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 The Science of Self Talk:
How to Increase Your Emotional
Intelligence and Stop Getting in Your
Own Way

Positive Psychology Coaching Series

Copyright © 2018 by Ian Tuhovsky

Author’s blog: www.mindfulnessforsuccess.com

Author’s Amazon profile: amazon.com/author/iantuhovsky

Instagram profile: https://instagram.com/mindfulnessforsuccess

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the author and the
publishers.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet, or via
any other means, without the permission of the author is illegal and punishable
by law.
Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage
electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

Important
The book is not intended to provide medical advice or to take the place of medical advice and treatment from
your personal physician. Readers are advised to consult their own doctors or other qualified health
professionals regarding the treatment of medical conditions. The author shall not be held liable or responsible
for any misunderstanding or misuse of the information contained in this book. The information is not indeed
to diagnose, treat or cure any disease.
It’s important to remember that the author of this book is not a doctor/therapist/medical professional. Only
opinions based upon his own personal experiences or research are cited. The author does not offer medical
advice or prescribe any treatments. For any health or medical issues – you should be talking to your doctor
first.
Please be aware that every e-book and “short read” I publish is
truly written by me, with thoroughly researched content 100% of
the time. Unfortunately, there’s a huge number of low quality,
cheaply outsourced spam titles on Kindle non-fiction market these
days, created by various Internet marketing companies. I don’t
tolerate these books. I want to provide you with high
quality, so if you think that one of my books/short reads can be
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contact@mindfulnessforsuccess.com
I will be very happy to hear from you, because
you are who I write my books for!
Introduction
Chapter 1 – What Is Self-Talk?
Exercise I
Chapter 2 – Constructive Self-Talk, Dysfunctional Self-Talk
Exercise II
Chapter 3 – Impact of Negative Self-Talk
Learned Helplessness
Exercise III
Chapter 4 – Positive Self-Talk
Challenge or Threat?
Self-Leadership
Self-Deception and False Positivity
Examples of Self-Talk
Exercise IV
Chapter 5 – Pareto: The 80/20 Rule
Chapter 6 – Creating the Right Circumstances for Motivation
Chapter 7 – The Self
Chapter 8 – Loving Yourself
Emotional Intelligence
Present and Future Selves
Chapter 9 – Getting to Know Yourself
Swimming in the OCEAN
Exercise V
Chapter 10 – Who’s Talking?
Exercise VI
Chapter 11 – What’s in a Pronoun?
Exercise VII
Chapter 12 – Turning Down the Volume
Addendum: Specific Applications
Mistakes
Health and Exercise
Wealth and Career
Relationships
Introduction

Have you ever paid attention to your inner speech? You know, that
running conversation that seems to go on interminably in your head.
The one that’s in the background, thinking your thoughts, or rather
“speaking” them to you in an internal, or is it infernal, commentary?

Or did you just kind of ignore it, never really thinking much about it?
But I bet you’re thinking about it, now that I’ve mentioned it. And
even if you’re thinking, “I have absolutely no idea what you’re
talking about,” stop and listen to your thoughts for a second.
Chances are, you’re thinking in a voice with speech. That’s what I’m
talking about.

What causes us to talk to ourselves silently or out loud? How does

self-talk affect our emotions and actions? "How can we become
more aware of what we're saying to ourselves?

These are interesting questions and we’ll get to them, but, by far,
the most useful question we can ask is: Can we talk to ourselves
differently? Can we flip the script and rewrite the way we
communicate with ourselves?

The answer is, yes, we can. And that’s what this book is
about.
Chapter 1 – What Is Self-Talk?

Let’s start with a more precise definition. Self-talk, aka intrapersonal

communication, is your internal use of speech and language. It
appears in the form of thoughts that you can “hear” with the
auditory part of your brain.

It can also include speaking to yourself out loud. Which is totally

normal, I promise. Well, unless you’re experiencing hallucinations
and hearing voices, in which case it could be a serious problem
requiring the attention of a mental health professional. But maybe
you don’t want to do it when others are around. Definitely avoid
mumbling to yourself as you walk down the street or browse the
aisles in the supermarket.

(See? We’re only getting started and already you have actionable
advice for how not to self-talk. You’re welcome.)

If you still don’t get what I’m talking about, notice what happens as
you’re reading these words. Read them silently, but pay attention to
your thoughts. Do you “hear” the words in your head as you read
them? That’s also self-talk. If you’re like most people, you use the
same inner voice to speak to yourself in a variety of situations
virtually all the time.

Much of the time, we don’t really notice our self-talk, so it’s this kind
of half-conscious chatter going on at the edges of our awareness like
smatterings of conversations in nearby cubicles at work. But we all
listen in pretty regularly, as well. The conversation usually comments
on ourselves, other people, and situations, which could be whatever
is currently happening, or what did happen, or what we imagine is
going to happen.

It’s like turning on the director’s commentary on a movie. There’s

the actual movie, which is our experience, and then there’s whatever
the director is saying about what’s on the screen, which is our self-
talk. Or you can think of it like a sports announcer commenting on
the game as it’s happening.

If you listen carefully, you’ll notice that this inner conversation

reflects thoughts and emotions. Self-talk isn’t random. It exhibits
patterns that repeat themselves. And everyone has their own
characteristic self-talk that is uniquely theirs.

Some people’s self-talk is mostly about the future, while others’ is an

internal dialogue about the past. Some self-talk tends to be positive
and upbeat, while other self-talk is harsh and critical. Or it can be
defeatist, gloomy, and negative. Sometimes, self-talk is focused
more on people; sometimes, it's fixated more on things. Sometimes,
it’s mainly about others, and, sometimes, mainly about oneself.

One of the points we’ll hammer home again and again is that it’s
important to listen to your self-talk and identify the patterns. If you
do that, you’ll learn a lot of useful things about yourself. And you’ll
figure out areas where you have a certain style of self-talk that’s
having a negative impact on your life. Once you know that, you can
do something about it by talking to yourself differently.

That’s important because negative self-talk is linked to negative

emotional states such as anxiety, depression, insecurity, rumination,
learned helplessness, and so on. In other words, a sense that life is
too overwhelming, that you can’t do much to improve your
condition, and even if there were something you could do, you’d
probably fail. Obviously, that’s not a good place to be.

Positive self-talk, on the other hand, is linked with less negative

emotion and more happiness, confidence, optimism, success in life,
and a sense of agency and authorship of your own existence.

Okay, but how does that work? I’m going to argue that self-talk
creates a feedback loop. What you put into it determines what
comes out, and your reaction to that determines what you put into it
the next time around. If you break a negative feedback loop by
giving it a positive input instead, it will spin into a positive feedback
loop. That creates a kind of snowball effect, which takes on a life of
its own. Make a small, incremental change today, and it will gather
momentum the next day, and the day after that, and the day after
that… until you’re surprised at what you’ve accomplished.
Exercise I

Spend some time with yourself, noticing your internal speech. It’s
best to do this while you’re not very engaged with something. So put
down the ebook, pocket your devices, and go for a walk in the park.
Go sit on the porch or balcony. Just be by yourself for a time and
listen to your inner dialogue. Don’t try to change it; just relax and
listen for now.

