There is generally an idea prevailing that the Southern States are very unhealthy. It is a point that bears directly on our labor question, and for that reason I wish to call special attention to this table, which is taken directly from the census:ANNUAL DEATH RATE FOR EACH THOUSAND OF POPULATIONNew York17.38Pennsylvania14.92Virginia16.32Massachusetts18.59Kentucky14.39Georgia13.97Alabama14.20Mississippi12.89Mississippi has the smallest average death rate of any of that number of States which I have enumerated.Q. I suppose the circumstance that the average death rate is larger in cities ought to be taken into account, the Southern population being mostly rural, is it not?—A. The Southern population is to a very greatextent rural—Still there are cities in Georgia which I suppose in proportion to our rural population would not make the latter in excess of what it is here. If you take your rural population here and in New Jersey, where you are densely populated, we are no more densely populated in the proportion of our city population to the country than you are here, I think.Q. Of the population, which is, as a rule, the more healthy in the South, the colored or the white population?By Mr.Pugh:Q. There must be some qualification of that difference between the death rate between such States as Massachusetts, for instance, and Georgia, on account of the fact—which I suppose must be conceded—that in these new States population is younger and more vigorous than in the older States. The emigration to these States has been of the younger and more vigorous population, not so liable to die as those who remain behind and are older?—A. There has been but very little emigration into these States up to this census.MR.Pugh. That is the fact to some extent, I suppose, anyway.TheChairman. In that same connection, I suppose, should be borne in mind the fact that the population of these Eastern States is largely re-enforced by immigration from Europe, and that is of the younger and more vigorous European population, and I do not know but what the people in Massachusetts will insist upon it that they are as young and as vigorous as anybody.Mr.Pugh. I have no doubt. I saw a great many very old people there.TheWitness. I merely mentioned this because I wanted to do away with the impression which generally exists that the Southern States are very unhealthy.Mr.Pugh. I have no doubt that what you state is true as a general fact.TheWitness. Now, to bear out the assertion which I made that the prosperity of the negroes began to increase with the cessation of race issues in the South, which has been so apparent to me that I can almost mark the time that it began, look at the cotton crop that is being made to a great extent by small farmers; look at the increase of the cotton crop in the different States in the last few years. For instance, take Georgia: in 1870 she made 473,934 bales of cotton; in 1880 she made 814,441, an increase of 75 per cent. Alabama in 1870 produced 429,482 bales; and in 1880 699,654, an increase of 62 per cent. Mississippi in 1870 produced 564,938 bales; in 1880 she produced 955,808 bales, an increase of 69 per cent.Here is a very significant fact also with regard to the condition of our laborers in the South, and it shows one of the disadvantages we have had to labor under. During the war, and from the results of the war, nearly all of our live stock was destroyed, a great portion of it was destroyed, which left us after the war without the means of raising our own meat and such supplies at home, and took away from the South a great portion of our wealth, for we know that cattle, hogs &c., increase in arithmetical progress. If you have a hog, this year she bears so many pigs, and in a couple of years those pigs bear so many, and so on. But we were left without live stock. I have here a table which shows, even under those difficulties, the increase in that respect in the Southern States of live stock. These are very significant figures. It is entirely an accident that I happened to get hold of them last night. The live stock of New York in 1870 was 5,286,421; in 1880, 5,422,238, an increase of 2 per cent. In Pennsylvania it was 4,484,748 in 1870; in 1880, 5,255,204, an increase of 17 per cent. In Georgia, in 1870, it was 2,275,137; in 1880, 3,139,101, an increase of 38 per cent. In Alabama it was 1,606,299 in 1870, and in 1880, 2,586,221, an increase of 61 per cent, and in Mississippi, in 1870, it was 1,724,295, and in 1880, 2,398,334, an increase of 38 per cent. This shows that with all the disadvantages the South had to contend with of their stock cattle being destroyed, the natural advantages of climate and pasturage, to which I attribute it, existing in the South have enabled them to increase more rapidly their live stock than any other of the States of the Union. That shows clearly the advantages which that country offers for immigration and labor. This is an advantage to labor. As I stated in my written reply to your submitted questions, we work but few white laborers in my section of the country. Why? Because they soon become land-owners with the opportunities which present themselves to them. The white men will not be there more than two or three years before he has bought and paid for his land in almost every instance.By theChairman:Q. And he becomes an employer himself?—A. He becomes an employer himself.Q. Does he usually locate upon the plantation lands along the rivers?