What's a Bargain?

I have been studying this term bargaining or bargain, which I first began making note of as I read through Civil War documents. Since then, I have been noticing it elsewhere. I noticed it last summer in Gone with the Wind though I cannot find the reference at the moment, something about Gerald, Scarlett's father, not wanting to spend his life bargaining. I suppose in this context bargaining is an ungentlemanly act. Bargaining is better left to merchants, whose livelihood depends on buying and selling at a reasonable price.

I have a second example of the practice; it comes from this summer's reading of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Darya's wayward husband, whom she sometimes allows herself to call Stiva, is selling off a piece of her property to a Ryabinin, who is actually taking advantage, getting the property at a steal. Stiva's friend Levin advises him not to sell at the agreed-upon price; Levin even offers to buy the land himself. It is timberland, and Levin informs Stiva, otherwise known as Stepan Oblonsky, that because so it is worth many times what he is getting for it. The correct procedure for determining price of such land is, according to Levin, to count the trees. Needless to say, that would be tedious work, and Stiva--who spends much of his time philandering and otherwise enjoying a life of good food, women, and wine--doesn't have time to count trees.

In Levin's own words, there is a difference between bargaining and haggling. With the latter, one continues bargaining after the deal is done. Oblonsky would not haggle. I suppose his word meant something, his character and reputation as well. He says, "I've given my word, you know." Apparently, one's word was everything.

I had an aged cousin tell me once that this is how it was as well in the South, in northwest Mississippi. If someone, white or black, gave their word, you could count on it. For instance, if a white man said he'd sell a black a piece of land, the white would not go back on his word because of the interference of others who might like to influence the deal one way or another rather as Levin tries to do in the novel. Maybe this is just my cousin's opinion. I don't know. I do know that fair dealing between whites and blacks in the past runs contrary to popular belief, which is that whites would not have had the wherewithal or integrity to sell to blacks or to deal fairly with them in the first place. One of the reasons I'm investigating traditional business behavior is to see if business ethics in the South encouraged a transcendence of race. I feel naive in even asking this question given all that I have been told about black life in the Old South, but, as a scholar, I have to ask and investigate rather than assume.

Why besides humanity would a white, say, during the Reconstruction era or the Jim Crow era, bargain fairly with a black? Did standards and practices of gentlemanly behavior always or ever extend to blacks? Again, were business people compelled by some ethic to deal fair and square and to stand by a word given, a promise, a deal? My guess is yes, for I believe I have gathered much proof of this in my many documents relating to my own family's land purchases. I also have an opportunity to witness indirectly business deals of an acquaintance who lives in the South today. I notice that he employs the same language of the past. The other day he spoke of the standard "fair and square." I think this phrase, which my father used often undoubtedly influenced by his father who conducted much business in Mississippi, means on the up and up--honest dealing. I am intrigued by the association of the social term fairness with a geometric term square. The latter gives the former a visual and physical aspect. Fairness is exact. Fairness can be measured and seen. It is not asymmetrical or uneven. Maybe our ancestors, both black and white ones, believed that bad dealing, unevenness, would haunt them, that they would have, through bad dealing, set up bad karma.

Likewise, close dealing too can be frowned upon though shrewdness is sometimes admired. Ryabinin says of Stepan's advisor, "Very close about money is Konstantin Dimitrievitch...there's positively no dealing with him." Ryabinin claims for instance that he offered Konstantin, also known as Levin, a pretty price for some wheat. In this case, it seems that a good deal to Ryabinin is the offer of what he may consider a fair price but one that his rival may consider too low. One key to dealing obviously is to know what one's goods or one's labor is worth. I am studying also a colored hauler from the Civil War era. He claims to have made fifty dollars per bale of cotton hauled to Memphis. He said that he'd haul for anyone who paid his price. I would assume that plenty did, which says to me that he knew what a fair price was for the job. Another black, enlisted, wrote home to his wife that he could have made more money outside the service using honest, close trading. His words too suggest knowledge of business etiquette, and they imply that a black skilled in dealing could play the game.