Repeat this exercise a few times, and you’ll soon start to recognize
characteristic patterns. Once you get used to that, then try to tune
in when you’re otherwise engaged with something.

Pay attention to what your inner speech is saying to you as you

work, as you hang out with friends, as you wash the dishes, as you
do anything. You’ll get an idea of what your self-talk patterns are in
various situations.

This isn't just a one-time exercise, it’s a useful habit to train in

yourself. At first, you have to make a conscious effort at it, but, with
time, you’ll just notice your self-talk automatically.
Chapter 2 – Constructive Self-Talk, Dysfunctional
Self-Talk

Consider the sports commentary analogy from earlier. A sports

announcer makes judgments of a player’s performance as they’re
playing the game. Maybe he criticizes the player or maybe he praises
a good performance.

Likewise, through self-talk your ego makes a lot of judgments about

you and your performance as you do the things you do. Those
judgments can be positive or negative. But positive and negative
doesn’t just mean you feel great about yourself or you feel like crap.
Maybe a better way to think about it is constructive versus
dysfunctional.

So a constructive kind of self-talk would be any kind of self-talk that

leads you in the right direction, toward your goals and toward
becoming a better you.

Dysfunctional self-talk would be any self-talk that bogs you down in

unproductive, stale, repetitive patterns, especially if those patterns
make you feel miserable and helpless.

It’s important to note here that negative emotion (or negative affect)
is not necessarily your enemy. It’s how you think about negative
emotions that makes them negative. In other words, how you
represent negative emotions to yourself in your own self-talk is the
key ingredient that turns them into real negativity.

How so? Researchers studying depression have figured out that

people with clinical depression have a kind of compulsive destructive
self-talk.[1] Psychologists call it rumination, and its characteristic is
repetitively going over symptoms of distress, like a scab you keep
obsessively picking at. Its other characteristic is passivity. You don’t
focus on solutions but problems.

So you have a negative emotion, such as sadness, but, on top of

that sadness, you’re telling yourself this toxic story: It’s all useless, I
can’t do anything right. I’ve been stuck in this same position forever
and I’ll never get out of it.

Dysfunctional self-talk tells a story. It's the wrong kind of story, a

story in which you’re passive and helpless.

In constructive self-talk, on the other hand, you see yourself as

someone who can achieve your goals. That doesn’t just lift your
mood. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you see yourself as capable,
then you have the right perspective to become capable. That puts
you in the driver’s seat.

With constructive self-talk, you might tell yourself:

You’ve faced challenges before, and with courage and hard work,
you overcame them. And you can overcome this one, too.
You’ve made mistakes before; it’s not the end of the world. Now that
you know more, you can use this information to get closer to what
you really want.

Your life is pretty good. Sure, there are some improvements you
want to make here and there. And you’re fully up to the task.

You’re good at your job and you should feel proud. You have a right
to take credit for a job well done and to feel happy and proud when
people praise you.

(You may have noticed the use of the second-person in these

examples. There’s a reason behind that, which we’ll get around to,
but, for now, I just wanted to draw your attention to it.)
Exercise II

Keep a journal or notepad with you. Keep two lists titled

“Constructive Self-Talk” and “Dysfunctional Self-Talk.” Take note of
your positive and negative self-talk as you go about your day or your
week. Whenever you find yourself engaging in negative self-talk like
“I’m always late” or “I suck,” write down your thoughts in the
dysfunctional list. And whenever you find yourself engaging in
positive self-talk (e.g., “I can do this” or “I can nail this
presentation”), write down those thoughts, too.

At the end of the day or week, go over your lists. Did you engage
more in positive or negative self-talk? How do you feel when you
read each list? Tally it up and take note of whether or not you have
more positive or negative self-talk. If the negative predominates,
don’t worry, we’re going to go over strategies for changing that. And
if it’s 50/50 or mostly positive, then that’s great, but maybe we can
make it even better.

I’m deliberately keeping the timeframe flexible here. If you have a

very busy schedule, you might not get a chance to make many notes
on any single day. So you can stretch the exercise out over a week,
or however long it takes to come up with a decent list of ten to
twenty items.

Don’t skip this exercise and don’t throw out your notes because
we’re going to come back to them later.
Chapter 3 – Impact of Negative Self-Talk

Negative self-talk has a number of unhealthy effects. Obviously, it

makes you feel bad about yourself. It’s associated with anxiety,
depression, stress, low self-esteem, and feelings of vulnerability. But
it can also become a self-fulfilling prophecy that harms your
performance and even ruins your life. One study found that healthy
teenagers of normal weight who just perceived themselves as
overweight were more likely to become obese later in life.[2] Other
research has found that negative self-talk can make your
performance worse in everything from academia[3] to your job and
can even make you worse at playing darts.[4]

Negative self-talk is especially associated with higher levels of stress

and poor emotional regulation when faced with stress. We’ve all
experienced stress, and we know what it’s like. But to really
understand what’s going on with it, we need a tighter definition.

Stress can be understood as a set of physiological responses to

something in our environment. The physical symptoms of stress
include:

Muscular tension and pain

Pain in the upper back, shoulders, and neck
Elevated heart rate and chest pain
High blood pressure
Headache
 Digestive problems such as nausea, diarrhea, constipation, and
ulcers
Low libido, inhibited sexual function or impotence
Insomnia
Tightness in the jaw and teeth grinding, especially while asleep
Sweating
Frequent illness (colds and so on) due to weakened immune
system

One theory suggests that stress is basically the same as a fight-or-

flight response. We evolved fight-or-flight to deal with specific
threats on the environment. When our prehistoric ancestors faced a
predator in the wild, they would tense up and become extremely
alert. Their heart rate would increase. Adrenaline would spike. Their
bodies were preparing to either face their foe in a life-or-death
struggle or run like hell in the opposite direction.

With agriculture and urbanization, cities, towns, and smaller

settlements replaced nature as our primary environment, and society
became exponentially more complex. But our brains lagged far
behind. We still relied on the same Paleolithic, hunter-gatherer
cognitive toolkit for navigating life, but life less and less resembled
the environment to which we were best fitted. We no longer rely on
hunting and gathering, let alone farming, to sustain us, but on
collecting money in exchange for producing valuable services or
goods. So anything that threatens our wallets is experienced as a
threat to survival. Also, survival was associated with belonging to a
tribe. Those who were banished from the tribe soon perished. So,
anything that separates us from our circle of family and friends is felt
as a threat to survival, even if our wallets are fat.

Nowadays, the threats or stressors in our environment are numerous

and constant. You have the possibilities of losing a job, not getting
that raise, losing to a competitor, failing a class, losing with
investments, committing a humiliating faux pas in a social setting, or
being stigmatized by your peers for some mistake.

