The war then meant a financial crash; in place of the
five and a half millions of 1860, there remained in 1870 only
farms valued at less than two millions. With this came in-
creased competition in cotton culture from the rich lands of
Texas; a steady fall in the normal price of cotton followed,
from about fourteen cents a pound in 1860 until it reached
four cents in 1898. Such a financial revolution was it that
involved the owners of the cotton-belt in debt. And if things
went ill with the master, how fared it with the man?
The plantations of Dougherty County in slavery days were
not as imposing and aristocratic as those of Virginia. The Big
House was smaller and usually one-storied, and sat very near
the slave cabins. Sometimes these cabins stretched off on
either side like wings; sometimes only on one side, forming a
double row, or edging the road that turned into the plantation
from the main thoroughfare. The form and disposition of the
laborers' cabins throughout the Black Belt is to-day the same
as in slavery days. Some live in the self-same cabins, others
in cabins rebuilt on the sites of the old.
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