The Quest of the Silver Fleece Part 70

THE COTTON MILL

The people of Toomsville started in their beds and listened. A new song was rising on the air: a harsh, low, murmuring croon that shook the village ranged around its old square of dilapadated stores. It was not a song of joy; it was not a song of sorrow; it was not a song at all, perhaps, but a confused whizzing and murmuring, as of a thousand ill-tuned, busy voices. Some of the listeners wondered; but most of the town cried joyfully, "It's the new cotton-mill!"

John Taylor's head teemed with new schemes. The mill trust of the North was at last a fact. The small mills had not been able to buy cotton when it was low because Cresswell was cornering it in the name of the Farmers' League; now that it was high they could not afford to, and many surrendered to the trust.

"Next thing," wrote Taylor to Easterly, "is to reduce cost of production. Too much goes in wages. Gradually transfer mills South."

Easterly argued that the labor was too unskilled in the South and that to send Northern spinners down would spread labor troubles. Taylor replied briefly: "Never fear; we'll scare them with a vision of n.i.g.g.e.rs in the mills!"

Colonel Cresswell was not so easily won over to the new scheme. In the first place he was angry because the school, which he had come to regard as on its last legs, somehow still continued to flourish. The ten-thousand-dollar mortgage had but three more years, and that would end all; but he had hoped for a crash even earlier. Instead of this, Miss Smith was cheerfully expanding the work, hiring new teachers, and especially she had brought to help her two young Negroes whom he suspected. Colonel Cresswell had prevented the Tolliver land sale, only to be inveigled himself into Zora's scheme which now began to worry him.

He must evict Zora's tenants as soon as the crops were planted and harvested. There was nothing unjust about such a course, he argued, for Negroes anyway were too lazy and s.h.i.+ftless to buy the land. They would not, they could not, work without driving. All this he imparted to John Taylor, to which that gentleman listened carefully.

"H'm, I see," he owned. "And I know the way out."

"How?"

"A cotton mill in Toomsville."

"What's that got to do with it?"

"Bring in whites."

"But I don't want poor white trash; I'd sooner have n.i.g.g.e.rs."

"Now, see here," argued Taylor, "you can't have everything you want--day's gone by for aristocracy of old kind. You must have neighbors: choose, then, white or black. I say white."

"But they'll rule us--out-vote us--marry our daughters," warmly objected the Colonel.

"Some of them may--most of them won't. A few of them with brains will help us rule the rest with money. We'll plant cotton mills beside the cotton fields, use whites to keep n.i.g.g.e.rs in their place, and the fear of n.i.g.g.e.rs to keep the poorer whites in theirs."

The Colonel looked thoughtful.

"There's something in that," he confessed after a while; "but it's a mighty big experiment, and it may go awry."

"Not with brains and money to guide it. And at any rate, we've got to try it; it's the next logical step, and we must take it."

"But in the meantime, I'm not going to give up good old methods; I'm going to set the sheriff behind these lazy n.i.g.g.e.rs," said the Colonel; "and I'm going to stop that school putting notions into their heads."

In three short months the mill at Toomsville was open and its wheels whizzing to the boundless pride of the citizens.

"Our enterprise, sir!" they said to the strangers on the strength of the five thousand dollars locally invested.

Once it had vigor to sing, the song of the mill knew no resting; morning and evening, day and night it crooned its rhythmic tune; only during the daylight Sundays did its murmur die to a sibilant hiss. All the week its doors were filled with the coming and going of men and women and children: many men, more women, and greater and greater throngs of children. It seemed to devour children, sitting with its myriad eyes gleaming and its black maw open, drawing in the pale white mites, sucking their blood and spewing them out paler and ever paler. The face of the town began to change, showing a ragged tuberculous looking side with dingy homes in short and homely rows.

There came gradually a new consciousness to the town. Hitherto town and country had been ruled by a few great landlords but at the very first election, Colton, an unknown outsider, had beaten the regular candidate for sheriff by such a majority that the big property owners dared not count him out. They had, however, an earnest consultation with John Taylor.

"It's just as I said," growled Colonel Cresswell, "if you don't watch out our whole plantation system will be ruined and we'll be governed by this white trash from the hills."

"There's only one way," sighed Caldwell, the merchant; "we've got to vote the n.i.g.g.e.rs."