The problem here is that the fight-or-flight response was adapted to

sudden and short-term threats, not gradual and long-term ones. So
we react to long-term stressors as if they were short-lived, but
they’re really not. The physiological responses we have to threats
are beneficial in that they give us the energy and quickness to get
out of the way of a speeding car, for instance, and then subside.
However, if something continually provokes those responses over a
long time, they have a negative effect. So, while short-term stress
can actually benefit health and longevity, long-term chronic stress
causes us to live shorter, less healthy lives.

Negative self-talk increases that stress by distorting our perception

of challenges and our ability to meet them. In other words, it makes
routine difficulties look like threats. It makes things seem worse than
they really are. Thus, it makes stress even more stressful.

It does this in a few ways. We can break them down into a number
of broad patterns or cognitive distortions.
Catastrophizing – Also known as “making a mountain out of
a molehill,” catastrophizing refers to making bad situations
seem much worse than they are. You didn’t just make a
mistake; you made an utter fool of yourself. You spilled some
milk on the carpet. You’ll never get it out; what a disaster!

Well, not really. Everyone makes mistakes, and spilled milk can
be cleaned up.

Personalization – This is also sometimes called personalizing.

It means automatically referring everything to yourself,
imagining it has something to do with you. Your boss forgot to
CC you on an email, so you imagine it’s because they're
unhappy with your work. In reality, it could have nothing to do
with you at all. Beware the trap of thinking too much and over-
analyzing the actions of others.

Blaming – You could be blaming yourself or others. If you’re

blaming others, consider how you may bear some of the
responsibility. If you’re blaming yourself, consider that not all
problems are your fault; you’re not in control of everything, so
you’re only to blame for the things you could have changed. Be
forgiving to both yourself and others.

Filtering – This means only considering the negative aspects

of something, not the positive ones. Trouble in your
relationship? There’s a good chance you’re focusing on the
negative in your partner and forgetting their good side and all
 the ways they treat you kindly. You have to make a conscious
effort to balance your thoughts by thinking of the positive, also.

Overgeneralizing – You fail at something one time, and from

that conclude that you are a failure who can’t get anything
right. It’s a mistake to think that way, both emotionally and
factually. “One” is not a big enough sample size to draw any
conclusions. Try proving yourself wrong. Each time you fall
down, you learn something you need to know to achieve
eventual success.

Black-or-white thinking – Things are either awesome or

they suck. I’m either #1 or I’m a failure. Life is a lot more
complicated than that. There are many shades of gray. Almost
nothing is completely black or white.

This isn't an exhaustive list. There are many other cognitive

distortions of this kind, such as jumping to conclusions and so on.
They’re a key tool in clinical paradigms such as cognitive-behavioral
therapy. If you’re interested in learning more about them—and it’s
definitely well worth your time—the Wikipedia page for cognitive
distortion has a great list.

Right about now, you may be thinking to yourself, But what if my

negative self-talk is true?
What if it’s accurate to focus on the negative? What if things really
are black and white? What if I really am a failure and a loser?
Well, first of all, “loser” is a value judgment, not a fact. And, yes,
value judgments are extremely useful—indeed indispensable—if
you’re trying to decide whether or not to buy something, or whether
or not you want to get to know someone, or whether that person
you think of as your friend is really a friend who's there for you
when you’re in need or is just a mooch who’s taking advantage of
you.

Value judgments are also useful for weighing your own habits,
decisions, and actions and deciding whether or not they’re good for
you and the people you care about, whether they’re ethical, and so
on.

But value judgments are worse than useless when they’re global
judgments of yourself. Because, for better or worse, you’re stuck
with yourself. And you are the material you have to work with. So,
since you can’t just reject yourself, it’s damaging to beat yourself up.
You’ll just end up in a rut, feeling hopeless. And that won’t be
because you were seeing things clearly. It will be because you
blinded yourself to the truth.

Or as the highly recommended former trader and risk and probability

expert Nassim Taleb put it in his book Anti-fragile:

A loser is someone who, after making a mistake, doesn’t

introspect, doesn’t exploit it, feels embarrassed and
defensive rather than enriched with a new piece of
 information, and tries to explain why he made the
mistake rather than moving on.

But that’s not you, because you’re here, reading this book and
introspecting. You’re thinking about yourself, thinking about how you
think, working out better strategies for self-talk and living, and
enacting them to make positive changes in your life.

The idea is to base everything on facts, not value judgments. Value

judgments are only as true as the facts they’re based on. So start
with what you know about the situation. Get the facts right. Know
what you want. And figure out how to get from here to there.
Learned Helplessness

Martin Seligman is a psychologist who did famous research on

classical conditioning. He performed an experiment that involved
delivering small electrical shocks to dogs. Every time he gave a dog
a shock, he would ring a bell. The dogs soon came to expect an
electrical shock even when the bell wasn’t being rung. (This was in
the 60s, so the ethical standards were a bit lax.)

Then he put the dogs in a room divided by a low partition. On one

side, the floor was electrified, and on the other side, it wasn’t. He
put the dogs on the electrified side. Then he delivered a shock to the
dogs through the floor.

Now, the partition was low, so the dogs could have jumped over it
with ease. But the weird thing was they didn’t even try. In fact, the
dogs would just lie down and accept their senseless punishment with
stoic resignation.

He tried the same thing with dogs that hadn’t been exposed to any
electric shocks. He put them into the same room and delivered a
shock through the floor. Those dogs jumped over the partition
without hesitation.

It’s kind of like how if you leave a horse’s reins draped over a post
without tying them, the horse will just stand there. Even though the
horse could easily wander off, it’s used to the idea of being tied up,
so it just assumes that it can’t go anywhere.
Seligman called this discovery learned helplessness. Later research
has linked learned helplessness to depression-like symptoms in
animals.[5]

It’s even more messed up than that, though. People with learned
helplessness are not as good at solving problems and have lower
relationship and job satisfaction.[6] Learned helplessness is what
keeps people in an abusive relationship. It’s what keeps some people
stuck in poverty even when they have a chance to get out, and it’s
what prevents some children from even trying to improve their
academic performance. Learned helplessness makes you neglect the
things in your life that you need to change.

That’s because you’re constantly telling yourself that you can’t

change and you can’t improve things. Negative self-talk is a
symptom of learned helplessness. It’s the voice in your head that
says I can’t and It’s no use.

Do yourself a favor. Consider burning that victim script and

completely rewriting it from scratch with positive self-talk.
Exercise III

Write down the categories of negative self-talk in your

notebook: Catastrophizing. Personalization, Blaming, Filtering,
Overgeneralizing, and Black-or-White Thinking. Leave a bit of
space after each one because you’re going to be keeping tally.

Now go back over your notes from the previous exercise. Take
the list of negative self-talk and consider each item you wrote
down previously. Which category of cognitive distortion does it
belong to? For example, if it’s catastrophizing, make a score
mark under “Catastrophizing.” If an item seems to fit more than
one category (e.g., both overgeneralizing and black-or-white
thinking), go ahead and add a point for both categories.

