In this evocative essay, Richard Hendrickson travels down the Mississippi in the aftermath of April, 1912’s massive flood to observe an economy built on a floodplain and still worked by bonded Black labor.

‘Life on the Mississippi in 1912’ by Richard Hendrickson from the International Socialist Review. Vol. 13 No. 1. July, 1912.

The Mississippi River, as described by Mark Twain and Chas. Dickens before him and by DeSoto 300 years ago, is not the Mississippi River of 1912. It has been harnessed on both sides from above Cairo, Ill, to the Gulf of Mexico, dammed at Keokuk, Iowa, and bridged at Memphis, Thebes, and St. Louis all for private profit. In Arkansas, along the Mississippi River, from the 36th parallel south to the 33d and inland to the west for about 30 miles, lies a vast expanse of the richest land in the world. To comprehend its extent, let us say from north to south it equals the distance from New York to Baltimore and in width from London to Manchester. Hardwood timber, such as oak and hickory, Covered it until a few years ago and in parts of it, still abound. Where the timber has been cleared, there lies the cotton plantations.

The land is so low that when the river becomes swollen from the spring thaws and rains in the north, it forms the bed of an inland sea. The receding waters leave year after year as they have done for millions of years, the rich silt that fairly reeks with vegetable life. Cotton plants as high as one’s head yield a bale to the acre without cultivation.

These lands are owned by a few white men. Practically none of these owners cultivate the soil themselves. They get “George” to do it for them, “George” is the negro— “n***r” down here. The total population of these bottom lands in Arkansas is very large including the farm lands, towns and cities. The white owners of these fertile lands class the negroes and the few whites who do their work as “croppers” and “renters.” “Croppers” аге they who are furnished all the implements and stock necessary for cultivating and bringing in the crop, and their share is very small. “Renters” are those who furnish their own stock and implements, and pay so many dollars per acre for rent. The owner of the land in both cases secures himself against loss. With the “cropper” the owner of the land holds the title to the crop itself. With the “renter” the owner of the land takes a mortgage on the crop before IT IS GROWN, as a guarantee that the rent will be paid. In case of flood, drouth or boll-weevil, or if from sickness, laziness or death, the renter falls short, it is the “renter,” never the owner of the land, that gets the “hook.”

The white owners of these larger tracks of land conduct either directly or indirectly what are called commissary stores. These stores supply for the year all the groceries and other needful articles of life, to the negroes who do the work on the plantations. The profit they usually reckon is not less than 100 per cent on merchandise. All moneys loaned, all credits extended, bear interest of not less than 10 per cent, the legal rate in Arkansas. In the towns and villages there exist the small storekeepers and middle men who perform a perfectly useful and legitimate function of merchandise. But they are largely under the jurisdiction of their powerful competitors whose purpose it is to exploit those who are depending upon them by reason of ownership of the land and of the banks, and therefore of credit.

When the cotton ripens the modern slaves pick it and haul it to the cotton-gin which is owned and operated wholly or in part by the men who own the land and, of course, for profit. The manager of the gin usually buys the cotton from a “renter,” and invariably rates it at a lower grade than it really is. The seed is sold by the manager at a heavy profit to the nearest cotton seed oil mill, a part of one of the great family of private owned monopolies in America. The “renter” or “cropper” reports to the owner of the land, and after rent, interest on loans, stock and what not, are deducted the worker in a good year goes to town with a balance to his credit. In the town await him the merchant with his gew-gaws, the gin mills, the harlots and the gamblers, all of whose habitations are owned almost invariably by capitalistic idlers. Each takes his toll and back to the miasmic swamps goes the happy, dull worker to another year of toil and another mortgage on the crop yet unplanted.

Those rich lands not only in Arkansas, but in Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana are protected by one of the most gigantic system of dikes in the world, all built by labor, the money being raised to pay for the labor, of course, by national, state or other taxation, which, in turn, comes from the pocket of labor in the form of “protective” tariff. You shall see how these levees serve the interest of the labor that creates and pays for them. Even as I write Senator Newlands of Nevada and Ex-governor Francis of Missouri are wildly proclaiming the urgency of more appropriations and more and higher and stronger levees. A project for a deep water way up the Mississippi River has been giver. nationwide publicity to the extent of having for its chief promoter, the president of the United States, Mr. Taft himself, who made a spectacular voyage down the river not long ago surrounded by as choice a group of stock waterers and financial porch climbers as have been seen afloat since the days of the buccaneers of the Spanish main. Let every citizen of this “glorious land of the free” remember that the levees are for the sole protection of the foreign and domestic absentee landlords who own practically all the land behind them and the deep water way is to enable the same ilk to make profits out of transporting the PRODUCTS THAT AN ALREADY SHAMELESSLY EXPLOITED ARMY OF LABOR RAISES, and let him remember that all the millions of dollars expended upon draining these low lands through innocent schemes of taxation are charged back a hundredfold in the form of rent or higher price of land, if he offers to become a “renter” or a “cropper” or a “purchaser.”

