This condition was
patently the result of the cotton corner and the subsequent
manipulation. When cotton rose, the tenants had already sold their
cotton; when cotton fell the landlords squeezed the rations and lowered
the wages. When cotton rose again, up went the new Spring rent
contracts. So it was that the bewildered black serf dawdled in listless
inability to understand. The Cresswells in their new wealth, the
Maxwells and Tollivers in the new pinch of poverty, stretched long arms
to gather in the tenants and their children. Excuse after excuse came to
the school.
"I can't send the chilluns dis term, Miss Smith; dey has to work."
"Mr. Cresswell won't allow Will to go to school this term."
"Mr. Tolliver done put Sam in the field."
And so Miss Smith contemplated many empty desks.
Slowly a sort of fatal inaction seized her. The school went on; daily
the dark little cloud of scholars rose up from hill and vale and settled
in the white buildings; the hum of voices and the busy movements of
industrious teachers filled the day; the office work went on
methodically; but back of it all Miss Smith sat half hopeless. It cost
five thousand a year to run the school, and this sum she raised with
increasingly greater difficulty. Extra and heart-straining effort had
been needed to raise the eight hundred dollars additional for interest
money on the mortgage last year.
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