, eighty-three, ninety-eight and one hundred and thirteen. Said he regarding these figures: "They show that the shoemaker that was the servant of an individual in 1860 is now a servant of the public. The smith, who was confined in his usefulness to the demands of one great planter is, on the contrary, available now to shoe the horse and share the plow of a score of small farmers!"

As to property he says: "Tenant farming has expanded amongst the whites since 1860 about one hundred per cent. In that year it was of course unknown amongst the negroes." The product in cotton on such farms for two years is given for twenty-three counties: In 1869, whites, twenty-seven thousand and seventy-five bales, and blacks, forty thousand five hundred and sixty-one bales; in 1870, whites, twenty thousand eight hundred and ninety- three, and colored, fifty thousand nine hundred and seventy-eight. "While the industrial monopoly of the old system is seen, thus, in the act of partition amongst the masses of the people, the popularization of our production comes to us accompanied by the further grati- fying fact that the negro has advanced in four short years to the condition of employing, as a farmer, active capital of his own! From twenty counties I have received full returns of the amount of cotton grown by colored people as owners of the soil. While one hun- dred thousand six hundred and ninety-seven bales were grown in those counties by white landowners in 1869, the number grown by colored landowners in those counties in 1869 was four thousand six hundred and forty-five. The white owner of the soil produced in those counties one hundred and two thousand four hundred and ninety-one bales in 1870; the col- ored owner of the soil produced in them during the same period six thousand one hundred

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and forty-one bales! The surprise with which these facts will come in proof before you, gentlemen, can not be greater than that with which they have come in proof before me. And my pleasure in the case is hardly less than my surprise, for one of the most serious fears for the working of reconstruction lay in the absence of a middle class constituting a link between the masses of our property-holders on the one hand, and the masses of our ballot casting labor on the other. "In seven counties selected as an illustration of the results shown by the national census, I find the following surprising evidence of negro thrift:" Sixty-nine real estate colored owners' property valued at $30,680, three thousand seven hundred and ninety-eight holding personality of $630,860, and one hundred and seventy-eight holding both realty and personality to the amount of $220, 700. "Amongst forty three thousand negroes of Washington, Madison, Holmes, Rankin, Neshoba, Jones and Lauderdale, who had been plucked penniless four short years ago from the clutches of the unwise legislation of 1865, three thousand four hundred and forty-one accumulated wealth -what the economists hold to represent the political virtue of denial-to the enormous amount of $882,240!'' The language is here quoted exact, "verbatim et literatim et punc- tuatim," so it may be realized that what is now plainly evident was not so much so twenty years ago, and it may serve to illustrate the apprehensive feeling on all sides. It would be interesting to multiply studies of this kind, but enough has been given to illustrate, and that is all the limits of this article will allow.

While the negro was the pivot of this transitional movement, and so becomes the center of the problem, and, may be, attracting from its students more than its share of attention and prominence, it is a fact that the results effected by the transition on the white popula- tion are pregnant with as great, if not greater, interest to the student of economics. This phase has hardly been touched upon yet, and so intricate a situation deserves more than the mere hints that can be made in limited space.

The old regime developed planters who were princely and a very poor lower class whites; there was no great middle class, such as is now seen everywhere. The planters were, and had to be, men of large executive ability and far-seeing sagacity. Their wealth was chiefly in labor, their ownership of human labor; but they had great capital too, and the combination made, for them, remarkable resources. These gave them the opportunities and advantages, in a lavish degree, afforded by the whole earth. It enabled the women to become queenly and the men royal in all phases of life. Their hospitality is a matter of common fame. Their artistic, literary and like acquirements became their pride-and justly so. Political, military and professional careers were considered the fit courses for them to pursue. Their vast superiority over the masses of humanity nearest them gave them a sense of power that could brook little opposition, and the duel was natural; while in the minds of their inferiors a halo of hero-worship surrounded them, that is not common where a great middle class intervenes.

These conditions made a sentiment against manual labor. They made a dependence on another's labor, and the inferior, relieved of all responsibility, became childishly dependent on his master. They made a lofty pride in the one that was the parent of finest virtues as well as vices; and in the other a servility attended with like results. Every condition has its compensations.

The overturning came. The loss of wealth and labor, while not tending to create those beautiful character products that we admire as we do a statue, yet awakened new powers and energies in these old families and a self-reliance in them, especially the younger gener- ation-which, grafted on to the old, are making the world turn to look at the new South,

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and placing a new term in the literature of the day-" Southern writer "-that has become its most marked feature.

But still more -- a great middle class has arisen and is still rising, which loudly demands and secures recognition. Among others in this class may be found the sons and daughters of the once so-called poor whites, of which Mississippi had a less number than most Southern states. The rise of this class gives labor a new status in the sentiment of the public. But this change is only in the horizon of its progress.

