USA > North Carolina > Chowan County > Economic and social history of Chowan County, North Carolina, 1880-1915 > Part 10
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CHAPTER XII COMMUNICATION, TRANSPORTATION, AND COMMERCE IN 1915
COMMUNICATION
Mail Service .- During the last thirty-five years the means of communication in Chowan, as elsewhere in this great country of ours, have been remarkably developed. The majority of families outside of Edenton are now served by rural-free-delivery mail routes. On October 14, 1914, there were seven of these in the county, covering a total of 162 miles.1 In addition, there were three miles of a route start- ing from an adjoining county. Since then a second route from an adjoining county has come in, adding twelve more miles, so that the county now has about a mile of rural-free- delivery route for every square mile of territory.2 More than ninety per cent of the population 3 are now within a mile of either some post-office or rural route, and are getting their mail daily.
Telegraph and Telephone .- There are now only two telegraph stations in the county. Certain sections, how- ever, are well served by telephone, there being four com- panies represented, with a total in the county of eighty miles of poles and two hundred and thirty miles of wire.4
1 Information obtained from the Fourth Assistant Postmaster Gen- eral, Washington, D. C.
2 The county has 178 square miles of territory. Cf. infra, p. 17.
3 My own estimate.
+ Data furnished December 7, 1914, by the Tax Clerk of the State of North Carolina Corporation Commission.
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In addition, there is a private line of some twenty miles in length. There is still another line, which is owned by the railroad and extends into the county for about five miles. This line has only one telephone in the county. All lines have long-distance connections.
TRANSPORTATION
Railways .- In the field of transportation, advantages have also been tremendously increased. On December 16, 1881, the first railroad in the county was opened from Edenton to Norfolk,1 thus bringing the Edenton section of the county into direct rail connection with the outside world. The nearest railroad shipping point for four-fifths of the farmers, however, was still from five to twelve miles distant, and not until 1887, when a second railroad (start- ing from Suffolk, Va.,2 and terminating in the upper end of the county on the Chowan river) was opened, was this condition changed. Some thirty or forty per cent. of the farmers were still left from five to twelve miles distant from any by-rail shipping point. The next significant change in transportation conditions was in 1901 when the owners of the last-mentioned road began shifting the southern end of the road-bed toward the center of the county and extending the line toward Edenton, which was destined to be the new southern terminal and to which place it was opened in 1903. The change gave the county a railroad running pretty well through its center for about twenty miles, and brought all, except comparatively few (principally in the south-eastern point of the county), within five miles of a railway. On January 1, 1910, a bridge across the Albemarle Sound, replacing the old ferry system between Edenton and
1 Poor's Manual of the Railroads of the United States (annual num- bers, 1868-1915, New York); 18th annual number (1885), p. 383.
' From Suffolk there were three or four lines running to Norfolk.
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Mackey's Ferry, was opened for traffic,1 and thus was com- pleted a direct all-rail route between Edenton and all prin- cipal points south and west.
Water Carriage .- With the development of rail trans- portation, water transportation has gradually dwindled. One small steamer plies between Edenton and Franklin, making three trips a week, and an occasional light-draft sailing vessel makes Edenton or some other point along the county's coast line, but the greater part, probably ninety- five per cent of the transportation to and from the county is now by rail.
Wagon Roads .- For some eight or ten years now the roads have been worked by taxation. In the clayey sec- tions, where they cut up badly in times of wet weather, the most of them have been better drained and partially graded so as to shed the water; and a few miles of the worst have been sanded. While what has been done thus far is signi- ficant rather because of what it promises than because of its amount, nevertheless, the roads, on the whole, have been much improved over what they were in the eighties.
COMMERCE
Carters .- The business of the carter, which in the eighties was of considerable importance, has almost vanished. There are a few who buy chickens and eggs and personally sell them in the Norfolk market, but they buy the majority of these from the country merchants rather than from pri- vate families, and instead of carting them to Norfolk, usu- ally they send them by rail. Furthermore, these men now generally have to pay something near net wholesale Norfolk prices, whether they buy from the farmer direct, or from the merchant.