At the end, look at your results. You’ll probably notice that your
negative self-talk tends to fall into one or two of the categories
more than others. Those are the areas you want to work on. So
if you scored highest in black-or-white thinking, for example,
you will want to be on guard for that.

Whenever you catch yourself in negative self-talk, stop and

write it down. Or if you can’t write it down, just think about it.
But think about it in a systematic way. Ask yourself:

1. Is this falling into a cognitive distortion, and if so, what kind?

Identify the distortion if you can.
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of ear-shot—then stopped. He pulled off his hat, shook it to and fro—
unconsciously, I think—in his hand as one who comes out of the
storm. He looked about him a while, as if undetermined, and then
browsed about vaguely in the sunset, until his bent, shambling figure
seemed melting into the golden glory that enveloped it; and his
round, chubby head was tipped with light.
I thought probably he wanted to see me, so I climbed up the hill.
He seemed to approve of my coming, and walked down in the shade
to meet me.
“Ann was sorter rough to me, wan’t she?” he said, with a chuckle
of deprecation.
I assented quietly to the lack of smoothness in Ann’s remarks.
“You aint know’d me long,” he said, with a sudden flicker of
earnestness; “and you’ve knowed the worst part of me. You’ve
knowed the trouble and the fag-end. You warn’t in at the good part of
my life!”
I should think not, poor fellow. Ever since I had known him he had
been the same shabby, good-for-nothing that he is now. He had
grown a bit more serious of late, and his long face—it was
abnormally long between the eyes and the chin—had whitened
somewhat, but otherwise he was about the same shabby, ragged,
half-starved old fellow I had known for a year or so. Yes, Bob, I had
clearly known the worst of you!
“I was a better man once; not a better man, either, as I know of,
but I had luck. When me and Ann married, there warn’t a happier
couple nowhere. I remember just as well when I courted her. She
didn’t think about me then as she does now. We had a buggy to
ourselves, and we turned down a shady road. I fetched it on soon
after we left the crowd, and she was about as well pleased as me. It
seemed like that road was the road to heaven, and we was so happy
that we wasn’t in no hurry to get to the end of it. Ann was handsome
then. Oh yes, she was!”—as I winced at this,—“and at first as good a
wife to me as ever a man had.
 “It may a-been me that started the trouble. I was unfortnit in
everything I touched. My fingers slipped off o’ everything and
everything slipped off o’ them. I could get no grip on nothin’. I worked
hard, but something harder agin me. Ann was ambitious and uppish,
and I used to think when I come home at night, most tired to death,
she was gettin’ to despise me. She’d snap me up and abuse me till
actually I was afraid to come home. I never misused her or give her
a back word. I thought maybe she wasn’t to blame, and that what
she said about me was true. Things kept a-gitten worse, and we sold
off pretty much what we had. Five years ago a big surprise came to
us. It was a baby—a boy—him!” nodding toward the hut. “It was a
surprise to both of us. We’d been married fourteen years. It made
Ann harder on me than ever. She never let me rest; it was all the
time hard words and hard looks. I never raised even a look against
her, o’ course. I thought she was right about me. He never had a
cross word with me. Him and me knowed each other from the start.
We had a langwidge of our own. Ther wasn’t no words in it—just
looks and grunts. I never could git ‘nough, nuther could he. He
know’d more an’ me. Ther was a kinder way-off look in his eyes that
was solemn and deep, I tell you. At last Ann got to breaking me up.
Whenever she catch me with him she’d drive me off. I’d always hurry
off, ’cause I never wanted him to hear her ’spressin herself ’bout me.
’Peared like he understood every word of it. Mos’t two years ago,
and I ain’t had one since. I couldn’t git one. Ann commenced takin’ in
washing, and one day she said I shouldn’t hang around no more a-
eatin’ him and her out of house and home. That was more’n a year
ago, and I seen him since to talk to him. Every time I go about she
hustles me about like she did to-day. I never make no fuss. She’s
right about me, I reckon. I am powerful no ’count. But he has stirred
things in me I ain’t felt movin’ for many a year!”
“What’s his name, Bob?”
“Got none. She never would let me talk to her ’bout it, and I ain’t
got no right to name him. I ast her once how it would do to call him
little Bob, and she said I better git him sumpin’ to eat; he couldn’t eat
a name, nor dress in it neither; which was true. But he’s got my old
face on him, and my look. I know that, and he knows it too.”
 “Did you ever drink, Bob?”
“Me? You know I didn’t. I did get drunk once. The boys give me the
wine. They say liquor makes a man savage, and makes him beat his
wife. It didn’t take me that way. I was the happiest fellow you ever
see. I felt light and free. My blood was warm, and just jumped along
—and beat Ann? why, all the old love come back to me, as I went
to’ards home, feelin’ big as a king. I made as how I’d go up to Ann
and put arm aroun’ her neck in the old way, and tell her if she’d only
encourage me a little, I’d get about for her and him and make ’em
both rich. I couldn’t hardly wait to get home, I was so full of it. She
was just settin’ down a pail of water when I come in. I made for her,
gentle like, and had just got my arms to her neck, when she drawed
back, with a few words like them this evening, and dosed the pail of
water full in my face. As I scrambled out o’ the door, sorter blind like,
I struck the edge o’ the gulley there, rolled down head over heels,
and fotch up squar’ at the bottom, as sober a man as ever you see!”

