The Cotton-Pickers Read Online Free PDF Page B

the evening and find a little lower in the morning. Same happens to me. Must be rats, I’d say.”
    That evening I told the gang what Mr. Shine had said about his hens.
    “There you are, fellers, there’s the true American farmer for you!” said Abraham. “They’d eat their own fingernails, they’re so mean, and they begrudge the po’r hens a handful of grain — then complain that they’re not layin’. How kin they if they’re not rightly fed? Look at my hens! I don’t spare the corn, so I get what I want from them. They only have to be well fed and properly treated, and then they do their duty. My good grandmother Susanne taught me that, and she was a clever woman, you can take it from me, fellers. And that’s a fact! Another thing,” he went on, “it’s not the rats that get into the bins of those greedy farmers, it is the po’r starvin’ hens which at night instead of sleeping prowl around to pick up a few kernels of corn lest they starve to death, po’r little animals.”
    And we listened to him. After all, Abraham had the proof of his chicken knowledge in eggs.
     

5
    That same evening we came unanimously to the conclusion that we had to eat properly to keep up our work power, but that at the same time we had to see to it that a certain sum was left over at the end of the harvest so that we shouldn’t have worked for nothing, like slaves just for our keep — that therefore, in a nutshell, we weren’t being paid enough. If we got eight instead of six centavos a kilo, we could just about scrape through.
    With this thought in our minds we went to sleep.
    The next morning as soon as the other workers arrived in the field, Antonio and Gonzalo went up to them and explained that we intended to ask for eight centavos a kilo from now on, plus two centavos a kilo retroactively. These people, natives and more independent than we were, especially since they all had their own parcels of land, readily agreed.
    Then Antonio and Gonzalo and two of the other men went up to the scales and told Mr. Shine how matters stood.
    “No,” answered Mr. Shine, “I’m not going to pay that, and that’s that! I’m not crazy! I’ve never paid that much. I don’t make that much on the cotton.”
    “All right,” said Antonio, “then we’re packing up. We’ll be off today.”
    One of the local men intervened: “Listen, señor, we’ll wait another two hours. Think it over. If you say no, we’ll saddle our mules. And we’ll take good care that you don’t get any more men.”
    With that the conference came to an end. The four returned to the field and reported Shine’s answer. The men left the rows they were picking, went over to the trees, and lay down to sleep. While I was also making my way toward the trees, Mr. Shine called, “Hey, Gales! Come over here a moment!”
    “Now,” I said while approaching him, “if you think I’m going to act as a go-between you’re quite mistaken, Mr. Shine. If I were a farmer I’d be on your side and I’d go with you through thick and thin. But I’m not a farmer. I’m a farm hand, and I stick with my fellow workers. You understand, don’t you?”
    “Yes, of course, Gales. In any case I’m not trying to win you over to my side. You couldn’t get the cotton in alone. But let’s have a quiet talk about it.”
    Mr. Shine lit a pipe. His elder son, who was about twenty-six, lit a cigar, and the other son, a fellow of twenty-two or so, peeled some filthy-looking paper from a piece of chewing gum and popped the gum into his mouth.
    “You’re the only white man among the pickers here, and as I’m already paying you eight you are really neutral and can talk with us. I take it you haven’t told the other fellows that you’re getting eight?” asked Mr. Shine, taking his pipe from his mouth.
    “No,” I said, “I haven’t had the slightest reason for doing so.”
    The fact is I hadn’t. But I knew that had the subject come up, not one of the men would have felt wronged