Two items at this point may serve to show this state's excellent condition in regard to all classes. The number of paupers in almshouses in the United States is a little over seventy-three thousand. New York has the largest number-ten thousand two hundred and seventy-two, and New Mexico the smallest-one. Mississippi comes along among the lowest states, with only four hundred and ninety-four, of which two hundred and five are whites and two hundred and eighty-nine colored. The number of county jail prisoners in the United States on June 1, 1890, was nineteen thousand five hundred and thirty-eight. Penn- sylvania had the largest number-two thousand three hundred and eighty-six, and North Dakota the lowest, with hut twenty-five; while Mississippi came below midway, with but two hundred and eighty-four-only forty-eight being white and two hundred and thirty-six colored.

From the people turn to the land development. "In one sense of the word," says Maj. A. B. Hurt, in a government report in 1884, " Mississippi is still a new state, with its immense natural advantages as yet mainly unappropriated. Its great forests of valuable woods have been comparatively little depleted; many of its numerous fine mill and manu- facturing sites await the power of skill and capital; more than one-half of its area remains untouched by the husbandman, while the part already in cultivation may be made double its productive power by improved methods of agriculture." And while the opening up, by various agencies before referred to, had changed this considerably since that date, the fact in general may still be used with some allowance.

In June, 1845, there were ten million four hundred and nine thousand and thirty-four acres of unsold public land, out of a total state acreage of twenty-nine million nine hundred and fifty-eight thousand four hundred. Of this enormous amount one million and eighteen thousand one hundred and fourteen acres had been on the market five years; four hundred and fifty-one thousand three hundred and ninety had been offered for ten years; two million nine hundred and seventy-four thousand and ninety-seven acres in market for fifteen years; nine hundred and thirty-four thousand one hundred and thirty-one for twenty years; eight hundred and ninety-four thousand four hundred and twenty-four for twenty-five years; two million nine hundred and twenty-four thousand one hundred and seventy-two for thirty years; and one million two hundred and twenty-two thousand seven hundred and six for over thirty years-and all at the low rate of $1.25 an acre! Says Mr. Harper, the geologist, in 1857 of the Yazoo delta: "It is still a wilderness, the retreat of the bear, wolf and panther. The prejudice of its unfitness for cultivation has only lately been removed from the minds of the inhabitants of our own and other states, and the ax of the woodman scarcely begun its ravages."

Note what the war did. Says Governor Alcorn in 1871: "Our improved land has decreased in breadth one-ninth. This fact is very encouraging, seeing that we still retain, substantially, our conquests from the forest. The small decline of our improved land in farms, combined with the large decline in our areas of unimproved land in farms, points to the conclusion that our young . settlements' have been given up again to the bear and

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panther. But, though progress is seen thus to be, for the time, arrested, we still hold, in fact, the great mass of our landed wealth of 1860. It is true the value of agricultural estate now shows a falling off on that of 1860 of nearly seventy per cent., but the basis of that wealth still unchanged in its breadth, the restoration to be effected in that case is that mainly of the establishment of order and the elevation of labor." Then came the great for- feitnre of land for taxes. Between 1871 and 1875, said Governor Lowry: "About twenty- seven per cent. of the total area of this state was forfeited for taxes;" but by 1883 all except about seven hundred thousand acres had been redeemed or purchased. Between 1875 and 1885 about five million acres were restored to the tax rolls of the state; and between 1880 and 1885 the large amount of four million two hundred and three thousand one hundred and ninety acres of public land had been sold, of which five hundred and one thousand four hundred and fifty acres had been taken up under homestead laws. It should be recalled that since the congressional act of September 25, 1850, down to 1883 Mississippi had received about three million acres of swamp lands, and under the act of September 4, 1841, about five million acres for internal improvement purposes. On the first day of 1890 there remained unsold of the swamp land two hundred and twenty-seven thousand six hundred and thirty-two acres, and of the internal improvement lands only two thousand six hundred and eighty-three acres. In the two years preceding that date over twenty thou- sand acres of the former at a dollar an acre, and nearly ten thousand acres of the latter at fifty cents per acre show how fast available lands of all kinds have been taken up. In 1883 there was still an area of seven million acres under cultivation, less than one-fourth, but extension in this direction has been rapid since that date. The census of 1890 wil] show, when made public, considerable change from these figures, for the opening up of lands in the delta and elsewhere, due to railway extension, has been remarkable as a leading feature of the decade of the eighties, and especially the latter half. Said George W.

Carlisle, commissioner of immigration, writing in the year 1888: "In the past two years, about one million three hundred thousand acres of land have been sold by the commissioner of lands. Most of the lands were purchased by parties from beyond the limits of the state. During the same time the register of the United States land office, at Jackson, Miss., sold in our state about one million acres of government lands. These large sales of lands prove conclusively that capitalists have confidence in our state and its prosperity. By an act of congress, approved May 16, 1888, all United States lands are withdrawn from sale by cash purchase in Mississippi; the only way by which these lands can be obtained from the government is under the homestead laws."