Merchants .- The merchants have become so numerous
1 Poor, op. cit., 43d annual number (1910), p. 469.
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that competition among them for the farmers' trade is rather keen, resulting in their having to pay the farmer close to Norfolk prices for what he has to sell. Most chickens now are sold by weight rather than by the piece as they were formerly, hence it is easy to compare the prices of different merchants, and if one is paying more than the others, he gets the trade. Practically everybody still sells his eggs locally, since hardly any one produces enough to pay him to make individual shipments. Many, however, ship part or all of their own poultry and certain other produce they raise for market.
While the importance of the carter class of middlemen has dwindled to small proportions, that of the merchant class has considerably increased both as regards numbers engaged and volume of business. Although many of the more substantial farmers either ship their own produce or sell it on the spot to the agents of commission houses,1 much of the farm produce is still handled by the local merchants. More than half of their merchandise goes out on a credit basis,2 with a promise to liquidate in the fall. Sometimes the merchant has a crop-lien, sometimes there is a mere verbal understanding that the crop shall go through his hands, and sometimes the debtor brings it to him simply as a matter of choice. The idea is pretty general that the city commission merchant will treat the local merchants better than he will the farmers, since the latter individually have comparatively little produce to ship. For this reason, some who ship their own stuff, ship in the name of some local merchant.
With the vast improvement in the general economic wel-
1 Peanuts are the principal product sold to agents.
2 The merchants, whom I have interviewed on this point, estimate that from sixty to seventy-five per cent of the mercantile business is done on time.
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fare, and with the change from a condition where the people consumed most of what they produced and produced most of what they consumed to a condition where they sell much of what they produce and buy much of what they consume -with these changes has come a big increase in the quantity and variety of goods carried by the general merchant. Be- sides dry-goods, groceries, drugs, stationery, hats, shoe, con- fectionery, snuff, tobacco, and hardware, some also handle furniture, farming utensils, cold drinks, millinery, and clothing. In short, many aim to supply practically all the demands of their customers, except a few special wants of the more fastidious. It should be noted, however, that the big mail-order houses are now doing considerable business in this section, a fact which is cutting into the trade of the local dealers, and which may eventually force them to dis- continue certain lines.
CHAPTER XIII LABOR AND WAGES
CONDITIONS IN 1880
Labor Supply .- Labor in 1880 was both plentiful and cheap. One could hire all he wanted of any kind he wanted, for any length of time he wanted, and at any time of the year he wanted. Farm hands of both races and sexes, fish hands-colored on the sound, mixed on the river, and do- mestics of both races-all were anxious to work, and were not so very particular about either the kind of work or the length of the hours.
Rates of Wages .- There were day hands and monthly hands. Men doing common labor by the day received from forty to fifty cents and board, and from fifty to seventy cents and "board yourself"-twelve to twenty cents a day being reckoned as the cost of boarding a laboring man. The higher prices were received in summer when the days were long and hot and the greatest amount of labor needed. Sometimes as high as seventy-five cents a day and board was paid for especially hard work, for instance, pulling fodder. The very best carpenters received from $1.25 to $1.50 and board, while the ordinary ones received from 75 cents to $1. Seine hands, except captains and seine menders, whose wages ranged from $2 to $2.50 a day, received from $I to $1.35 and board. It must be remembered, however, that this was night-and-day work, with much exposure, and, when the fish were running heavy, very little time for eating and sleeping.1
1 Cf. supra, pp. 96, 97. [144
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Some of the monthly hands worked the year around, but a large number worked only during crop season-from about the first of March till the last of July, receiving from eight to ten dollars a month with board and lodging. Those hired for crop season only generally received from fifty cents to a dollar a month more than the same grade of hands working by the year. Twenty-six working days were counted a month. Some hands were paid for straight time, rain or shine, others were paid only for the time that they worked. While the day hands received a little more per day during the time they worked than did the monthly hands, the work of the former was very irregular and uncertain; they could get work only for a few days at a time, or in the most busy part of the season when some one happened to need extra help.
