Under such a system all labor is
bound to suffer. Even the white laborers are not yet intelli-
gent, thrifty, and well trained enough to maintain themselves
against the powerful inroads of organized capital. The results
among them, even, are long hours of toil, low wages, child
labor, and lack of protection against usury and cheating. But
among the black laborers all this is aggravated, first, by a
race prejudice which varies from a doubt and distrust among
the best element of whites to a frenzied hatred among the
worst; and, secondly, it is aggravated, as I have said before,
by the wretched economic heritage of the freedmen from
slavery. With this training it is difficult for the freedman to
learn to grasp the opportunities already opened to him, and the
new opportunities are seldom given him, but go by favor to
the whites.
Left by the best elements of the South with little protection
or oversight, he has been made in law and custom the victim
of the worst and most unscrupulous men in each community.
The crop-lien system which is depopulating the fields of the
South is not simply the result of shiftlessness on the part of
Negroes, but is also the result of cunningly devised laws as to
mortgages, liens, and misdemeanors, which can be made by
conscienceless men to entrap and snare the unwary until
escape is impossible, further toil a farce, and protest a crime.
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