Relations on the plantation have been sentimentalized and moralized over until it is difficult to find an objective presentation. The house servants were the closest to their owner. Their contacts were primary, and their often cordial relations are responsible for the many tra ditions of the plantation. "The lives of the white and blacks were partly segregate, partly intertwined. If any special link was needed the children supplied it." ' The field hands lived farther removed, their lives were harder, and the overseer interposed between them and their own ers. But unless the master was away most of the time there was likely to be no estrangement. Phillips has phrased it happily ". . . the slaves themselves would not permit indifference even if the master were so in clined. The generality of the Negroes insisted upon pos sessing and being possessed in a cordial but respectful intimacy." 27 The connection of the plantation with the economic world outside was usually through the factor. The cotton factor ' was likely to be a man of money and brains. Since the prevailing prejudice against trade did not op erate against him, he was always from a good family. His relations with the planter were personal and inti mate as well as economic. Since factorage reflected the hazards of cotton planting, a large profit was allowed him without complaint on the part of the planters. The confidential nature of their relationship attached a high value to the moral hazards. If the planter consigned his cotton to the factor and accepted his accounting usually without quibble, the factor lent the planter money with nothing more definite than a personal pledge. In south ern cities such as Charleston, South Carolina, the factors either paid the proceeds of the sea island cotton over to the growers or acted in the capacity of a bank for them, honoring their checks when presented. As a matter of fact, the factor was wholesale merchant, banker, and cotton agent. He supplied the necessities for the slaves and the comforts and conveniences for the home in job bers' lots. He handled the planter's money and thus con centrated it in the larger cities. If in some instances he built up a system of rebates on weighing, storing, and drayage, no one blamed him particularly. He was a busy and hard-working man but cotton was the only agri cultural commodity that could have stood the delays and exposure at export ports without serious deterioration. If the factors sometimes retired rich men, the hazards of their business were just as likely to wipe out their for tunes over one or two bad seasons. The factors retarded the growth of fair-sized cities in the inland, because they kept out small merchants and country banks. They de veloped it high standard of business honor, occupied a high social position, and if often angered at seeing their loans for cotton production spent at northern watering places or on European tours, they remained on intimate terms with the planter, directing and advising his under takings.
The cotton system developed a rationale surprisingly fitted for its self-maintenance. With brilliant, incisive strokes Dodd has analyzed the social philosophy by which the planter aristocracy rationalized their system.
It developed the familiar doctrine of inherent inferiority. It taught the degradation of manual labor, the necessity for "mudsills of civilization," and an aristocratic organ ization of society. "It is the order of nature," wrote President Dew of William and Mary College, "that the being of superior faculties and knowledge, and therefore of superior power, should control and dispose of those who are inferior. . . . The exclusive owners of property ever have been, ever will and perhaps ever ought to be the virtual rulers of mankind." Admitted that the slaves were inferior by nature there could be no injustice in keeping them so by training. "Odium has been cast upon our legislation," wrote Chancellor Harper of the Uni versity of South Carolina, "on account of its forbidding the elements of education to be communicated to slaves. But, in truth, what injury is done them by this? He who works during the day with his hands does not read in the intervals of his leisure for his amusement or the im provement of his mind. If there were any chance of their elevating their rank and condition in society, it might be a matter of hardship that they should be denied those rudiments of knowledge which open the way to further attainments." Finally, Fitzhugh in his Sociology for the South propounded that the state must take care that every man, woman, and child shall have a vocation and useful employment with due support. But for the igno rant and poor this demands slavery. "In England the duty of the state is to subordinate the owners of the cotton mills to the government, and the workers should be made slaves of the owners who must give them sup port and kindly treatment. The American government should grant plantations in the West to responsible men and the landless and idle of the eastern states should be attached to these plantations and become the tenants of their masters for life. Slavery will everywhere be abol ished or everywhere be reinstated." Such was the status of the plantation regime and the human factors in cotton culture in 1860. The cotton system had arrived after a long period of development and change. The plantation in America had begun as a lineal descendent of the feudal organization of agri culture in Europe. It was exported by royal charter, confirmed by proprietary land grants, and accepted by the English gentry as a matter of right and privilege. It was standardized and perfected under tobacco cul ture. The great excess of land over labor encouraged all attempts to secure labor, and the plantation or ganized this cheap labor as efficiently as possible around a staple crop. Almost by chance the innovation of hu man slavery and the invention of the cotton gin in an area of peculiar climatic possibilities for cotton made possible its large scale production. Cotton culture ex tended the plantation far and wide and settled the Negro in the fertile river bottoms and flood lands where he re mains today. It remains to be seen how the plantation survived the shock of the abolition of slavery and, re organizing itself, fitted into the cotton system of today.