The only work in sight was with a
carpet-bag dredging company, improving the lower Brazos River, under a
contract from the Reconstruction government of the State. My old crony
pleaded with me to have nothing to do with the job, offering to share
his last crust with me; but then he had not had all the animosities of
the war roughed out of him, and I had. I would work for a Federal as
soon as any one else, provided he paid me the promised wage, and,
giving rein to my impulse, I made application at the dredging
headquarters and was put in charge of a squad of negroes.
I was to have sixty dollars a month and board. The company operated
a commissary store, a regular "pluck-me" concern, and I shortly
understood the incentive in offering me such good wages. All employees
were encouraged and expected to draw their pay in supplies, which were
sold at treble their actual value from the commissary. I had been
raised among negroes, knew how to humor and handle them, the work was
easy, and I drifted along with all my faculties alert. Before long I
saw that the improvement of the river was the least of the company's
concern, the employment of a large number of men being the chief
motive, so long as they drew their wages in supplies. True,
we scattered a few lodgments of driftwood; with the aid of a
flat-bottomed scow we windlassed up and cut out a number of old snags,
felled trees into the river to prevent erosion of its banks, and we
built a large number of wind-dams to straighten or change the channel.
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