Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, General Research and Reference Division

H. Paul Douglass, Christian Reconstruction in the South (Boston: The Pilgrim Press, 1909)

Wages in the rural south, when wages were paid, averaged about 75¢ a day. A minister from Alabama commented, "The Negro farm hand gets his compensation hardly more than the mule he plows; that is his board and shelter. Some mules fare better than Negroes."