Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/502

 486 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

committee to look after the welfare of the freedmen, to see that contracts were carried out and the freedmen protected in them, and, in cases of dispute, to act as arbitrator. The members of the association pledged themselves to see that the freedman received his wages, and to aid him in case his employer refused to pay his wages. They were also to see that the freedman fulfilled his con- tract, unless there was good reason why he should not. Homes and the necessaries of life were to be provided by the association for the aged and helpless negroes, of whom there were several on every plantation. The planters declared themselves in favor of schools for the negro children, and a committee was appointed to devise a plan for their education. Every planter in Monroe County belonged to the association. 28 An organization in Cone- cuh County adopted, word for word, the constitution of the Monroe County association. In Clarke and Wilcox Counties similar organizations were formed, and in all counties where negro labor was the main dependence some such plans were devised. 29 But it is noticeable that in those counties where the planters first undertook to reorganize the labor system there were no regular agents of the Freedmen's Bureau and no garrison.

The average negro, quite naturally, had little or no sense of the obligation of contracts. He would leave a growing crop a! the most critical period and move into another county, or, work- ing his own crop " on shares," would leave it in the grass and go to work for someone else in order to get small change for tobacco, snuff, and whisky. After three years of experience with such conduct, a meeting of citizens at Summerfield, Dallas County, decided that laborers ought to be impressed with the necessity of complying with contracts. They agreed that no laborers dis- charged for failure to keep contracts would be hired again by

"Trowbridge, The South, pp. 431 ft-

"Ibid., p. 431; reports of General Swayne, December 26, 1865, and Janu- ary, 1866, in House Executive Document, No. 70, Thirty-ninth Congress, First Session. General Swayne strongly approved the objects of these societies. He said there was not, and never had been, any question of the right of the negro to hold property. Free negroes had held property before the war. The Creoles of Mobile had all the rights of citizens by the treaty of cession of west Florida.