When this increased interest in lands began to be most marked, in 1884, Major Hurt showed the average value of land per acre was $17.79, while the averages in Illinois, Indi- ana and Iowa were respectively $38.65, $45.66 and $23.52, when the average acre-crop values were but a little more than half that of Mississippi's rate-$12.21 per acre. Said he: "It appears from the above, price of lands, or their market value, in Mississippi, bears no just proportion to their real intrinsic value. Lands that will average a money value prod- uct of $12.21 per acre should average a market value of at least $50 per acre, especially in such a temperate, healthy climate. Without discussing the cause of the low price of lands, it may be remarked that there is too much land for the population and capital. Land is plentiful, easy to obtain, and, therefore, cheap. If Mississippi could double or treble its population by the addition of thrifty, industrious immigrants, possessed of some capital, the price of lands would, no doubt, increase to something like their real value. This is now being accomplished, and it is stated, on the authority of the state commissioner of immigra-

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tion, that lands have advanced from fifty to one hundred per cent in the past two years. It is to be regretted that the state has so little statistical data to illustrate in detail the progress made since the last census. Unfortunately, there is no statistical bureau in Mississippi."

The foregoing will add new significance to the growth of Mississippi in wealth. This need not consider slaves after the consideration hereinbefore accorded that subject, and indicating that as the greatest source of wealth. Of the general subject it has been said that the emancipation of slaves was a loss of over $600,000,000 to their owners; and that, were the total cost of the civil war to be divided by the number of slaves set free, that freedom would cost $700 per slave.

To illustrate the general wealth development, a glance at census matter for the years 1812, 1840, 1857, 1870, 1880 and 1887 must suffice, as these dates indicate somewhat nearly the beginning, middle and close of the old labor system of slavery, and like periods in the new system.

In 1812 there were one thousand three hundred and thirty private looms at work in the state, making annually three hundred and forty-two thousand four hundred and seventy-two yards of cotton cloth, four hundred and fifty yards of linen and seven thousand eight hun- dred and ninety-eight yards of woolen stuffs. There was one carding machine and twenty- two mills with eight hundred and seven spindles. Ten tanneries produced $39,595 worth of leathers, while the distilleries numbered six, and the tin-shops one. The largest number of looms were in Madison and Amite counties, while the woolens were entirely in Adams, Claiborne and Wilkinson. The tanneries were in Adams, Jefferson, Claiborne, Wilkinson and Washington, while Madison reveled in over half of the entire number of distilleries. This is no small showing, and is indicative of only one line, and that the least developed line of industry-manufactures. Its agriculture, cotton, slaves and stock were its great wealth. In the absence of statistics these must be inferred for the present.

Nearly thirty years later, 1840, one hundred and thirty-nine thousand seven hundred and twenty-four whites were employed in agriculture, one thousand three hundred and three in commerce, four thousand one hundred and fifty-one in manufacture and trades, thirty-three were ocean and one hundred were river sailors, while the professions enrolled one thousand five hundred and six. In stock there were in the state one hundred and nine thousand two hundred and twenty-seven horses and mules, six hundred and twenty-three thousand one hundred and ninety seven neat cattle, one hundred and twenty-eight thousand three hundred and sixty-seven sheep, one million one thousand two hundred and nine swine, and poultry to the value of $369,482. The granaries were full: One hundred and ninety six thousand six hundred and twenty six bushels of wheat, eleven thousand four hundred and forty four of rye, thirteen million one hundred and sixty-one thousand two hundred and thirty-seven of Indian corn, one thousand six hundred and fifty-four of barley, and six hun- dred and sixty eight thousand six hundred and twenty-four bushels of oats. Potatoes scored a total of one million six hundred and thirty thousand one hundred bushels; wax, six thousand eight hundred and thirty-five pounds; tobacco, eighty-three thousand four hundred and seventy-one pounds; rice, seven hundred and seventy-seven thousand one hundred and ninety-five pounds; wool, one hundred and seventy-five thousand one hundred and ninety- five pounds, and the great king product, cotton, rising to the immense proportions of one hundred and ninety-three million four hundred and one thousand five hundred and seventy- seven pounds-all showing wealth in these lines. " The dairy made a product of value $359,585, the orchard made $14,458, and lumber $192,794, while tar, pitch and turpentine rolled out two thousand two hundred and forty-eight barrels. Trade and manufactures