I met Bob a few days after that in a state of effusive delight. He

would not disclose himself at first. He followed me through several
blocks, and at length, diving into an alley, beckoned me cautiously to
him. He took off his old hat, always with him a preliminary to
conversation, and glancing cautiously around, said in a hoarse
whisper:
“Had a pic-nic to-day.”
“A pic-nic! Who?”
“Me and him!”
And his wrinkled, weather-beaten old face was broken by smiles
and chuckles, that struggled to the surface, as porpoises do, and
then shrunk back into the depths from whence they came.
“You don’t know Phenice—the neighbor’s gal as nusses him
sometimes? Well, I seed her out with him, to-day, and I tolled her off
kinder, till she got beyant the hill, and then I give her a quarter I had
got, and purposed as how she should gi’ me a little time with him.
She sciddled off to town to git her quarter spent, and I took him and
made for the woods, to meet her thar agin, by sun!”
“He’s a deep one, I tell you!” he said, drawing a breath of
admiration; “as deep a one as I ever see. He’d never been in the
woods before, but he jest knowed it all! You orter seed him when a
jay-bird come and sot on a high limb, and flung him some sass, and
tried to sorter to make free with him. The look that boy give him
couldn’t a’ been beat by nobody. The jay tried to hold up to it and
chaffered a little, but he finally had to skip, the wust beat bird you
ever saw!”
And so the old fellow went on, telling me about that wonderful pic-
nic; how he had gathered flowers for the baby, and made little
bouquets, which the baby received with a critical air, as if he had
spent his life in a florist’s shop, and being a connoisseur in flowers,
couldn’t afford to become enthusiastic over pied daisies; how a gray
squirrel scampering down a near tree had startled him out of his wits,
while the baby, seated still nearer the disturbance than he, remained
a marvel of stolidity and presence of mind; how the baby was finally
coaxed out of his wise reserve by a group of yellow butterflies
pulsating in the golden sunshine, and by the flashing of the silvery
brook that ran beneath them; how all the birds in the county seemed
to have entered into a conspiracy to upset that baby’s dignity; and
how they would assail him with pert bursts of song and rapid
curvetings about his head, while Bob sat off at a distance, “and let
’em fight it out, not helping one side or t’other,” always to see the
chatterers retire in good-humored defeat before the serene
impassibility of the youngster; how the only drawback to the pic-nic
was that there was not a thing to eat, and besides its being in
violation of all pic-nic precedent, there was danger of the little one
getting very hungry; and how, in the evening—what would have been
after dinner if they’d had any dinner—the baby, who was sitting
opposite Bob on the grass, suddenly assumed an air of deeper
solemnity, even than he had worn before, and gazed at Bob with a
dense and inscrutable gaze, until he was actually embarrassed by
the searching and fixed character of this look; and how the round,
grave head suddenly keeled to one side as if it were so heavy with
ideas that it could not be held upright any longer; and how then,
suddenly, and without a sign or hint of warning, this self-possessed
baby tumbled over in the grass, shot his little toes upward, and,
before Bob could reach him, was dead asleep! And Bob told me
then, with the glittering tears gathering in his eyes and rolling down
his old cheeks, how he had picked the baby up and cuddled him
close to his old bosom, and listened to his soft breathing, and
stroked his chubby face, and almost guessed the wise dreams that
were flitting through his round fuzzy head,—hugged him so close,
and pressed him to his bosom with such hungry, tender love, that he
felt as if he had him “layin’ agin’ my naked heart, and warmin’ it up,
and stirrin’ all its strings with his little fingers!”
It was late that night when I went home—after one o’clock; a
fearful night, too. The rain was pouring in torrents and the wind
howled like mad. Taking a near cut home, I passed by the hut where
Bob’s wife lived. Through the drifting rain, I saw a dark figure against
the side of the house. Stepping closer, I saw that it was Bob,
mounted on a barrel, flattened out against the planks, his old felt hat
down about his ears, and the rain pouring from it in streams—his
face glued to the window.
Poor old follow! there he was! oblivious to the storm, to hunger
and everything else—clinging like some homeless night-bird, drifting
and helpless, to the outside of his own home; gazing in stealthily at
the bed where the little one slept, and warming his old heart up with
the memory of that wondrous pic-nic—of the solemn contest with the
impertinent jay-bird, and the grave rapture over the butterflies that
swung lazily about in their rift of sunshine.
One morning, many months after the pic-nic, Bob came to me
sideways. His right arm hung limp and inert by his side, and his right
leg dragged helplessly after the left. The yielding muscles of the
neck had stiffened and drawn his head awry. He stumbled clumsily to
where I was standing, and received my look of surprise
shamefacedly.
“I’ve had a stroke,” he said. “Paralysis? It’s most used me up. I
reckon I’ll never be able to do anything for him! It came on me
sudden,” he said, as if to say that if it had given him any sort of
notice, he could have dodged it.
After that Bob went on from worse to worse. His face, all save that
fixed in the rigid grasp of the paralysis, became tremulous, pitiful and
uncertain. He had lost all the chirrupy good-humor of the other days,
and became shy and silent. There was a wistfulness and yearning in
his face that would have made your heart ache; a hungry passion
had struggled from the depth of his soul, and peered out of his blue
eyes, and tugged at the corners of his mouth. There was, too, a
pitiful, scary look about him. He had the air of one who is pursued. At
the slightest sigh he would pluck at his lame leg sharply, and
shamble off, turning full around at intervals to see if he was followed.
I learned that his wife had become even harder on him since his
trouble, and that he was even more than ever afraid of her.
He had never had another “pic-nic.” He had snatched a furtive
interview with the baby, under protection of the occasional nurse,
from each of which he came to me with a new idea of the “deepness”
of that infant. “He’s too much for me, that baby is!” he would say. “If I
just had his sense!” He was rapidly getting shabbier, and thinner and
more woe-begone. He became a slink. He hid about in the day-time,
avoiding everybody, and seeming to carry off his love and his
passion, as a dog with a bone, seeking an alley. At night he would be
seen hanging like a guilty thief about the hut in which his treasure
was hid.
“I’ve a mind,” he said one morning, “to go home. I don’t think she”
(he had quit calling her “Ann” now) “could drive me out now. All I’d
want would be to just sit in a corner o’ the house and be with him.
That’s all.”
“Bob,” I said to him one morning, “you rascal, you are starving!”
He couldn’t deny it. He tried to put it off, but he couldn’t. His face
told on him.
“Have you had anything to eat to-day?”
“No, sir.”
“Nor yesterday?”
 “No, sir.”
I gave him a half-dollar. A wolfish glare of hunger shot into his
eyes as he saw the money. He clutched it with a spasm of haste and
started off. I watched his side-long walk down the street, and then
went to work, satisfied that he would go off and pack himself full.
It was hardly an hour before he came back, his face brighter than I
had seen it in months. He carried a bundle in his live hand. He laid it
on my desk, and then fell back on his dead leg while I opened it. I
found in the bundle a red tin horse, attached to a blue tin wagon, on
which was seated a green tin driver. I looked up in blank
astonishment.
“For him!” he said simply. And then he broke down. He turned
slowly on his live leg as an axis and leaned against the wall.
“Could you send it to him?” he said at last. “If she knew I sent it,
she mightn’t let him have it. He’s never had nothin’ o’ this kind, and I
thought it might pearten him up.”
“Bob, is this the money I gave you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you were starving when you left here?”
“Oh, I got some bread!”

