It Is Hoped That The Calhoun Company Will Show, By Its Humane And
Protective Treatment Of Its Laborers, That Its Method Is The Most
Profitable For Both Planter And Negro; And It Is Believed That A General
Adoption Of That Method Will Then Follow.
And where so many are saying their say, shall not the barkeeper testify?
He is thoughtful, observant, never drinks; endeavors to earn his salary,
and WOULD earn it if there were custom enough.
He says the people along
here in Mississippi and Louisiana will send up the river to buy
vegetables rather than raise them, and they will come aboard at the
landings and buy fruits of the barkeeper. Thinks they 'don't know
anything but cotton;' believes they don't know how to raise vegetables
and fruit - 'at least the most of them.' Says 'a nigger will go to H for
a watermelon' ('H' is all I find in the stenographer's report - means
Halifax probably, though that seems a good way to go for a watermelon).
Barkeeper buys watermelons for five cents up the river, brings them down
and sells them for fifty. 'Why does he mix such elaborate and
picturesque drinks for the nigger hands on the boat?' Because they
won't have any other. 'They want a big drink; don't make any difference
what you make it of, they want the worth of their money. You give a
nigger a plain gill of half-a-dollar brandy for five cents - will he
touch it? No. Ain't size enough to it. But you put up a pint of all
kinds of worthless rubbish, and heave in some red stuff to make it
beautiful - red's the main thing - and he wouldn't put down that glass to
go to a circus.' All the bars on this Anchor Line are rented and owned
by one firm. They furnish the liquors from their own establishment, and
hire the barkeepers 'on salary.' Good liquors? Yes, on some of the
boats, where there are the kind of passengers that want it and can pay
for it. On the other boats? No. Nobody but the deck hands and firemen
to drink it. 'Brandy? Yes, I've got brandy, plenty of it; but you
don't want any of it unless you've made your will.' It isn't as it used
to be in the old times. Then everybody traveled by steamboat, everybody
drank, and everybody treated everybody else. 'Now most everybody goes by
railroad, and the rest don't drink.' In the old times the barkeeper
owned the bar himself, 'and was gay and smarty and talky and all jeweled
up, and was the toniest aristocrat on the boat; used to make $2,000 on a
trip. A father who left his son a steamboat bar, left him a fortune. Now
he leaves him board and lodging; yes, and washing, if a shirt a trip
will do. Yes, indeedy, times are changed. Why, do you know, on the
principal line of boats on the Upper Mississippi, they don't have any
bar at all!
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