Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/514

 498 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

one another's share of the crop, and next the planter's by way of general redress." 66 Crop-stealing was usually done at night. Stolen cotton, corn, pork, etc., was carried to the low doggeries kept on the outskirts of the plantation by low white men, and there exchanged for bad whisky, tobacco, and cheap stuff of various kinds. These doggeries were called "dead falls," and their proprietors often became rich. 57 So serious did the theft of crops become that the legislature passed a " sunset " law making it a penal offense to purchase farm produce after nightfall. Poul- try, hogs, corn, mules, and horses were stolen when left in the open. During the decade from 1868 to 1878 it was estimated by several grand juries which investigated the matter that the cotton and corn stolen from the open fields amounted to more than one- fifth of the crops produced.

The negroes deteriorated much in personal appearance and dress; immorality increased; religion nearly died out; con- sumption and other diseases attacked the childish people who would not care for themselves; fceticide was common; negro children died in swarms when very young ; there was a tendency to return to the barbarous customs of their African forefathers; witchcraft and hoodoo were practiced, and in some cases human sacrifices made. 58

Emancipation destroyed the agricultural supremacy of the Black Belt. The uncertain returns from the plantations caused an exodus of planters and their families to the cities, and many well-kept plantations were divided into one- and two-house farms for negro tenants who let everything go to ruin. The negro tenant system was much more ruinous than the worst of the slavery system, and none of the plantations again reached their former state of productiveness. Ditches filled up, fences down, large stretches of fertile fields growing up in weeds and bushes, cabins tumbling in, and negro quarters deserted, corn choked by


 * Somers, op. cit., p. 131.

" The prosperity of a number of large Hebrew commercial houses in Alabama is said to date from the corner groceries of the seventies.

"Somers, op. cit.; Southern Magazine, January and March, 1874; Ku Klux Report, Alabama testimony (Pettus).