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loomed up too. There were seven commercial companies, sixty-seven commercial houses in the foreign trade with a capital of $673,900; seven hundred and fifty-five retail dry goods stores, with a capital of $5,004,420; two hundred and eighty-eight in the lumber trade, with $132,175 capital; fifty-three cotton factories had three hundred and eighteen spindles employing eighty-one hands and capital to the sum of $6,420; $5,140 worth of hats and caps were made by thirteen persons on a capital of $8,100; one hundred and twenty eight tanneries employed one hundred and forty-nine hands and had a capital of $70,870; forty- two other leather factories produced $118, 167 worth of goods on a capital of $41,945; one pottery had two hands producing wares to the amount of $1,200 on $200 capital; four drug and paint stores, with an aggregate capital of $500, sold $3, 125 in profits; $10,500 worth of confectionery made in two places; machinery made to the amount of $242,225; brick and lime making was rewarded by $273,870 product on $222, 745 capital; three hundred and twelve thousand and eighty-four pounds of soap were made; thirty-one thousand nine hundred and fifty-seven tallow and ninety seven pounds of wax candles were made; wagonmaking scored $49,693, with one hundred and thirty-two men on $34,335 capital; sixteen flourmills made one thousand eight hundred and nine barrels of flour, worth $486,864, on $1,219,845 capital; $13,925 was spent in building vessels; forty-one men made furniture worth $34, 450 on a capital of $28,610; fourteen distilleries produced three thousand one hundred and fifty gallons of liquor; two breweries, on a capital of $910, made one hundred and thirty-two gal- lons; the state boasted of one hundred and forty-four stone houses and two thousand two hundred and forty-four wooden ones, aggregating a value of $1, 175,513; there were twenty- eight printing offices, one bindery, two dailies, one semi-weekly and twenty eight weeklies, employing ninety-four men and $83,510 in capital. The total manufactured product was worth $1,797, 727. There were three colleges, with two hundred and fifty students; seventy- one academies, with two thousand five hundred and fifty-three students; three hundred and eighty-two primary schools, with eight thousand two hundred and thirty-six pupils; and eight thousand three hundred and sixty whites over twenty years of age who could neither read nor write. These latter facts are given to indicate the general intelligence connected with this wealth.

Seventeen years later, 1857, figures had grown larger: There was money at interest to the amount of $6, 713,658, and merchants had a trade of the comely proportions of $15,- 552,194. Bank stock was held to the amount of $615, 100, and auctioneers had a business of $51, 772. Such items as eleven thousand four hundred and eighty-six carriages valued at $1,666,079, or thirteen thousand nine hundred and forty-one watches worth $815, 140, or eighteen thousand five hundred and ninety-nine clocks worth $168,939, indicate a luxurious wealth over years then past, along with $223,178 in gold and silver plate, or two thousand two hundred and thirty-three pianos worth $494,628. Counting herds of cattle only above twenty head there were two hundred and twenty thousand six hundred and sixty-four, while six thousand four hundred and forty-three horses, worth $896,044, were taxable totals in that line. Taxable slaves numbered three hundred and thirty-four thousand eight hundred and eighty-six to a total free white poll of fifty three thousand three hundred and one. The taxable land acreage was fifteen million nine hundred and thirteen thousand five hun- dred and twenty-two, worth $88, 705, 203 .. Now add to this a season product of cotton- taking that of 1859, two years later, for example-one million three hundred thousand bales worth $45,000,000, and the slave period closes with striking figures in wealth.

Governor Alcorn's comparison of 1860 and 1870 in six representative counties showed a decrease of melancholy proportions in everything save oats and molasses, both of which

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had increased. The decrease in improved farm lands was eleven per cent., in unimproved farm lands thirty-four per cent., farm values sixty-nine per cent., farm implements sixty-one per cent., stock values forty-six, cotton bales of four hundred and fifty pounds sixty- three per cent., corn sixty-five, slaughtered animals fifty-six, horses forty-nine, mules thirty- six per cent., cows twenty-seven per cent., a decrease of forty-seven per cent. in oxen, forty- three per cent. in other cattle, thirty-eight in sheep, sixty-five in swine, eighty-six per cent. in wheat, ninety-eight in rye, sixty in rice, thirty-nine in tobacco, eighty-nine in peas and beans, eighty-three per cent. loss in Irish potatoes, sixty-four in sweet potatoes, seventy- six in wool, sixty-three in butter, ninety-six in cheese, sixty-two per cent. loss in home manufactures, and eighty two in orchard produce. And these counties represented about an eighth or ninth of the state in wealth and population.

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Biographical and historical memoirs of Mississippi, embracing an authentic and comprehensive account of the chief events in the history of the state and a record of the lives of many of the most worthy and illustrious families and individuals, Vol. II, Part 15

Author: Goodspeed Brothers Publication date: 1891 Publisher: Chicago, Goodspeed Number of Pages: 1314

Author: Goodspeed Brothers
Publication date: 1891
Publisher: Chicago, Goodspeed
Number of Pages: 1314