As previously explained, at this period much hoe work was done-at certain times from two to four hoe hands being required to follow one plow. Many farmers de- pended almost entirely on day hands to do their hoe work. One seldom had to lodge them, and it was necessary neither to feed nor to pay them except when they were actually working. While this may have been of advantage to the farmer, it was hard on the laborer.
For day labor, women received from twenty-five to thirty cents and board for housework. One would wash through- out a long hot August day for her board and twenty-five cents. For light work like sewing, they received from fifteen to twenty cents a day. By the month, the year round, their wages ranged from three to four dollars. Many worked both in the house and in the field for this price. When working in the field they not only worked. with the hoe but even cleaned up the new ground, hauled dirt, stripped fodder-in fact did almost anything there
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was to do except ditch, maul, and plow, and some doubtless did these things.
Hours .- The eight-hour-day system for either men or women, if ever thought of, was a mere dream that few dared to mention and none expected to see come to pass. In the country, during six or seven months of the year, the hired girl turned out about four o'clock in the morning to prepare breakfast. If she worked outdoors, after cleaning up the dishes, she went to the field and stayed till time to cook dinner.1 After dinner she went back and stayed till time to cook supper. When supper was over she had to clean up the dishes, rarely finishing till after eight o'clock. The only time she had off was Sunday afternoons.
LABOR AND WAGES IN 1915
Scarcity of Labor and the Method of Securing a Sup- ply .- In 1880 laborers were hunting jobs; at present just the reverse is true-jobs are hunting laborers. The time was when one could hire all the labor he wanted, and when he wanted it, without previously making any special pro- visions, but that time is no more. Unless one has plenty of labor living on his own land, ordinarily he is unable to hire hands at the very times he needs them most. Because of this condition the great majority of farmers who do much hiring aim to keep settled on their own places sufficient labor to supply their needs. To attain this end the usual custom is to furnish families (mostly colored), rent free, cheap one- or two-room shanties, fire-wood, and small garden plots. It is a common thing for a tenant of this class to have a " side crop" of two or three acres of cotton which he cultivates on halves. In furnishing free quarters, fire-wood, and garden, the landlord appeals to that side of human nature
1 If it was an extremely busy season with the farmer, frequently his wife would do the breakfast dishes and get dinner.
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which is always looking for and expecting something for nothing, and in this way he induces families to take up their residence on his land. By renting such families a few acres on halves, ordinarily he is able to hold them through the crop season, when they might otherwise pull up and leave him when he is busiest.
Such families as above described are, in reality, not tenants, but rather hired laborers domiciled on the em- ployer's premises, and more or less controlled by him. They promise to work for him whenever he needs their services. At other times, if they are not needed in their own little crops, they are at liberty to work wherever they see fit.
While the above variety of tenant pays nothing directly for his shack, fire-wood, and little patch of garden (some- times only a small space around the shack in which he lives), he usually gets from twenty-five to fifty cents a day less for his labor than he could command in the open market. Sometimes the landlord agrees to furnish these tenants work whenever they want it, but almost invariably at a compara- tively low rate of wages. This class of laborers is largely composed of those with little capacity for self-direction, less ambition, and almost no initiative.
Rates and Services .- The wages of monthly hands on the farm now run from $12 to $20 a month, besides board and lodging. In the mills and lumber woods, labor generally is paid by the day, the wages of common labor ranging from $I. IO to $1.60. Men working on the farm by the day re- ceive from 75 cents to $1, sometimes with and sometimes without board. Pound-net hands, who formerly were paid from $15 to $25 a month, now receive from $25 to $60, and the work is far less arduous. For example, now the boats are all run by gas, while formerly they were sailed when there was wind, and when there was none they had to be rowed. One of the biggest pound-net fishermen on
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the sound told me that if fishing were carried on now without gas he could get no hands at all.
