Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0139/01393.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 10KB | 164 lines

$Unique_ID{bob01393}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Life On The Mississippi
Chapter XXXIII}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{hundred
per
river
dollars
mississippi
cent
arkansas
buy
ten
big}
$Date{1917}
$Log{}
Title:       Life On The Mississippi
Author:      Twain, Mark
Date:        1917

Chapter XXXIII

Refreshments And Ethics

     In regard to Island 74, which is situated not far from the former
Napoleon, a freak of the river here has sorely perplexed the laws of men and
made them a vanity and a jest.  When the state of Arkansas was chartered, she
controlled "to the center of the river" - a most unstable line.  The state of
Mississippi claimed "to the channel" - another shifty and unstable line.  No.
74 belonged to Arkansas.  By and by a cut-off threw this big island out of
Arkansas, and yet not within Mississippi. "Middle of the river" on one side of
it, "channel" on the other.  That is as I understand the problem.  Whether I
have got the details right or wrong, this fact remains: that here is this big
and exceedingly valuable island of four thousand acres, thrust out in the
cold, and belonging to neither the one state nor the other; paying taxes to
neither, owing allegiance to neither.  One man owns the whole island, and of
right is "the man without a country."

     Island 92 belongs to Arkansas.  The river moved it over and joined it to
Mississippi.  A chap established a whisky-shop there, without a Mississippi
license, and enriched himself upon Mississippi custom under Arkansas
protection (where no license was in those days required).

     We glided steadily down the river in the usual privacy - steamboat or
other moving thing seldom seen.  Scenery as always; stretch upon stretch of
almost unbroken forest on both sides of the river; soundless solitude.  Here
and there a cabin or two, standing in small openings on the gray and grassless
banks - cabins which had formerly stood a quarter or half mile farther to the
front, and gradually been pulled farther and farther back as the shores caved
in.  As at Pilcher's Point, for instance, where the cabins had been moved back
three hundred yards in three months, so we were told; but the caving banks had
already caught up with them, and they were being conveyed rearward once more.

     Napoleon had but small opinion of Greenville, Mississippi, in the old
times; but behold, Napoleon is gone to the catfishes, and here is Greenville
full of life and activity, and making a considerable flourish in the valley;
having three thousand inhabitants, it is said, and doing a gross trade of two
million five hundred thousand dollars annually.  A growing town.

     There was much talk on the boat about the Calhoun Land Company, an
enterprise which is expected to work wholesome results.  Colonel Calhoun, a
grandson of the statesman, went to Boston and formed a syndicate which
purchased a large tract of land on the river, in Chicot County, Arkansas -
some ten thousand acres - for cotton-growing.  The purpose is to work on a
cash basis: buy at first hands, and handle their own product; supply their
negro laborers with provisions and necessaries at a trifling profit, say eight
or ten per cent.; furnish them comfortable quarters, etc., and encourage them
to save money and remain on the place. If this proves a financial success, as
seems quite certain, they propose to establish a banking-house in Greenville,
and lend money at an unburdensome rate of interest - six per cent. is spoken
of.

     The trouble heretofore has been - I am quoting remarks of planters and
steamboatmen - that the planters, although owning the land, were without cash
capital; had to hypothecate both land and crop to carry on the business.
Consequently, the commission dealer who furnishes the money takes some risk
and demands big interest - usually ten per cent., and two and one-half per
cent. for negotiating the loan.  The planter has also to buy his supplies
through the same dealer, paying commissions and profits.  Then when he ships
his crop, the dealer adds his commissions, insurance, etc.  So, taking it by
and large, and first and last, the dealer's share of that crop is about
twenty-five per cent. ^1

[Footnote 1: "But what can the state do where the people are under subjection
to rates of interest ranging from eighteen to thirty per cent., and are also
under the necessity of purchasing their crops in advance even of planting, at
these rates, for the privilege of purchasing all their supplies at one hundred
per cent. profit?" - Edward Atkinson.]

