Still the price of cotton fell, and gradually the landlords
deserted their plantations, and the reign of the merchant began.
The merchant of the Black Belt is a curious institution,--part
banker, part landlord, part banker, and part despot. His store,
which used most frequently to stand at the cross-roads and be-
come the centre of a weekly village, has now moved to town;
and thither the Negro tenant follows him. The merchant keeps
everything,--clothes and shoes, coffee and sugar, pork and
meal, canned and dried goods, wagons and ploughs, seed and
fertilizer,--and what he has not in stock he can give you an
order for at the store across the way. Here, then, comes the ten-
ant, Sam Scott, after he has contracted with some absent land-
lord's agent for hiring forty acres of land; he fingers his hat
nervously until the merchant finishes his morning chat with
Colonel Saunders, and calls out, "Well, Sam, what do you
want?" Sam wants him to "furnish" him,--i.e., to advance him
food and clothing for the year, and perhaps seed and tools, until
his crop is raised and sold. If Sam seems a favorable subject,
he and the merchant go to a lawyer, and Sam executes a chattel
mortgage on his mule and wagon in return for seed and a week's
rations.
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