At one town in Arkansas on April 5, 1912, the Mississippi River stood at 51 feet above low water. The highest previous record was 51 feet 8 inches. Directly in front of the hotel in which I write is the levee that protects this town from inundation to a height of from three to fifteen feet, when the river reached 52 feet along the water front before the town. This levee stretches for four miles. Above the town are cross levees reaching from the shore to the hills and below in the transverse bank of a small river completes the protection against abnormal floods. Back of the town are the hills. There live the “affluent,” who own the low lands. In the low lands for hundreds of miles above and below the town and back inland for 50 miles or more, lies the richest alluvial soil in the world. There live the human animals who cut the timber and clear the land and plant the cotton, and under the boiling sun cultivate it, and in due time pick it and haul it to the gin for the “affluent” who live upon the hills. Most of these humans are black. They descend by a few generations from their ancestors who were brought to America by our pious Pilgrims of New England, who exchanged rum for them in Africa and traded them to our equally pious cavaliers of Virginia and to the other colonies of the Sunny South.

Tonight the “affluent” from the hills, who own all the lands in and around the towns and all the houses and all stores and all the goods and provisions and all the factories, with gun in hand are pressing every black man into service upon the levees. Bales of cotton sacks are dumped helter skelter, flat cars of soil are shunted to the river front and thousands of human hands with shovels fill these sacks with their leaden loads and lay them side by side on top of the earthen levee as a barrier against a steadily rising river. Only the “affluent” boss the job. Governors and mayors, boards of trade and chambers of commerce are telegraphing to congressmen and senators and to the president of the United States himself for relief. Officers of the army are dispatched to view the devastation and report. Congress in an hour authorizes an appropriation of $350,000.

In the midst of all this we were told that a boat was about to go up the river to rescue some flood distressed families. Thirty miles we battled against the on-rushing flood with a wheezing, coughing little craft about the shape of a bed bug and not much larger. One of her stacks, about the size of a stove pipe, is broken off and one could reach the top of it with the outstretched hand. Bravely she puffs and trembles and whisks across lots over the flooded tree tops on her mission of mercy. On the upper deck sits the aged philanthropist who planned this age of rescue and for two hours I looked upon him as such a gentle, kind soul; his glance seemed to reprove some of the men when they took a swig from the bottle that ` bore the little green government guarantee of age and purity. He proudly proclaimed himself a follower of the Man of Sorrows —the meek and lowly Nazarene. The captain of this queer craft seemed taller by a foot than the broken stack and like Don Quixote, bending to whisper to Sancho Panza, he stooped down to our philanthropist for instruction. In a moment there was a jingle of a bell in the crazy engine room below and along the black shadows of the forest we came upon a faint light. There before us on a rude float, guarded around the sides by poles newly cut, were huddled a dozen negroes with as many mules, and 20 head of cattle, a few pigs and horses and some chickens. Our philanthropist took the mules, a few cattle and fewer negroes. The mules are worth $200 a piece. We went to the Mississippi side and at 3 o’clock in the morning moored on a small island about a quarter of an acre in area and surrounded by miles and miles of muddy water. Between the bellowing of the cattle, the braying of the mules, the squealing of the pigs and the cackle of the poultry and the shouting of the marooned negroes, we heard the voice of authority from both decks of our fantastic craft. Some of the negroes held out for terms, some even would not help to load the stock unless paid in advance. On came the mules first (for you know they are worth $200 a piece), then came some horses and a few cows, followed by all the negroes, except five, who chose to take a chance. The upper deck was loaded with the rudest kind of furniture and bedding. Off we went down the stream with the lower deck loaded to its utmost capacity with stock, mostly mules and the upper deck strewn with sleeping negroes. I asked the philanthropist if he were doing this out of the goodness of his heart. He answered that when a horse has the glanders the neighbors have a right to destroy him or make such disposition of him as they please. He had paid $75 for the use of the ferry boat. That night when we reached the land safely with the mules, he was a man tired out but satisfied with having done a “fine nights work” — HE HAD NOT CHARGED THE NEGROES A CENT FOR THE RIDE, but had an excellent lot of mules that he did not have the day before.

Of course the levees will be repaired and deep water ways built and more swamps will be drained. All these good works should go on, but I wonder how much longer the “free and independent” electorate will vote to pay for these things for the benefit of a handful of land speculators, cotton kings, sugar barons and merchant princes.

The International Socialist Review (ISR) was published monthly in Chicago from 1900 until 1918 by Charles H. Kerr and critically loyal to the Socialist Party of America. It is one of the essential publications in U.S. left history. During the editorship of A.M. Simons it was largely theoretical and moderate. In 1908, Charles H. Kerr took over as editor with strong influence from Mary E Marcy. The magazine became the foremost proponent of the SP’s left wing growing to tens of thousands of subscribers. It remained revolutionary in outlook and anti-militarist during World War One. It liberally used photographs and images, with news, theory, arts and organizing in its pages. It articles, reports and essays are an invaluable record of the U.S. class struggle and the development of Marxism in the decades before the Soviet experience. It was closed down in government repression in 1918.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v13n01-jul-1912-ISR-gog-ocr.pdf