Women receive from sixty to seventy-five cents without board for field work. On an average the wages of women on the inside are more than double what they were in 1880, while the work they do is about half what it was then. In the eighties and early nineties the women who cooked usually washed, ironed, and nursed (cared for the children). Now, especially in town and sometimes in the country, the servant who cooks expects to do nothing else : the same is true of the nurse, so a third person has to be called in to do the wash- ing and ironing.
In Edenton (the only town in the county) the servants rarely live on the premises. The washerwoman either comes to the employer's home for a couple of days in the week to do the washing and ironing, or else carries the clothes to her own home. The latter is the more common custom.1 The cook ordinarily comes in about seven o'clock in the morning, cooks breakfast and dinner (dinner is always the midday meal), cleans up the dishes, and is away by two or three o'clock in the afternoon, in many cases not to be seen any more till the following morning. She eats breakfast where she works, but refuses to eat dinner there, claiming that she much prefers to eat at home; so, when she leaves, she carries away with her a turn of victuals-not infrequently enough for a good-sized family. In fact many a man who has a cook has not only to pay and feed her, but also to put up with her carrying away a large part of what several others eat. This condition is expressed in some lines of a song, which run thus :
" Why do I need to work so hard? I got a wife in de white fo'ks' yard."
1 In the rural districts the former prevails.
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While formerly there were plenty of house-servants to be had at from three to four dollars a month, now one has to pay from six to ten dollars, and let them do as they please. In fact many a person seems to consider himself lucky if he gets one under any conditions.
Causes of Increased Wages of Men .- Why this rise of from 75 to 125 per cent in money wages? In the first place, there has been a tremendous increase in the per-capita pro- duction of wealth and a general rise in prices. In agricul- ture the increased productivity has come about through a greater dissemination and more general application of the modern principles of agriculture, together with a wider and more efficient use of improved farm machinery. In manufacturing it has come through the substitution of the factory type of industry for the household type. The in- crease in prices has come about principally by reason of two economic changes, one of which is universal and the other local. The first is that a greater cheapening has taken place in the production of gold-due to the application of new processes and the opening up of new fields-than in the pro- duction of commodities in general. The second is the great increase in the transportation facilities of Chowan since 1880 which now enables producers to secure prices that are controlled by world- rather than by local-market conditions. This increased productivity and rise in prices have made it possible for the employer to pay more than formerly. But this is only one blade of the shears which cut off a bigger wage for the employee. The employer, as a rule, raises wages not simply because he is able to, but because he is forced to. The factor that has forced employers to grant higher wages-the other blade of the shears-has been the diminished relative supply of workers due to the widened demand for workers and to their migration to other locali- ties. The increased demand has come from several sources.
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In agriculture, while improved methods of cultivating and housing, and a somewhat smaller area under cultivation,1 make less labor in general necessary in this industry than formerly, nevertheless there is needed more labor of able- bodied men, because of the fact that much of the planting, hoeing, and gathering, which the women and children form- erly did by hand, is now done by tools and machinery oper- ated by men. The fishing does not require as many hands as it did three and a half decades ago, but, owing to the longer season for pound-nets than for seines, the sum total of the labor done by men is probably about the same.2 The building of the railroads, the manning and the keeping of them in repair, commercial manufacturing, and the cutting, hauling, and milling of the timber have all resulted in en- tirely new demands for labor. With increased formal edu- cation and increased means of travel and communication, the market value of labor has become much better known. With the spreading of this knowledge, many of those with the most ambition, energy, and initiative having labor for sale, have migrated to places where its value could be more nearly realized.
