A WOMAN RICE PLANTER

INTRODUCTION

While the influences and mechanisms of the present world tend to make all parts of it alike in thought and in costume, the various nooks and corners of our own country are gradually losing their original highly accentuated characteristics, and are merging into a general similarity. Most of what you hear and see any morning in the towns of Massachusetts you will hear and see in Omaha, Denver, Seattle, or anywhere else, because the department stores advertise and sell the same kind of clothes everywhere at the same time, and the same news is everywhere published in the daily papers.

Our American literature is therefore very lucky to have produced its Jewetts, Wilkinses, Cables, Craddocks, Pages, and Harrises, who have well set down for our perpetual interest and instruction the evaporating charm of their chosen fields.

Here is another book belonging to this valuable indigenous shelf of ours, a shelf where stand the volumes that tell of people and events that could have been met with nowhere in the world save upon our own native soil. Although it is not fiction, but a record of personal experience, it should prove to many readers as entertaining as our best fiction.

It is about the South, a particular part of the South, the rice-plantation coast of South Carolina. In this region, field and water and forest intermingle to form a strange, haunting scene, full of character and mystery. To dine with a neighbor here, one needs both the horse and the boat; travel has to be amphibious. And in this region, too, the marks that were made by the old days have been by the new days obliterated less than in most parts of our country. The Massachusetts, the New York, the Pennsylvania of fifty years ago, have been swept into albums and libraries; shelves and cabinets are their resting-place. Would you know how yonder large mills looked in 1860? No mills were there then, the spot was a pond, with a country road and a farm-house about half a mile down the road; perhaps somebody has a photograph or a wood-cut showing it as it used to be. That is what most of us in the North and East have to do—pull down old books, pull open old drawers—if we would see the former aspect of our neighborhood.

Not so is it in the country of the rice. The Southerner of to-day can still trace the fields and woods of old. His house may be roofless, his garden walks a tangle, but the avenue of live oaks still stands, the chimney of his mill still rises above a pile of crumbled bricks, at the doors of the cabins the negroes still sit, clad in a fashion not yet changed beyond recognition. The fields themselves may have had their banks cut and dissolved away by unresisted freshets, but still they are visible, still the unchanged river pours between and around them, and still the boat loads of people creep and prowl through the cuts.

True it is that no longer are these people well-to-do neighbors going to visit each other, rowed by an ebony crew in uniform that chants plantation songs in rhythm to the strokes of its oars—those neighbors are most of them lying in the graveyard of St. Michael's, Charleston, or in the lovely enclosures surrounding the little silent country churches upon which one sometimes emerges during a long ride through the woods. They who go in the boats to-day are apt to be less prosperous, whatever their color, and when they are black they may very likely be poachers who do not sing. But in spite of these differences, the general scene is the same.

Thus the mark of the old days remains visible; emancipation has by no means obliterated it; emancipation has merely brought to a close the old days themselves, without building on top of them anything new; it is Time that gently and silently and slowly is strewing its leaves upon that ended era.

But certain Southerners, loving their old land and custom, have struggled to keep alive the rice-planting, to mend their roofs and doors, to guard the flame upon their old hearths, and to teach good conduct and Christian faith to the young negroes unshackled from slavery indeed, but flung into space without master, or law, or guide. Once engulfed by the towns, these hapless blacks become a prey to every primitive and every sophisticated vice.

Struggle is too pale a word for the decades of efforts and obstacles that these courageous Southerners have known, particularly since rice has come to be grown so successfully elsewhere; and when the devoted planter happens to be a woman, the measure of daily indomitableness is full and runs over.

Such a life of such a woman is described in these pages; with its humor and it poignancy mingling at every turn, with the performances of the negroes, the performances of the animals, and the ceaseless and miscellaneous distractions and dangers of the mistress, all told with perfect vividness and simplicity. As the narrative proceeds, the reader gradually perceives that he has met with a Southern picture unsurpassed, and that it makes a native document of permanent historic value. It should be the companion volume to that admirable account of Eliza Pinckney written by Mrs. St. Julien Ravenel; together, these two books record the South Carolina lady and her plantation, first in the days of her prosperity and then in the later days. Now and then one meets some one with a natural gift of style so complete that it flows from the pen as song from a wild bird; but most rare is it to find this gift and the experiences it portrays united in the same person.

OWEN WISTER.

ILLUSTRATIONS

A WOMAN RICE PLANTER

CHAPTER I

Cherokee, March 30, 1903.

You have asked me to tell of my rice-planting experience, and I will do my best, though I hardly know where to begin.

