A negro in trouble, in immediate need of money to pay a police-court fine, a doctor’s bill, or some urgent debt, would come to see Judge Bland. Sometimes he needed as little as five or ten dollars, occasionally as much as fifty dollars, but usually it was less than that. Judge Bland would then demand to know what security he had. The negro, of course, had none, save perhaps a few personal possessions and some wretched little furniture—a bed, a chair, a table, a kitchen stove. Judge Bland would send his collector, bulldog, and chief lieutenant—a ferret-faced man named Clyde Beals—to inspect these miserable possessions, and if he thought the junk important enough to its owner to justify the loan, he would advance the money, extracting from it, however, the first instalment of his interest.
From this point on, the game was plainly and flagrantly usurious. The interest was payable weekly, every Saturday night. On a ten-dollar loan Judge Bland extracted interest of fifty cents a week; on a twenty-dollar loan, interest of a dollar a week; and so on. That is why the amount of the loans was rarely as much as fifty dollars. Not only were the contents of most negro shacks less than that, but to pay two dollars and a half in weekly interest was beyond the capacity of most negroes, whose wage, if they were men, might not be more than five or six dollars a week, and if they were women—cooks or house-servants in the town—might be only three or four dollars. Enough had to be left them for a bare existence or it was no game. The purpose and skill of the game came in lending the negro a sum of money somewhat greater than his weekly wage and his consequent ability to pay back, but also a sum whose weekly interest was within the range of his small income.
Judge Bland had on his books the names of negroes who had paid him fifty cents or a dollar a week over a period of years, on an original loan of ten or twenty dollars. Many of these poor and ignorant people were unable to comprehend what had happened to them. They could only feel mournfully, dumbly, with the slave-like submissiveness of their whole training and conditioning, that at some time in the distant past they had got their money, spent it, and had their fling, and that now they must pay perpetual tribute for that privilege. Such men and women as these would come to that dim-lit place of filth and misery on Saturday night, and there the Judge himself, black-frocked, white-shirted, beneath one dingy, fly-specked bulb, would hold his private court:
“What’s wrong, Carrie? You’re two weeks behind in your payments. Is fifty cents all you got this week?”
“It doan seem lak it was three weeks. Musta slipped up somewheres in my countin’.”
“You didn’t slip up. It’s three weeks. You owe a dollar fifty. Is this all you got?”
With sullen apology: “Yassuh.”
“When will you have the rest of it?”
“Dey’s a fellah who say he gonna give me----”
“Never mind about that. Are you going to keep up your payments after this or not?”
“Dat’s whut Ah wuz sayin’. Jus’ as soon as Monday come, an’ dat fellah----”
Harshly: “Who you working for now?”
“Doctah Hollandah----”
“You cooking for him?”
Sullenly, with unfathomable negro mournfulness: “Yassuh.”
“How much is he paying you?”
“Three dollahs.”
“And you mean you can’t keep up? You can’t pay fifty cents a week?”
Still sullen, dark, and mournful, as doubtful and confused as jungle depths of Africa: “Doan know…Seem lak a long time since Ah started payin’ up----”
Harshly, cold as poison, quick as a striking snake: “You’ve never started paying up. You’ve paid nothing. You’re only paying interest, and behind in that.”
And still doubtfully, in black confusion, fumbling and fingering and bringing forth at last a wad of greasy little receipts from the battered purse: “Doan know, seem lak Ah got enough of dese to’ve paid dat ten dollahs up long ago. How much longer does Ah have to keep on payin’?”
“Till you’ve got ten dollars…All right, Carrie: here’s your receipt. You bring that extra dollar in next week.”
Others, a little more intelligent than Carrie, would comprehend more dearly what had happened to them, but would continue to pay because they were unable to get together at one time enough money to release them from their bondage. A few would have energy and power enough to save their pennies until at last they were able to buy back their freedom. Still others, after paying week by week and month by month, would just give up in despair and would pay no more. Then, of course, Clyde Beals was on them like a vulture. He nagged, he wheedled, and he threatened; and if, finally, he saw that he could get no more money from them, he took their household furniture. Hence the chaotic pile of malodorous junk which filled the shop.
Why, it may be asked, in a practice that was so flagrantly, nakedly, and unashamedly usurious as this, did Judge Rumford Bland not come into collision with the law? Did the police not know from what sources, and in what ways, his income was derived?