The mention of black people as competitors for wages was like a red rag to a bull. The laborers got together and at the next election they made a clean sweep, judge, sheriff, two members of the legislature, and the registrars of votes. Undoubtedly the following year they would capture Harry Cresswell’s seat in Congress.
The result was curious. From two sides, from landlord and white laborer, came renewed oppression of black men. The laborers found that their political power gave them little economic advantage as long as the threatening cloud of Negro competition loomed ahead. There was some talk of a strike, but Colton, the new sheriff, discouraged it.
“I tell you, boys, where the trouble lies: it’s the niggers. They live on nothing and take any kind of treatment, and they keep wages down. If you strike, they’ll get your jobs, sure. We’ll just have to grin and bear it a while, but get back at the darkies whenever you can. I’ll stick ’em into the chain-gang every chance I get.”
On the other hand, inspired by fright, the grip of the landlords on the black serfs closed with steadily increasing firmness. They saw one class rising from beneath them to power, and they tightened the chains on the other. Matters simmered on in this way, and the only party wholly satisfied with conditions was John Taylor and the few young Southerners who saw through his eyes. He was making money. The landlords, on the contrary, were losing power and prestige, and their farm labor, despite strenuous efforts, was drifting to town attracted by new and incidental work and higher wages. The mill-hands were more and more overworked and underpaid, and hated the Negroes for it in accordance with their leaders’ directions.
At the same time the oppressed blacks and scowling mill-hands could not help recurring again and again to the same inarticulate thought which no one was brave enough to voice. Once, however, it came out flatly. It was when Zora, crowding into the village courthouse to see if she could not help Aunt Rachel’s accused boy, found herself beside a gaunt, overworked white woman. The woman was struggling with a crippled child and Zora, turning, lifted him carefully for the weak mother, who thanked her half timidly. “That mill’s about killed him,” she said.
At this juncture the manacled boy was led into court, and the woman suddenly turned again to Zora.
“Durned if I don’t think these white slaves and black slaves had ought ter git together,” she declared.
“I think so, too,” Zora agreed.
Colonel Cresswell himself caught the conversation and it struck him with a certain dismay. Suppose such a conjunction should come to pass? He edged over to John Taylor and spoke to him; but Taylor, who had just successfully stopped a suit for damages to the injured boy, merely shrugged his shoulders.
“What’s this nigger charged with?” demanded the Judge when the first black boy was brought up before him.
“Breaking his labor contract.”
“Any witnesses?”
“I have the contract here,” announced the sheriff. “He refuses to work.”
“A year, or one hundred dollars.”
Colonel Cresswell paid his fine, and took him in charge.
“What’s the charge here?” said the Judge, pointing to Aunt Rachel’s boy.
“Attempt to kill a white man.”
“Any witnesses?”
“None except the victim.”
“And I,” said Zora, coming forward.
Both the sheriff and Colonel Cresswell stared at her. Of course, she was simply a black girl but she was an educated woman, who knew things about the Cresswell plantations that it was unnecessary to air in court. The newly elected Judge had not yet taken his seat, and Cresswell’s word was still law in the court. He whispered to the Judge.
“Case postponed,” said the Court.
The sheriff scowled.
“Wait till Jim gets on the bench,” he growled.
The white bystanders, however, did not seem enthusiastic and one man—he was a Northern spinner—spoke out plainly.
“It’s none o’ my business, of course. I’ve been fired and I’m damned glad of it. But see here: if you mutts think you’re going to beat these big blokes at their own game of cheating niggers you’re daffy. You take this from me: get together with the niggers and hold up this whole capitalist gang. If you don’t get the niggers first, they’ll use ’em as a club to throw you down. You hear me,” and he departed for the train.
Colton was suspicious. The sentiment of joining with the Negroes did not seem to arouse the bitter resentment he expected. There even came whispers to his ears that he had sold out to the landlords, and there was enough truth in the report to scare him. Thus to both parties came the uncomfortable spectre of the black men, and both sides went to work to lay the ghost.
Particularly was Colonel Cresswell stirred to action. He realized that in Bles and Zora he was dealing with a younger class of educated black folk, who were learning to fight with new weapons. They were, he was sure, as dissolute and weak as their parents, but they were shrewder and more aspiring. They must be crushed, and crushed quickly. To this end he had recourse to two sources of help—Johnson and the whites in town.
Johnson was what Colonel Cresswell repeatedly called “a faithful nigger.” He was one of those constitutionally timid creatures into whom the servility of his fathers had sunk so deep that it had become second-nature. To him a white man was an archangel, while the Cresswells, his father’s masters, stood for God. He served them with doglike faith, asking no reward, and for what he gave in reverence to them, he took back in contempt for his fellows—“niggers!” He applied the epithet with more contempt than the Colonel himself could express. To the Negroes he was a “white folk’s nigger,” to be despised and feared.
To him Colonel Cresswell gave a few pregnant directions. Then he rode to town, and told Taylor again of his fears of a labor movement which would include whites and blacks. Taylor could not see any great danger.
“Of course,” he
