INDUSTRIAL REORGANIZATION IN ALABAMA 485
While the number of white laborers had increased somewhat, negro labor had decreased. Several thousand negro men had gone with the armies ; many of the most intelligent had drifted to town to earn a precarious living at their trades; great numbers congregated in the towns where bureau supplies were doled out ; and in the vicinity of the larger towns there was a general disposi- tion among the blacks to crown into the outskirts of the towns, where the sanitary arrangements were bad and where thousands died. The rural negro had a promising outlook, for at any time he could get more work than he could do ; the city negro found work scarce even when he wanted it. 28
ATTEMPTS TO ORGANIZE A NEW SYSTEM
Several attempts were made by the negroes in 1865 and 1866 to work farms and plantations on the co-operative system that is, to club work but with no success. They were not accus- tomed to independent labor; their faculty for organization had not been sufficiently developed : and the dishonesty of their lead- ing men sometimes caused failures of the schemes. 27
In the summer of 1865 the Monroe County Agricultural Asso- ciation was formed to regulate labor and to protect the interests of both employer and laborer. It was the duty of the executive
work a certain " gentleman-of-leisure " class that had been supported by the work of slaves and had scorned labor. (See W. B. Tillett in the Century, Vol. XI, p. 769.) It is a mistake to regard the slaveholding, planting class as in any degree idle, unless from the point of view of the negro or the ignorant white who believed that any man who did not work with his hands was a gentleman of leisure. The Alabama planter was, and had to be, a man of great energy, good judgment, and diligence. It was a belief that a man who could not successfully manage a plantation or other business should not be intrusted with an official position. One of the most serious objections made by the cotton planters to Jefferson Davis as president was that he had failed to manage his plantation with success. (See also Somers, Southern States, p. 127.)
- DeBow's Review, February and March, 1866; Montgomery Advertiser,
March 21, 1866; New York Herald, July 17, 1866. It was estimated that in the fall of 1865 the negro male population of the state was reduced by 50,000 able- bodied men who were hanging around the cities and towns doing nothing. At Mobile there were 10,000; at Montgomery, 10,000; at Meridian, Miss., 5,000; at Selma, 5,000 ; and at various smaller points, 20,000. (Mobile Times, October 21, 1865.)
"See also Reid, After the War, p. 221.