I suppose every man, woman and child remembers that terrible

night three years ago when we had lightning while the snow was on
the ground. The flashes plowed great yellow seams through the gray
of the day, and at night a freezing storm of sleet and rain came.
It was a terrible night. I staggered home through it to where a big
fire, and blue eyes and black, and slippers, and roasting apples were
awaiting me. I thought of Bob—my old night-owl, with a heart in him,
and wondered whether he was keeping his silent, but uncomplaining
vigil about the little hut on the hillside. I even went so far as to
speculate on this point with a certain blue-eyed youngster on my
knee, to whom Bob’s life was a romance and a wonder.
 Bless me! and all the time I was pitying him, I didn’t know that he
had “gone home” and was all right.
His wife slept uneasily that night, as she has since said. She rolled
in her sleep a long time, and at last got up and went to the window
and looked out. She shuddered at the sound of the whizzing sleet
and pitiless hum of the rain on the roof. Then she stumbled sleepily
back to her couch, and dreamed of a long shady lane, and a golden-
green afternoon in May, and a bright-faced young fellow that looked
into her heart, and held her face in his soft fingers. How this dream
became tangled in her thoughts that night of all nights, she never
could tell. But there it was gleaming like a thread of gold through the
dismal warp and woof of her life.
It was full day when she awoke. As she turned lazily upon her side
she started up in affright. There was a man, dripping wet, silent,
kneeling by her bedside. An old felt hat lay upon the floor. The man’s
head was bowed deep down over the bed and his hands were
bundled tenderly about one of the baby’s fists that had been thrown
above its head.
The worn, weatherbeaten figure was familiar to her. But there was
something that stopped her, as she started forward angrily. She
stood posed like a statue for a moment, then bent down, curiously
and tenderly, and with trembling fingers pulled the cover back from
the bed, and looked up into the man’s face steadily. Then she put
her fingers on his hand furtively and shrinkingly. And then a strange
look crept into her face—the dream of the night came to her like a
flash—and she sank back upon the floor, and dropped her head
between her knees.
Ah, yes, Bob had “come home.”
And the poor fellow had come to stay. Not even his place in the
corner would he want now! No place about the scanty board! Just to
stay—that was all; not to offend by his laziness, or to annoy with his
ugly, shambling figure, and his no-count ways. Just “come home to
stay!”
 And there the baby slept quietly, all unconscious of the shadow
and the mystery that hung above his wise little head—unconscious
of the shabby old watcher, and the woman on the floor, dreaming,
perhaps, of the swinging butterflies and the chaffing birds and the
brook flashing in the sunshine. And there was old Bob—brave, at
last, through love—“come home.”
Out of the storm like a night-bird! In the door stealthily like a thief!
Groping his way to the bedside through the dark like a murderer! But
there was no danger in him—no ill-omen about him. It was only old
Bob, come home, “come home to stay!”
He had clasped the little hand he loved so well in his rough palm
and cuddled it close, as if he hoped to hold it always—fondled it in
his hands, as if he hoped to ride his own life on the spring-tide that
gathered in its rosy palm, or to catch that young life in the ebbing
billows that wasted from his cold fingers. But no; the baby was “too
much for him!” And the young heart, all unconscious and all
perverse, sent the rich blood through the little arm, down the slender
wrist, and into the dimpled fist, where it pulsed and throbbed
uneasily, as it broke against the chill, stark presence of Death!
 COTTON AND ITS KINGDOM.[1]
1. Reprinted from Harper’s Magazine, Oct., 1881.