     A cotton-planter's estimate of the average margin of profit on planting,
in his section: One man and mule will raise ten acres of cotton, giving ten
bales cotton, worth, say five hundred dollars; cost of producing, say three
hundred and fifty dollars; net profit, one hundred and fifty dollars; or
fifteen dollars per acre.  There is also a profit now from the cotton-seed,
which formerly had little value - none where much transportation was
necessary.  In sixteen hundred pounds crude cotton, four hundred are lint,
worth, say, ten cents a pound; and twelve hundred pounds of seed, worth twelve
dollars or thirteen dollars per ton. Maybe in future even the stems will not
be thrown away.  Mr. Edward Atkinson says that for each bale of cotton there
are fifteen hundred pounds of stems, and that these are very rich in phosphate
of lime and potash; that when ground and mixed with ensilage or cotton-seed
meal (which is too rich for use as fodder in large quantities), the stem
mixture makes a superior food, rich in all the elements needed for the
production of milk, meat, and bone.  Heretofore the stems have been considered
a nuisance.

     Complaint is made that the planter remains grouty toward the former
slave, since the war; will have nothing but a chill business relation with
him, no sentiment permitted to intrude; will not keep a "store" himself, and
supply the negro's wants and thus protect the negro's pocket and make him able
and willing to stay on the place and an advantage to him to do it, but lets
that privilege to some thrifty Israelite, who encourages the thoughtless negro
and wife to buy all sorts of things which they could do without - buy on
credit, at big prices, month after month, credit based on the negro's share of
the growing crop; and at the end of the season, the negro's share belongs to
the Israelite, the negro is in debt besides, is discouraged, dissatisfied,
restless, and both he and the planter are injured; for he will take steamboat
and migrate, and the planter must get a stranger in his place who does not
know him, does not care for him, will fatten the Israelite a season, and
follow his predecessor per steamboat.

     It is hoped that the Calhoun Company will show, by its humane and
protective treatment of its laborers, that its method is the most profitable
for both planter and negro; and it is believed that a general adoption of that
method will then follow.

     And where so many are saying their say, shall not the barkeeper testify?
He is thoughtful, observant, never drinks; endeavors to earn his salary, and
would earn it if there were custom enough.  He says the people along here in
Mississippi and Louisiana will send up the river to buy vegetables rather than
raise them, and they will come aboard at the landings and buy fruits of the
barkeeper.  Thinks they "don't know anything but cotton"; believes they don't
know how to raise vegetables and fruit - "at least the most of them." Says "a
nigger will go to H for a watermelon" ("H" is all I find in the stenographer's
report - means Halifax probably, though that seems a good way to go for a
watermelon). Barkeeper buys watermelons for five cents up the river, brings
them down and sells them for fifty.  "Why does he mix such elaborate and
picturesque drinks for the nigger hands on the boat?" Because they won't have
any other.  "They want a big drink: don't make any difference what you make it
of, they want the worth of their money.  You give a nigger a plain gill of
half-a-dollar brandy for five cents - will he touch it? No.  Ain't size enough
to it.  But you put up a pint of all kinds of worthless rubbish, and heave in
some red stuff to make it beautiful - red's the main thing - and he wouldn't
put down that glass to go to a circus." All the bars on this Anchor Line are
rented and owned by one firm.  They furnish the liquors from their own
establishment, and hire the barkeepers "on salary." Good liquors?  Yes, on
some of the boats, where there are the kind of passengers that want it and can
pay for it. On the other boats?  No.  Nobody but the deck-hands and firemen to
drink it.  "Brandy?  Yes, I've got brandy, plenty of it; but you don't want
any of it unless you've made your will." It isn't as it used to be in the old
times.  Then everybody traveled by steamboat, everybody drank, and everybody
treated everybody else.  "Now most everybody goes by railroad, and the rest
don't drink." In the old times, the barkeeper owned the bar himself, "and was
gay and smarty and talky and all jeweled up, and was the toniest aristocrat on
the boat; used to make two thousand dollars on a trip.  A father who left his
son a steamboat bar, left him a fortune. Now he leaves him board and lodging;
yes, and washing if a shirt a trip will do.  Yes, indeedy, times are changed.
Why, do you know, on the principal line of boats on the Upper Mississippi they
don't have any bar at all!  Sounds like poetry, but it's the petrified truth."