People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 December 1895 — LABOR IN THE SOUTH. [ARTICLE]

LABOR IN THE SOUTH.

A CORRESPONDENT TELLS OF THE PRINCELY WAGES- — Farm Laborer* Getting Six Dollar* a Month —Fact* Regarding Report* of “a Revival of Froaperlty” —Starvation Ha* to Compete with Cheap Living. Atlanta, Oct. 10. —When I reached this city and the grounds of the Cotton States and International Exposition, about three weeks ago, I found everything in dire confusion. Two days before the opening there was only one building really ready, and that was the government's. Thousands of workmen, however, were rejoicing in hope that their present condition would continue and were free to talk of their wages, as workmen generally are when they are doing a little better than common. And verily 1 was astonished at some of their statements. Thousands of negroes have flocked in from the farming regions and were getting $1 a day for common labor, where before the exposition boom the rate was but 90 cents. One year ago painters and carpenters in Atlanta got but $1.50 per day. Now they get $2.50 and call it princely pay. Country negroes tell roe that on the farms they get $lO a month and rations, but that is •only in this middle section, while southward and eastward wages are lower. Orthodox party papers over in Tom Watson’s district have been making a great to do over the improvement and revival of prosperity, and surely there is an improvement if Editor (late Senator) Pat Walsh telis the truth, for he says that not long ago able bodied negroes could be hired in the vicinity of Augusta for $G a month, while the latest comers from there tell me they can now get SB. Of course these wages go with rations —that is, enough cornrneal, pork, coffee, peas, rice and black molasses to keep a laborer in working order. And even in this state I hear the familiar statement that one great cause of hard times is the extravagance of laborers. Last year the rate for picking cotton was forced down to 30 cents per 100 pounds. This year there was an attempt at a combine to force it up to f>o cents, the rate which prevailed in the “good old times,” but I am told to-day that there is a compromise by which the pickers are to get 45 cents on “first” and “scant” and 40 cents on the late or full boll. It takes a lively darky to pick 200 pounds a day, but women occasionally do better, and one was pointed out to me who could turn in 240 pounds’ a day for a week. In view of such and many similar facts I was not surprised at seeing a very large chain gang without a white man in it, and when a resident friend called my attention to me model jail in the exposition grounds 1 was moved to ask:

“Will you explain your model convict system?” “Not this year,” he replied, with a dry smile, and we changed the venue. Street car men have also had their wages raised and now get 12 cents an hour, a part of the contract being that they must “maintain a neat and respectable appearance.” That’s a blamed sight more than I could do during the long drought, when a cloud of red dust hung perpetually over the grounds. Editor Martin of The Dixie Magazine tells me that cotton mill operatives average 80 cents a day, and others put their wages at “from sl2 to $lB per month,” which does not seem to consist. I suppose the latter are only the poorest class of workers. In the section where they live board is phenomenally cheap and I suppose correspondingly plain. I had to laugh at one good old lady who told me she “railly hadn’t the heart to charge the poor girls more’n eight dollahs a month, though railly it’s wuth more in these hard times.” In the nicer sections board is much higher, and rents are simply awful.

Gas and water rates are said to be higher than in New York or Chicago, while house service of some kinds is dog cheap. Even among men there is a great diversity, and much more so since the exposition company discharged so many common laborers, who are bidding against each other. The firm I am best acquainted with just now gets the services of a preacher of the gospel for $3 per week, and he is there from 7 a. m. to 5 p. m., though his duties as messenger do not employ him all the time. He is 25 years old, a well educated mulatto and a licensed minister, but is on the pay roll as a “boy.” Draymen and hackmen get $6 per week. All these facts and many more of the same sort I gathered in my first ten days here, for really there was not much to see yet in the exposition, and if it had not been for the thousands of veterans who came down from the Chickamauga dedication and the ten governors, including two candidates for the presidency, and the generals here on blue and gray day we certainly should have suffered “ongwee.” I was particularly struck with the fact that the speakers laid great stress on the rising tide of prosperity and the advantages to farmer and laborer. And all those fellows profess to believe in a God and expect to be justified in his sight!—J. H. Browning, in Chicago Express.