John Taylor laughed. "Nonsense!" he spurned the suggestion. "You're old-fas.h.i.+oned. Let the mill-hands have the offices. What good will it do?"

"What good! Why, they'll do as they please with us."

"Bos.h.!.+ Don't we own the mill? Can't we keep wages where we like by threatening to bring in n.i.g.g.e.r labor?"

"No, you can't, permanently," Maxwell disputed, "for they sometime will call your bluff."

"Let 'em call," said Taylor, "and we'll put n.i.g.g.e.rs in the mills."

"What!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the landlords in chorus. Only Maxwell was silent.

"And kill the plantation system?"

"Oh, maybe some time, of course. But not for years; not until you've made your pile. You don't really expect to keep the darkies down forever, do you?"

"No, I don't," Maxwell slowly admitted. "This system can't last always--sometimes I think it can't last long. It's wrong, through and through. It's built on ignorance, theft, and force, and I wish to G.o.d we had courage enough to overthrow it and take the consequences. I wish it was possible to be a Southerner and a Christian and an honest man, to treat n.i.g.g.e.rs and dagoes and white trash like men, and be big enough to say, 'To h.e.l.l with consequences!'"

Colonel Cresswell stared at his neighbor, speechless with bewilderment and outraged traditions. Such unbelievable heresy from a Northerner or a Negro would have been natural; but from a Southerner whose father had owned five hundred slaves--it was incredible! The other landlords scarcely listened; they were dogged and impatient and they could suggest no remedy. They could only blame the mill for their troubles.

John Taylor left the conference blithely. "No," he said to the committee from the new mill-workers' union. "Can't raise wages, gentlemen, and can't lessen hours. Mill is just started and not yet paying expenses. You're getting better wages than you ever got. If you don't want to work, quit. There are plenty of others, white and black, who want your jobs."

The mention of black people as compet.i.tors for wages was like a red rag to a bull. The laborers got together and at the next election they made a clean sweep, judge, sheriff, two members of the legislature, and the registrars of votes. Undoubtedly the following year they would capture Harry Cresswell's seat in Congress.

The result was curious. From two sides, from landlord and white laborer, came renewed oppression of black men. The laborers found that their political power gave them little economic advantage as long as the threatening cloud of Negro compet.i.tion loomed ahead. There was some talk of a strike, but Colton, the new sheriff, discouraged it.

"I tell you, boys, where the trouble lies: it's the n.i.g.g.e.rs. They live on nothing and take any kind of treatment, and they keep wages down. If you strike, they'll get your jobs, sure. We'll just have to grin and bear it a while, but get back at the darkies whenever you can. I'll stick 'em into the chain-gang every chance I get."

On the other hand, inspired by fright, the grip of the landlords on the black serfs closed with steadily increasing firmness. They saw one cla.s.s rising from beneath them to power, and they tightened the chains on the other. Matters simmered on in this way, and the only party wholly satisfied with conditions was John Taylor and the few young Southerners who saw through his eyes. He was making money. The landlords, on the contrary, were losing power and prestige, and their farm labor, despite strenuous efforts, was drifting to town attracted by new and incidental work and higher wages. The mill-hands were more and more overworked and underpaid, and hated the Negroes for it in accordance with their leaders' directions.

At the same time the oppressed blacks and scowling mill-hands could not help recurring again and again to the same inarticulate thought which no one was brave enough to voice. Once, however, it came out flatly. It was when Zora, crowding into the village courthouse to see if she could not help Aunt Rachel's accused boy, found herself beside a gaunt, overworked white woman. The woman was struggling with a crippled child and Zora, turning, lifted him carefully for the weak mother, who thanked her half timidly. "That mill's about killed him," she said.

At this juncture the manacled boy was led into court, and the woman suddenly turned again to Zora.

"Durned if I don't think these white slaves and black slaves had ought ter git together," she declared.

"I think so, too," Zora agreed.

Colonel Cresswell himself caught the conversation and it struck him with a certain dismay. Suppose such a conjunction should come to pa.s.s? He edged over to John Taylor and spoke to him; but Taylor, who had just successfully stopped a suit for damages to the injured boy, merely shrugged his shoulders.

"What's this n.i.g.g.e.r charged with?" demanded the Judge when the first black boy was brought up before him.

"Breaking his labor contract."

"Any witnesses?"

"I have the contract here," announced the sheriff. "He refuses to work."

"A year, or one hundred dollars."