19

18.

don't pay that $2.66 us owes for lights they's gwine to cut 'em off.
Well, if they does, I'll just start using my old kerosene lamp again.

"I'se tellin' you what's the truth; things is in a
worser condition now then they's ever been in befo', since I come
on this earth. When I was first married, 'bout thirty year ago, it
wasn't no effort to step out and get a job. If things got tight in
town a person could go to the country and git work in the fields to
holp out. Now you can't git nothin' to do in the country, for what
few white folks is still runnin' farms ain't able to pay out much for
wages. My cousin that lives in the country has a wife and eight chillun
to bed, feed, and clothe, and he don't git but sixty cents a day. His
wife has two little washin's. Come springtime, the chillun totes
cotton seed and guano and draps corn. They chops cotton and in the
fall they picks it, but none of them little jobs pays 'nough to pay
for the clothes they rots out with sweat whilst they's doin' the work.

"It used to be 'most any fambly could grow 'nough corn,
wheat, potatoes, and sugarcane for syrup, to last 'em all winter.
Now them folks what carries out government orders has cut down on 'em
so, they don't have 'nough home-raised victuals t'eat. I will say for
'em, they ain't cut down on potatoes and other vedibles yit - just
mostly corn, wheat, and sugarcane, and, Oh, yes, I mustn't forgit,
they's got hard-boiled 'bout how much tobacco a man can raise. I
reckon the folks that's at the tiptop head of the government knows
what they's doin' when they fixes up they plans, but I don't believe
they meant for the folks that carries out the orders to run things

1835