Causes of Increased Wages of Women .- The rise in the wages of women doing house- and farm-work is due to causes somewhat different from those which effected the rise in the wages of men. Women have not gone elsewhere in search of work; furthermore, not only has the work usu- ally allotted to them decreased rather than increased in pro- portion to the increase in population, but the absolute amount they now do, even in the house, is far less than it was in 1880. Much of what they formerly did has been trans- ferred to the factory, and that which is left is much more easily and quickly done now than then, by reason of the use of modern devices. In the fields the work done by women
1 Cf. table 6, p. 269.
2 Cf. table 13, p. 276.
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is probably less than fifty per cent of what it was in the early eighties.
With an absolute decrease of some forty or fifty per cent 1 in the amount of work done by women now from that done by them in 1880, and with a 49.3 per cent. increase in popu- lation, ? if there were no further data at hand one naturally would expect the supply of female labor to be greater in proportion to the demand than in the eighties, and, as a re- sult, that lower instead of higher wages would prevail. Just the contrary, however, is the case. The decrease in the supply of female laborers has gone on at a more rapid rate than has the decrease in the supply of work for them. This anomaly is explained by the terms "pride " and " growth of material welfare." Pride and the general im- provement in economic conditions which has enabled an ever-increasing proportion of the people to maintain their pride, are the two main factors which have caused the present dearth of female laborers.
Growing Opposition to Hired Female Service .- Al- tho hired female (as well as male) labor in 1880 was predominantly colored, there were still a limited number of white women to be employed for almost any kind of work they were physically capable of doing, whether in the field or in the house. At present this class of hired labor is very near the vanishing point. A few white women and girls work outdoors during the chopping and housing season, but, as a rule, they are members of the families who cultivate the farms on which they work. Some white women still pick cotton for hire, but this is by the pound, and not by the day or month, which they consider a very different proposi- tion, since in the former case one is one's own boss and can come and go when she pleases.
Now that all planting, except the " setting out " (trans- 1 My personal estimate.
2 Calculations made for June 1, 1915.
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planting) of sweet-potato sprouts, is done by machinery ; all peanuts picked off by machinery; and comparatively little hoe work done-not much field work formerly done by wo- men, aside from picking cotton, is left. For this reason, if for no other, one would expect to see comparatively fewer women in the fields than in the earlier days. But there is a more potent reason still. For years many of both sexes have been especially prejudiced against a white woman's doing ordinary farm labor. A goodly number of women who had it to do for a living felt exceedingly chagrined if caught at it, no matter how poor they might be. Some would even run and hide if a man was seen approaching. With the growth of economic well-being an ever-increasing proportion has been enabled to avoid such work.
Probably ninety-five per cent of the rural and sixty per cent of the urban white families, and nearly all of the colored, still do all their domestic work, while the remaining five and forty per cent, respectively, hire much of their cooking, washing, ironing, and nursing done. As for hired white domestics, there are probably not a half dozen in the county working as servants for a straight wage. The few white women who live out, do so under the express stip- ulation that they are to be considered and treated as members of the families with whom they live, rather than as hired servants. They do not do the housework while the other women of the family sit back and "play lady "-they simply help the other women, and their remuneration usu- ally comes as does that of a wife or daughter (in so far as the remuneration of these latter comes in the present)-in the shape of food, shelter, clothing, and recreation.
Prejudice against work for women decreases as we pro- ceed from hired field labor to business and professional labor. The scale, arranged in a descending series, is about as follows: hired field labor (except cotton-pick- ing), hired domestic labor, field labor for one's own
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family (except cotton-picking), domestic labor for a family in which one has been adopted for an indefinite period, cotton-picking for hire, cotton-picking for one's family, domestic labor for one's own family, clerking in a store, stenography, teaching. There are still a few of that variety which believes that any useful work whatsoever ill befits a lady.1 This type of parasite has been, and con- tinues to be, an incubus on the county, however, not so much because of the number of them the county has been forced to maintain in idleness and frivolity, as because of the feeling they have helped to engender and foster among the working classes-the feeling that women cannot work without com- promising their dignity to a greater or less degree, the de- gree depending upon the kind of work performed.
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