Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/495

 INDUSTRIAL REORGANIZATION IN ALABAMA 479

his slave quarters, changed his name, probably deserted his family, joined a new church and attended many revivals, bought a gun and acquired a dog, and went hunting and fishing to his heart's content. 11 The house servants and the artisans, who were the best and most intelligent of the negroes, began to go to the towns. Many were attracted by the reports of confiscation and division of property, and stopped working. Negro women, desiring to be as white ladies, refused to work in the fields, to cook, wash, or to perform other menial duties. It was years before this " freedom " prejudice of the negro women against domestic service died out. The precarious support offered by the bureau attracted many negroes to town and made agricultural labor unreliable. The negro would work one or two days in the week, go to town two days, and wander about the rest of the time. Under such conditions there was no hope of continuing the old patriarchal system, and new plans, modeled on what they had heard of free labor, were tried by the planters. In the white counties the ex-soldiers went to work as before the war, but they had come home from the army too late to plant full crops, and few had supplies enough to last until the crops should be gathered. In the white counties the negroes were so few as to escape the serious attention of the bureau, and consequently they worked fairly well at what they could get to do. 12

THE FREEDMEN'S BUREAU SYSTEM

The first work of the bureau was to break up the labor system that had been partially constructed, and to endeavor to establish a new system based on the northern free-labor system and the old slave-hiring system, with the addition of a good deal of pure theory. The bureau was to act as a labor clearing-house; it was to have entire control of labor; contracts must be written in

"The crop of cotton in 1865 was 75,305 bales; in 1866, 429,102 bales; in 1867, 239,516 (showing influence of political agitation); in 1868, 366,193 bales; and in 1869, 429,482 bales. (See Hodgson's Manual, 1869 and 1871, and the Census of 1870.) In 1849 the crop was 564,429 bales, and in 1859, 989,955 bales.

"New York Herald, July 17, 1865; Reid, After the War, pp. an, 218, 219; Tillet in Century, Vol. XI ; reports of General Swayne, 1865, 1866; Van de Graaf in Forum, Vol. XXI, pp. 330, 339; DeBow's Review, February, 1866, p. 220; oral accounts.