INDUSTRIAL REORGANIZATION IN ALABAMA 481
along trying to develop a workable basis of existence. In the districts infested by the bureau agents the negroes had fantastic notions of what freedom meant. On one plantation they demanded that the plantation bell be no longer rung to sum- mon the hands to and from work, because it was too much like slavery. 16 In various places they refused to work, and congre- gated about the bureau offices, awaiting the expected division of property, when they would get the " forty acres and one old gray mule." When wages were paid, they believed that each should receive the same amount, whether his labor had been good or bad, and whether the laborer was present or absent, sick or well. In one instance a planter was paying his men in corn according to the time each had worked. The negroes objected and got an order from the bureau agent that the division should be made equally. The planter read the order (which the negro could not read), and at once ordered the division as before. The negroes, thinking the bureau had ordered it, were satisfied. In the cane- brake region the agents were afraid of the great planters, and did not interfere with the negroes except to organize them into Union Leagues ; but elsewhere in the Black Belt the planter could not afford to hire negroes on the terms fixed by the bureau. 18
NORTHERN AND FOREIGN IMMIGRATION
With the breakup of the slave system the planter found him- self with much more land than he knew what to do with. He could get no reliable labor, he had no cash capital, and in many cases he offered his best lands for sale for low prices. The planters wanted to attract northern and foreign immigration and capital into the country ; the cotton-planter sought for a northern partner who could furnish the capital. Owin*g to the almost reli- gious regard of the negro for his northern deliverers, many white landholders thought that northern men, especially discharged soldiers, might be able to control negro labor better than southern men. General Swayne, the head of the bureau in the state, said
v Somers, Southern States, p. 130.
"Southern Magazine, January, 1874; Selma Messenger, November 15, 1865; Harper's Monthly Magazine, January, 1874 '. Selma Times, December 4, 1865 ; oral accounts ; DeBow's Review, February, 1866.