Some years ago the plantation where I had spent my very short married life, Casa Bianca, was for sale, and against the judgment of the men of my family I decided to put $10,000, every cent I had, in the purchase of it, to grow old in, I said, feeling it a refuge from the loneliness which crushed me. Though opposed to the step, one of my brothers undertook very kindly to manage it until paid for, then to turn it over to me. I had paid $5000 cash and spent $5000 in buying mules, supplies, ploughs, harrows, seed rice, etc., necessary to start and run the place. This left me with a debt of $5000, for which I gave a mortgage. After some years the debt was reduced to $3000, when I awoke to the fact that I had no right to burden and worry my brother any longer with this troublesome addition to his own large planting,[1] and I told him the first of January of 18—that I had determined to relieve him and try it myself. He seemed much shocked and surprised and said it was impossible; how was it possible for me, with absolutely no knowledge of planting or experience, to do anything? It would be much wiser to rent. I said I would gladly do so, but who would rent it? He said he would give me $300 a year for it, just to assist me in this trouble, and I answered that that would just pay the taxes and the interest on the debt, and I would never have any prospect of paying off the mortgage, and, when I died, instead of leaving something to my nieces and nephews, I would leave only a debt. No; I had thought of it well; I would sell the five mules and put that money in bank, and as far as that went I would plant on wages, and the rest of the land I would rent to the negroes at ten bushels to the acre. He was perfectly dismayed; said I would have to advance heavily to them, and nothing but ruin awaited me in such an undertaking.

However, I assembled the hands and told them that all who could not support themselves for a year would have to leave the place. With one accord they declared they could do it; but I explained to them that I was going to take charge myself, that I was a woman, with no resources of money behind me, and, having only the land, I intended to rent to them for ten bushels of rice to the acre. I could advance nothing but the seed. I could give them a chance to work for themselves and prove themselves worthy to be free men. I intended to have no overseer; each man would be entirely responsible for the land he rented. "You know very well," I said, "that this land will bring my ten bushels rent if you just throw the seed in and leave it, so that every stroke of work that you do will go into your own pockets, and I hope you will prove men enough to work for that purpose."

Then I picked out the lazy, shiftless hands and told them they must leave, as I knew they would not work for themselves. All the planters around were eager for hands and worked entirely on wages, and I would only plant fifty acres on wages, which would not be enough to supply all with work. My old foreman, Washington, was most uneasy and miserable, and questioned me constantly as to the wisdom of what I was doing. At last I said to him: "Washington, you do not know whether I have the sense to succeed in this thing, Mass' Tom does not know, I don't know; but we shall know by this time next year, and in the meantime you must just trust me and do the best you can for me."

It proved a great success! I went through the burning suns all that summer, twice a week, five miles in a buggy and six in a boat! I, who had always been timorous, drove myself the five miles entirely alone, hired a strange negro and his boat and was rowed by him to Casa Bianca plantation. Then, with dear old Washington behind me, telling of all the trials and tribulations he had had in getting the work done, I walked around the 200 acres of rice in all stages of beauty and awfulness of smell.

But I was more than repaid. I paid off the debt on the place and lifted the mortgage. I had never hoped for that in one year. My renters also were jubilant; they made handsomely and bought horses and buggies and oxen for the coming year's work. When I had paid off everything, I had not a cent left in the bank to run on, however. Washington was amazed and very happy at the results, but when I said something to him about preparing the wages field for the coming crop, he said very solemnly: "Miss, ef yo' weak, en you wrastle wid a strong man, en de Lo'd gie you strenf fo' trow um down once, don't you try um 'gain." I laughed, but, remembering that I would have to borrow money to plant the field this year, I determined to take the old man's advice and not attempt it. This was most fortunate, for there was a terrible storm that autumn and I would have been ruined. My renters were most fortunate in getting their rice in before the storm, so that they did well again.

From that time I have continued to plant from 20 to 30 acres on wages and to rent from 100 to 150 acres. Of course I have had my ups and downs and many anxious moments. Sometimes I have been so unfortunate as to take as renters those who were unfit to stand alone, and then I have suffered serious loss; but, on the whole, I have been able to keep my head above water, and now and then have a little money to invest. In short, I have done better than most of my neighbors.

Five years ago the head of our family passed away, and the Cherokee plantation, which my father had inherited from his grandfather, had to be sold for a division of the estate. None of my family was able to buy it, and a syndicate seemed the only likely purchaser, and they wanted to get it for very little. So I determined the best thing I could do was to buy it in myself and devote the rest of my life to keeping it in the family, and perhaps at my death some of the younger generation would be able to take it. This would condemn me to a very isolated existence, with much hard work and anxiety; but, after all, work is the greatest blessing, as I have found. I have lived at Cherokee alone ever since, two miles from any white person! With my horses, my dogs, my books, and piano, my life has been a very full one. There are always sick people to be tended and old people to be helped, and I have excellent servants.