I T has long been the fortune of the South to deal with special
problems—slavery, secession, reconstruction. For fifty years has
the settlement of these questions engaged her people, and
challenged the attention of the world. As these issues are set aside
finally, after stubborn and bloody conflict, during which she
maintained her position with courage, and abided results with
fortitude, she finds herself confronted with a new problem quite as
important as either of those that have been disposed of. In the
cultivation and handling, under the new order of things, of the world’s
great staple, cotton, she is grappling with a matter that involves
essentially her own welfare, and is of the greatest interest to the
general public. To the slaveholder the growing of cotton was straight
and easy, as the product of his land was supplemented by the
increase of his slaves, and he prospered in spite of himself. To the
Southern farmer of post-bellum days, impoverished, unsettled, and
thrown upon free labor, working feverishly with untried conditions,
poorly informed as to the result of experiments made by his
neighbors, and too impatient to wait upon his own experience, it is
quite a different affair. After sixteen years of trial, everything is yet
indeterminate. And whether this staple is cultivated in the South as a
profit or a passion, and whether it shall bring the South to
independence or to beggary, are matters yet to be settled. Whether
its culture shall result in a host of croppers without money or credit,
appealing to the granaries of the West against famine, paying toll to
usurers at home, and mortgaging their crops to speculators abroad
even before it is planted—a planting oligarchy of money-lenders,
who have usurped the land through foreclosure, and hold by the
ever-growing margin between a grasping lender and an enforced
borrower—or a prosperous self-respecting race of small farmers,
cultivating their own lands, living upon their own resources,
controlling their crops until they are sold, and independent alike of
usurers and provision brokers—which of these shall be the outcome
of cotton culture the future must determine. It is certain only in the
present that the vigor of the cotton producers and the pace at which
they are moving are rapidly forcing a settlement of these questions,
and that the result of the experiments now swiftly working out in the
South will especially concern a large part of the human race, from
the farmer who plods down the cotton row, cutting through his doubts
with a hoe, to the spinner in Manchester who anxiously balances the
totals of the world’s crop.
It may be well to remark at the outset that the production of cotton
in the South is practically without limit. It was 1830 before the
American crop reached 1,000,000 bales, and the highest point ever
reached in the days of slavery was a trifle above 4,500,000 bales.
The crop of 1880-81 is about 2,000,000 in excess of this, and there
are those who believe that a crop of 8,000,000 bales is among the
certainties of the next few years. The heavy increase in the cotton
crop is due entirely to the increase of cotton acreage brought about
by the use of fertilizers. Millions of acres of land, formerly thought to
be beyond the possible limit of the cotton belt, have been made the
best of cotton lands by being artificially enriched. In North Carolina
alone the limit of cotton production has been moved twenty miles
northward and twenty miles westward, and the half of Georgia on
which no cotton was grown twenty years ago now produces fully half
the crop of the State. The “area of low production” as the Atlantic
States are brought to the front by artificial stimulation is moving
westward, and is now central in Alabama and Florida. But the
increase in acreage, large as it is, will be but a small factor in the
increase of production, compared to the intensifying of the cultivation
of the land now in use. Under the present loose system of planting,
the average yield is hardly better than one bale to three acres. This
could be easily increased to a bale an acre. In Georgia five bales
have been raised on one acre, and a yield of three bales to the acre
is credited to several localities. President Morehead, of the
Mississippi Valley Cotton Planters’ Association, says that the entire
cotton crop of the present year might have been easily raised in
fourteen counties along the Mississippi River. It will be seen,
therefore, that the capacity of the South to produce cotton is
practically limitless, and when we consider the enormous demand for
cotton goods now opening up from new climes and peoples, we may
conclude that the near future will see crops compared to which the
crop of the past year, worth $300,000,000, will seem small.
Who will be the producers of these vast crops of the future? Will
they be land-owners or tenants—planters or farmers? The answer to
this inquiry will be made by the average Southerners without
hesitation. “Small farms,” he will say, “well tended by actual owners,
will be the rule in the South. The day of a land-holding oligarchy has
passed forever.” Let us see about this.
The history of agriculture—slow and stubborn industry that it is—
will hardly show stronger changes than have taken place in the rural
communities of the South in the past fifteen years. Immediately after
the war between the States there was a period of unprecedented
disaster. The surrender of the Confederate armies found the
plantations of the South stripped of houses, fences, stock, and
implements. The planters were without means or prospects, and
uncertain as to what should be done. The belief that extensive cotton
culture had perished with slavery had put the price of the staple up to
thirty cents. Lured by the dazzling price, which gave them credit as
well as hope, the owners of the plantations prepared for vast
operations. They refitted their quarters, repaired their fences,
summoned hundreds of negro croppers at high prices, and invested
lavishly their borrowed capital in what they felt sure was a veritable
bonanza. The few years that followed are full of sickening failure.
Planters who had been princes in wealth and possessions suddenly
found themselves irretrievably in debt and reduced to beggary.
Under the stimulation of high prices the crops grew, until there was a
tumble from thirty to ten cents per pound. Unable to meet their
engagements with their factors, who, suddenly awakening to the
peril of the situation, refused to make further advances or grant
extensions, the planters had no recourse but to throw their lands on
the market. But so terrible had been their experience—many losing
$100,000 in a single season—that no buyers were found for the
plantations on which they had been wrecked. The result of this panic
to sell and disinclination to buy was a toppling of land values.
Plantations that had brought from $100,000 to $150,000 before the
war, and even since, were sold at $6000 to $10,000, or hung on the
hands of the planter and his factor at any price whatever. The ruin
seemed to be universal and complete, and the old plantation system,
it then seemed, had perished utterly and forever. While no definite
reason was given for the failure—free labor and the credit system
being the causes usually and loosely assigned—it went without
contradiction that the system of planting under which the South had
amassed its riches and lived in luxury was inexorably doomed.
Following this lavish and disastrous period came the era of small
farms. Led into the market by the low prices to which the best lands
had fallen, came a host of small buyers, to accommodate whom the
plantations were subdivided, and offered in lots to suit purchasers.
Never perhaps was there a rural movement, accomplished without
revolution or exodus, that equalled in extent and swiftness the
partition of the plantations of the ex-slave-holders into small farms.
As remarkable as was the eagerness of the negroes—who bought in
Georgia alone 6850 farms in three years—the earth-hunger of the
poorer class of the whites, who had been unable under the slave-
holding oligarchy to own land, was even more striking. In Mississippi
there were in 1867 but 412 farms of less than ten acres, and in 1870,
11,003; only 2314 of over ten and less than twenty acres, and 1870,
8981; only 16,024 between twenty and one hundred acres, and in
1870, 38,015. There was thus in this one State a gain of nearly forty
thousand small farms of less than one hundred acres in about three
years. In Georgia the number of small farms sliced off of the big
plantations from 1868 to 1873 was 32,824. In Liberty County there
were in 1866 only three farms of less than ten acres; in 1870 there
were 616, and 749 farms between ten and twenty acres. This
splitting of the old plantations into farms went on with equal rapidity
all over the South, and was hailed with lively expressions of
satisfaction. A population pinned down to the soil on which it lived,
made conservative and prudent by land-ownership, forced to
abandon the lavish method of the old time as it had nothing to spare,
and to cultivate closely and intelligently as it had no acres to waste,
living on cost as it had no credit, and raising its own supplies as it
could not afford to buy—this the South boasted it had in 1873, and
this many believe it has to-day. The small farmer—who was to
retrieve the disasters of the South, and wipe out the last vestige of
the planting aristocracy, between which and the people there was
always a lack of sympathy, by keeping his own acres under his own
supervision, and using hired labor only as a supplement to his own—
is still held to be the typical cotton-raiser.
But the observer who cares to look beneath the surface will detect
signs of a reverse current. He will discover that there is beyond
question a sure though gradual rebunching of the small farms into
large estates, and a tendency toward the re-establishment of a land-
holding oligarchy. Here and there through all the Cotton States, and
almost in every county, are reappearing the planter princes of the old
time, still lords of acres, though not of slaves. There is in Mississippi
one planter who raises annually 12,000 bales of cotton on twelve
consolidated plantations, aggregating perhaps 50,000 acres. The
Capeheart estate on Albemarle Sound, originally of several thousand
acres, had $52,000 worth of land added last year. In the Mississippi
Valley, where, more than anywhere else, is preserved the distinctive
cotton plantation, this re-absorbing of separate farms into one
ownership is going on rapidly. Mr. F. C. Morehead, an authority on
these lands, says that not one-third of them are owned by the men
who held them at the close of the war, and that they are passing, one
after the other, into the hands of the commission merchants. It is
doubtful if there is a neighborhood in all the South in which casual
inquiry will not bring to the front from ten to a dozen men who have
added farm after farm to their possessions for the past several years,
and now own from six to twenty places. It must not be supposed that
these farms are bunched together and run after the old plantation
style. On the contrary, they are cut into even smaller farms, and
rented to small croppers. The question involved is not whether or not
the old plantation methods shall be revived. It is the much more
serious problem as to whether the lands divided forever into small
farms shall be owned by the many or by the few, whether we shall
have in the South a peasantry like that of France, or a tenantry like
that of Ireland.
