Page:The Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist.djvu/150

CHAPTER 7. DOROTHY VISITS PHOENIX 137 of these days if I ever get away from this damned desert."

"I agree with you. Many professors have written books about just that way of life but few have gone back to the land," I answered.

"Folks hereabouts was talking the other day of breaking in the stores to get something to eat. But I told them they are beat before they start at that game. Got to get back to the land. That's what I told them, but they, didn't want to get too far away from the dime stores, shows and taverns," he continued as we came to the cotton field.

This field had been picked over before and now just the bolls here and there that had been missed and the few that had matured late were left. The Oakie went one way and I worked next to two young Negroes. We snapped off the bolls and all the visible cotton, and went half a mile, two rows at a time, before we were back to the truck. I had but thirty-six pounds and when the girl paid me I found that 2c a pound was the rate instead of 3c. I mentioned this to one of the Negroes as we were picking and he said:

"Lucky we gets the 2c. The other day they gave us slips of paper and told us to come the next day if it didn't rain and they would have the money. I told them to go to hell with such paper; I wanted something that got me my eats and I walked off the field. But most of the others stayed on for they had families."

This reminded me that I still had the slips for $4.18 for cotton I had picked in November at the Jim Crow ranch, fifty miles away, in the desert beyond Arlington. The Negro went to eat some lunch and his row was taken by a husky white man who had lost his job in a laundry when his boss had sold the plant in Phoenix. One of his sisters had married a Church of the Brethren man so he was receptive to my conversation about Conscientious Objectors and nonpayment of taxes for war. Here the cotton was a little thicker and when we came back to the truck I had 72 pounds.

"Got to watch these belly robbers. They'll doctor up the scales and cheat you of half the cotton. The other day I picked around 100 pounds and the weigh man said he was only paying for 50 as he was not making much money on this second grade cotton. I wonder what the hell he thought I was making. I didn't like it but I stayed for the day, but did not go back the next day."

"Yes," I replied, "I heard the fellows at the fire by the curb, as we waited for the truck this morning, talking about a cotton contractor who 'short-weighed and ticket-paid' the pickers and made a thousand dollars month from poor folks as poor as he had been a month before."

He wanted to know if I was a Witness. I told him that I belonged to no church, for each one prayed more and did less than the other. I mentioned about the Oakie who had wanted to go back to the land and he replied that he was sorry, he had gone out for day work for he had had more real income and satisfaction on the land. He spoke of several relatives who had made from $50 to $100 a week all during the war in war work. When they had lost their jobs they went to live with his old father who had but $70 cash income a year but always had his cellar full of something to eat from what he had raised on the land.