My renters here, nearly all own their farms and live on them, coming to their work every day in their ox-wagons or their buggies; for the first thing a negro does when he makes a good crop is to buy a pair of oxen, which he can do for $30, and the next good crop he buys a horse and buggy.

The purchase of Cherokee does more credit to my heart than head, and it is very doubtful if I shall ever pay off the mortgage. I have lost two entire crops by freshet, and the land is now under water for the third time this winter, and, though I have rented 125 acres, it is very uncertain if I can get the half of that in. March is the month when all the rice-field ploughing should be done. The earliest rice is planted generally at the end of March, then through April, and one week in May. Last season I only got in fifty acres of rent rice and ten of wages; for in the same way the freshet was over the rice land all winter, and when it went off, there was only time to prepare that much. The renters made very fine crops—30, 40, and 45 bushels to the acre, while the wages fields only made 17! This is a complete reversal of the ordinary results, for I have very rarely, in all these years, made less than 30 bushels to the acre on my fields, and I was greatly discouraged and anxious to understand the reason of this sudden failure in the wages rice at both plantations.

By the merest chance I found out the cause. Early in December I was planting oats in a six-acre field. We broadcast winter oats in this section and then plough it in on fields which have been planted in peas before. I was anxious to get the field finished before a freeze, and had six of the best ploughmen in it. Grip had prevented my going out until they had nearly finished, but Bonaparte had assured me it was being well done. When I went into the field, it looked strange to me—the rich brown earth did not lie in billowy ridges as a ploughed field generally does. Here and there a weed skeleton stood erect. I tried to pull up one or two of these and found they were firmly rooted in the soil and had never been turned. I walked over that field with my alpenstock for hours, and found that systematically the ploughmen had left from eight to ten inches of hard land between each furrow, covering it skilfully with fresh earth, so that each hand who had been paid for an acre's ploughing had in reality ploughed only one-third of an acre. And then I understood the failure of all the wage rice!

I called Bonaparte, my head man, whom I trust fully. His grandfather belonged to my grandfather, and his family hold themselves as the colored aristocracy of this country. He has been a first-class carpenter, but he is rheumatic and does not work with ease at his trade now, and prefers taking charge of my planting as head man, or agent, as they now prefer to call it. He is trustworthy and has charge of the keys to my barns where rice, corn, oats, and potatoes are kept. I have trusted him entirely, and it would be a dreadful blow to think that he was losing his integrity. Though the pressure from the idle, shambling, trifling element of his race is very great, he has been able to resist it in the past.

What is to be the result of this new departure in the way of dishonesty I do not know. It has taken me a long time to lose patience. A few years ago one could get the value of the money paid for work. Just after the war there was a splendid body of workers on this plantation, and every one in the neighborhood was eager to get some of the hands from here. My father gave prizes for the best workers in the different processes, and they felt a great pride in being the prize ploughman or ditcher or hoe hand of the year; but now, alas, poor things, they have been so confused and muddled by the mistaken ideas and standards held out to them that they have no pride in honest work, no pride in anything but to wear fine clothes and get ahead of the man who employs them to do a job.

It is very hard for me to say this; I have labored so among them to try to elevate their ideals, to make them bring up their children to be honest and diligent, to make them still feel that honest, good work is something to be proud of. Even last year I would not have said this, but, alas, I have to say it now.

I have just come in from the corn-field, where two women have been paid for cutting down the corn-stalks, so that there will be nothing to interfere with the plough. They have only broken off the tops of the stalks, leaving about eighteen inches of stout corn-stalks all through the field. I shall have to send some one else to do the work and pay once more.

Yesterday I drove eight miles to my lower place, Casa Bianca, where the foreman asked me to go round the banks with him and see the inroads of the last full-moon tides, and it was appalling, the forces of nature are so immense. It makes me quail to think of the necessity of setting my small human powers in opposition. The rice-field banks are about three feet above the level of the river at high water, and each field has a very small flood-gate (called a trunk), which opens and closes to let the water in and out; but when a gale or freshet comes, all the trunk doors have to be raised so as not to strain the banks, and the water in the fields rises to the level of the river outside.

I must stop writing now or I will get too blue. I must go out and bathe in the generous sunshine and feast my eyes on the glory of yellow jessamine that crowns every bush and tree and revel in the delicious perfume as my bicycle glides over the soft, brown pine-needles along the level paths where the great dark blue eyes of the wild violets look lovingly up at me.

Yes, yes, God is very good and His world is very beautiful, and we must trust Him. When these brown children of His were wild, they were, no doubt, in a physical way perfect, but when they were brought to a knowledge of good and evil and brought under the law, like our first parents, the Prince of Darkness stepped in and the struggle within them of the forces of heaven and hell has been going on there ever since.