By getting at the cause of this threatened re-absorption of the
small farmer into the system from which he so eagerly and bravely
sought release, we shall best understand the movement. It is
primarily credit—a false credit based on usury and oppression,
strained to a point where it breeds distrust and provokes a
percentage to compensate for risk, and strained, not for the
purchase of land, which is a security as long as the debt is unpaid,
but for provisions and fertilizers, which are valueless to either secure
the lender or assist the borrower to pay. With the failure of the large
planters and their withdrawal from business, banks, trust companies,
and capitalists withdraw their money from agricultural loans. The
new breed of farmers held too little land and were too small dealers
to command credit or justify investigation. And yet they were obliged
to have money with which to start their work. Commission merchants
therefore borrowed the money from the banks, and loaned it to
village brokers or store-keepers, who in turn loaned it to farmers in
their neighborhood, usually in the form of advancing supplies. It thus
came to the farmer after it had been through three principals, each of
whom demanded a heavy percentage for the risk he assumed. In
every case the farmer gave a lien or mortgage upon his crop of land.
In this lien he waived exemptions and defense, and it amounted in
effect to a deed. Having once given such a paper to his merchant,
his credit was of course gone, and he had to depend upon the man
who held the mortgage for his supplies. To that man he must carry
his crop when it was gathered, pay him commission for handling it,
and accept the settlement that he offered. To give an idea of the
oppressiveness of this system it is only necessary to quote the
Commissioner of Agriculture of Georgia, who by patient investigation
discovered that the Georgia farmers paid prices for supplies that
averaged fifty-four per cent. interest on all they bought. For instance,
corn that sold for eighty-nine cents a bushel cash was sold on time
secured by a lien at a dollar and twelve cents. In Mississippi the
percentage is even more terrible, as the crop lien laws are in force
there, and the crop goes into the hands of the merchant, who
charges commission on the estimated number of bales, whether a
half crop or a full one is raised. Even this maladjustment of credits
would not impoverish the farmer if he did not yield to the infatuation
for cotton-planting, and fail to plant anything but cotton.
Those who have the nerve to give up part of their land and labor to
the raising of their own supplies and stock have but little need of
credit, and consequently seldom get into the hands of the usurers.
But cotton is the money crop, and offers such flattering inducements
that everything yields to that. It is not unusual to see farmers come to
the cities to buy butter, melons, meal, and vegetables. They rely
almost entirely upon their merchants for meat and bread, hay,
forage, and stock. In one county in Georgia last year, from the small
dépôts, $80,000 worth of meat and bread was shipped to farmers.
The official estimate of the National Cotton Planters’ Association, at
its session of 1881, was that the Cotton States lacked 42,252,244
bushels of wheat, 166,684,279 bushels of corn, 77,762,108 bushels
of oats, or 286,698,632 bushels of grain, of raising what it
consumed. When to this is added 4,011,150 tons of hay at thirty
dollars a ton, and $32,000,000 paid for fertilizers, we find that the
value of the cotton crop is very largely consumed in paying for the
material with which it was made. On this enormous amount the
cotton farmer has to pay the usurous percentage charged by his
merchant broker, which is never less than thirty per cent., and
frequently runs up to seventy per cent. We can appreciate, when we
consider this, the statement of the man who said, “The commission
merchants of the South are gradually becoming farmers, and the
farmers, having learned the trick, will become merchants.”
The remedy for this deplorable tendency is first the establishment
of a proper system of credit. The great West was in much worse
condition than the South some years ago. The farms were
mortgaged, and were being sold under mortgages, under a system
not half so oppressive as that under which the Southern farmer
labors. Boston capital, seeking lucrative investment, soon began to
pour toward the West, in charge of loan companies, and was put out
at eight per cent., and the redemption of that section was speedily
worked out. A similar movement is now started in the South. An
English company, with headquarters at New Orleans, loaned over
$600,000 its first year at eight per cent., with perfect security. The
farmers who borrowed this money were of course immensely
relieved, and the testimony is that they are rapidly working out. In
Atlanta, Georgia, a company is established with $2,000,000 of
Boston and New York capital, which it is loaning on farm lands at
seven per cent. In the first three months of its work it loaned
$120,000, and it has now appointed local agents in thirty counties in
the State, and advertises that it wishes to lend $50,000 in each
county. The managers say that they can command practically
unlimited capital for safe risks at seven per cent. Companies working
on the same plan have been established elsewhere in the South,
and it is said that there will be no lack of capital for safe risks on rural
lands in a few years.
The first reform, however, that must be made is in the system of
farming. The South must prepare to raise her own provisions,
compost her fertilizers, cure her own hay, and breed her own stock.
Leaving credit and usury out of the question, no man can pay
seventy-five cents a bushel for corn, thirty dollars a ton for hay,
twenty dollars a barrel for pork, sixty cents for oats, and raise cotton
for eight cents a pound. The farmers who prosper at the South are
the “corn-raisers,” i.e., the men who raise their own supplies, and
make cotton their surplus crop. A gentleman who recorded 320
mortgages last year testified that not one was placed on the farm of
a man who raised his own bread and meat. The shrewd farmers who
always have a bit of money on hand with which to buy any good
place that is to be sold under mortgage are the “corn-raisers,” and
the moment they get possession they rule out the all-cotton plan,
and plant corn and the grasses. That the plan of farming only needs
revision to make the South rich beyond measure is proven by
constant example. A corn-raiser bought a place of 370 acres for
$1700. He at once put six tenants on it, and limited their cotton
acreage to one-third of what they had under cultivation. Each one of
the six made more clear money than the former owner had made,
and the rents for the first year were $1126. The man who bought this
farm lives in Oglethorpe, Georgia, and has fifteen farms all run on
the same plan.
The details of the management of what may be the typical planting
neighborhood of the South in the future are furnished me by the
manager of the Capeheart estate in North Carolina. This estate is
divided into farms of fifty acres each, and rented to tenants. These
tenants are bound to plant fifteen acres in cotton, twelve in corn,
eight in small crops, and let fifteen lie in grass. They pay one-third of
the crop as rent, or one-half if the proprietor furnishes horses and
mules. They have comfortable quarters, and are entitled to the use
of surplus herring and the dressings of the herring caught in the
fisheries annexed to the place. In the center of the estate is a
general store managed by the proprietor, at which the tenants have
such a line of credit as they are entitled to, of course paying a pretty
percentage of profit on the goods they buy. They are universally
prosperous, and in some cases, where by skill and industry they
have secured 100 acres, are laying up money. The profits to Dr.
Capeheart are large, and show the margin there is in buying land
that is loosely farmed, and putting it under intelligent supervision. Of
the $52,000 worth of land added to his estates last year, at a
valuation of twenty-five dollars per acre, he will realize in rental nine
dollars per acre for every acre cultivated, and calculates that in five
years at the most the rentals of the land will have paid back what he
gave for it.
Amid all this transition from land-owner to tenant there is, besides
the corn-raiser, one other steadfast figure, undisturbed by change of
relation or condition, holding tenaciously to what it has, though little
inclined to push for more. This is Cuffee, the darky farmer. There is
no more interesting study in our agriculture than this same dusky,
good-natured fellow—humble, patient, shrewd—as he drives into
town with his mixed team and his one bag of cotton, on which, drawn
by a sympathetic sense of ownership, his whole family is clustered.
Living simply and frugally, supplementing his humble meal with a
’possum caught in the night hunt, or a rabbit shot with the old army
musket that he captured from some deserted battle-field, and
allowing no idlers in the family save the youngsters who “tend de
free school,” he defies alike the usurer and the land-shark. In the
State of Georgia he owns 680,000 acres of land, cut up into farms
that barely average ten acres each, and in the Cotton States he
owns 2,680,800 acres, similarly divided. From this possession it is
impossible to drive him, and to this possession he adds gradually as
the seasons go by. He is not ambitious, however, to own large tracts
of land, preferring the few acres that he has constantly under his
eye, and to every foot of which he feels a rude attachment.
The relations of the negro to cotton are peculiar. Although he
spends the most of his life in the cotton field, and this staple is the
main crop with which he is concerned, it does not enter into his
social life, catch his sentiment, or furnish the occasion for any of his
pleasures. None of his homely festivals hinge upon the culture or
handling of the great staple. He has his corn-shuckings, his log-
rollings, his quilting bees, his threshing jousts, and indeed every
special work about the farm is made to yield its element of frolic,
except the making of cotton. None of those tuneful melodies with
which he beguiles his work or gladdens his play-time acknowledge
cotton as a subject or an incident. None of the folklore with which the
moonlight nights are whiled away or the fire-lit cabins sanctified, and
which finds its home in the corn patch or the meadows, has aught to
do with the cotton field. I have never heard a negro song in which the
cotton field is made the incidental theme or the subject of allusion,
except in a broken perversion of that incomparable ballad, “The
Mocking-Bird,” in which the name of the heroine, the tender
sentiment, and the tune, which is a favorite one with the negroes, are
preserved. This song, with the flower of Southern girlhood that points
the regretful tenderness changed into a dusky maiden idealized by
early death, with the “mocking-bird singing o’er her grave,” and sung
in snatches almost without words or coherence, is popular with the
field hands in many parts of the South.
But when we have discussed the questions involved in the
planting and culture of the cotton crop, as serious as they are, we
have had to do with the least important phase of our subject. The
crop of 7,000,000 bales, when ready for the market, is worth in round
numbers $300,000,000. The same crop when manufactured is worth
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