Can we doubt which will conquer in the end? No! Evil can never have the final victory, but the struggle will be long, for the Prince of Darkness uses such subtle emissaries. They come in the guise of angels, as elevators and instructors, taking from them the simple first principles of right and wrong which they had grasped, and substituting the glamour of ambition, the desire to fly, to soar, for the God-given injunction, "What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God?" Thank God, there is one man of their own race striving to hold up true standards of the Cross instead of the golden calf of the politician.

I fear this is a dull letter, but I have tried to make you understand something of the situation.

Patience Pennington.

Cherokee, June 1, 1903.

Since last I wrote I have been the sport of winds and waves. This place is still under water from a freshet, and on Sunday, April 5, there was a severe gale, and the water swept over the whole 200 acres of Casa Bianca, flowing up the rice-fields in an hour. Saturday evening the hands, after ploughing, left their ploughs in the field to continue work Monday, and they could not see the handles of the ploughs Sunday morning. I went down Tuesday, to find bridges carried away and even the banks still under water, and the head man reported five breaks in the Black River bank. It was impossible to do anything until the tide receded, and as there was a strong east wind blowing and a freshet coming down the Pee Dee, things looked very black.

I could not help lamenting aloud, and Marcus felt obliged to offer me some comfort, so he said: "Miss, if we one been a suffer, I'd feel bad, but eberybody bank bruk, en eberybody fiel' flow." This did not comfort me at all, but I realized the folly of lamenting. Fortunately I had just bought 3000 feet of boards, and as soon as the water left the fields Marcus began work on the breaks, and by driving puncheons, laying ground logs, and flatting mud and filling in, the bank is up again, keeping out the river, and the fields are drying off. The season, however, has not waited on us. April is gone, and not an acre is planted when I expected to have 100 acres growing by this time. The worst is that I have been paying out heavily every week to put things back where they were at the end of March.

There are many curious things about the planting of rice. One can plant from the 15th of March to the 15th of April, then again from the 1st to the 10th of May, and last for ten days in June. Rice planted between these seasons falls a prey to birds,—May-birds in the spring and rice-birds in August and September. It was impossible to plant in April this year, and now every one is pushing desperately to get what they can in May.

Yesterday I went down to give out the seed rice to be clayed for planting to-day. I keep the key to the seed-rice loft, though Marcus has all the others. I took one hand up into the upper barn while Marcus stayed below, having two barrels half filled with clay and then filled with water and well stirred until it is about the consistency of molasses. In the loft my man measured out thirty-five bushels of rice, turning the tub into a spout leading to the barn below, where young men brought the clay water in piggins from the barrel and poured it over the rice, while young girls, with bare feet and skirts well tied up, danced and shuffled the rice about with their feet until the whole mass was thoroughly clayed, singing, joking, and displaying their graceful activity to the best advantage. It is a pretty sight. When it is completely covered with clay, the rice is shovelled into a pyramid and left to soak until the next morning, when it is measured out into sacks, one and one-fourth bushels to each half acre. Two pairs of the stoutest oxen on the plantation are harnessed to the rice-drills, and they lumber along slowly but surely, and by twelve o'clock the field of fourteen acres is nearly planted.

It is literally casting one's bread on the waters, for as soon as the seed is in the ground the trunk door is lifted and the water creeps slowly up and up until it is about three inches deep on the land. That is why the claying is necessary; it makes the grain adhere to the earth, otherwise it would float. Sometimes, generally from prolonged west winds, the river is low, and water enough to cover the rice cannot be brought in on one tide, and then the blackbirds just settle on the field, diminishing the yield by half.

I went down into the Marsh field, where five ploughs are running, preparing for the June planting. It is a 26-acre field, very level and pretty, and I am delighted with the work; it is beautiful. When I told one of the hands how pleased I was with the work, he said: "Miss, de lan' plough so sweet, we haf for do' um good." I went all through with much pleasure, though I sank into the moist, dark brown soil too deep for comfort, and found it very fatiguing to jump the quarter drains, small ditches at a distance of 200 feet apart, and, worse, to walk the very narrow plank over the 10-foot ditch which runs all around the field and is very deep.

The evening is beautiful; the sun, just sinking in a hazy, mellow light, is a fiery dark red, the air is fresh from the sea, only three miles to the east, the rice-field banks are gay with flowers, white and blue violets, blackberry blossoms, wistaria, and the lovely blue jessamine, which is as sweet as an orange blossom. Near the bridge two negro women are fishing, with great strings of fish beside them. The streams are full of Virginia perch, bream, and trout; you have only to drop your line in with a wriggling worm at the end, and keep silent, and you have fine sport. Then the men set their canes securely in the bank just before dark and leave then, and almost invariably find a fish ready for breakfast in the morning. There is a saying that one cannot starve in this country, and it is true.