—A. No, sir; he cannot buy this land, because the planter would not divide a large plantation into tracts; he would not sell off a portion of his land without selling the whole.Q. In how large tracts are the plantations held? Just mention theacreage of some of them that you are acquainted with.—A. I would say variously from 500 to 2,500 acres in cultivation.Q. How valuable are these plantations per acre?—A. That is a question which cannot be answered definitely except in this way: where a planter owns the land, and he is out of debt, the land is not for sale, because he cannot invest his money in anything that is so profitable; but where a planter's property is mortgaged, and the mortgagee wants to foreclose and will foreclose, and there is not in that country the money which the planter can borrow to relieve himself of his indebtedness, he will probably sell his land at a small excess of his debt in order to save something. You see there is a want of capital in that country, and if a planter is involved, as many planters are and have been ever since the war, he must do the best he can. There are many planters in that country who are nothing but agents of the factors, from the fact that the interest and commissions they pay upon the debt amount to more than the rent for the property, and they hold on to it as a home. Therefore, a planter in that condition will sell at a nominal price, whereas a plantation owned and paid for is not for sale.By Mr.Pugh:Q. There is really no established market price?—A. None at all, owing to the necessity of the one to sell and the desire of another to buy.By theChairman:Q. At what rates per acre have you known the title to change in some instances?—A. I have known lands to be bought there, including woodlands and cleared lands, at from $20 to $25 an acre, which would be, say, $40 or $50 an acre for the cleared land, and I have known other planters to refuse $80 an acre, cash.Q. Do you think that $80 or $100 per acre would be a reasonable price for these plantation lands?—A. They sold before the war for $120 an acre.By Mr.Call:Q. You are speaking now of the alluvial lands?—A. I am speaking of the alluvial lands on the Mississippi River, cleared, ready for cultivation, with the improvements existing upon them.By theChairman:Q. Improved plantations?—A. Yes, sir.Q. Upon what price per acre do you think those lands would pay, one year with another, an interest of 6 per cent?—A. I will best answer that question by the figures of rents which I have given. The rent, without any responsibility attached to the proprietor at all, is from $8 to $10 an acre.Q. In money?—A. In money. I will say further that I have been living in that country since 1869, and I have never yet known a year when there has not been a sufficient crop made to pay the rent, without a single exception.By Mr.Call:Q. What is left to the tenant after he pays this $10 an acre?—A. That land produces on an average 400 pounds of lint cotton to the acre, which at 10 cents a pound is $40.By theChairman:Q. To what extent is Northern capital availing itself of opportunity to invest in these plantations?—A. I might say it is limited.Q. From what fact does that arise?—A. From the fact that the safety of investments there is just becoming apparent to capitalists. Capitalists up to this time have been afraid to go to the South, owing to the disturbed condition of affairs politically and this very race-issue question. A man does not want to carry his money down there and put it into a country that might be involved in riots and disturbances. Those questions are now just beginning to settle themselves, and capital is beginning to find its way.Q. Do you anticipate in the near or remote future any further difficulty from the race question?—A. Not at all, and if we are left to ourselves things will very soon equalize themselves.Q. You are left to yourselves now, are you not?—A. We are now.Q. All you ask is to continue to be let alone?—A. Just to be let alone. The South, with her natural resources and advantages of climate and soil, feels that she is perfectly able to take care of herself and her affairs, and all she wants is that the legislation of the country, both Federal and State, should be that which will mete out justice to all her citizens, colored as well as white.Q. Does the South feel as though all she had got to do was to take care of herself, or does she feel a little responsibility for the other section of the country?—A. She feels, more immediately now, responsibility for that section, for this reason, that the negro population of the South, compared with the white population of the South, might be a dangerous element, butthe negro population, compared with the whole white population of the United States as an integral body, sinks into insignificance. Therefore, the forces which are at work in the South today make us strongly Union. They are directly contrary to what were existing before the war, and there are no people in this Government today who have the same interest in the Federal Union that the people of the Southern States have, and they appreciate it.Q. You feel that it is to your advantage that the negro population should be dealt with by the forty or fifty millions of whites, that the races should be balanced in that proportion rather than in the proportion that exists between them and the white population of the South alone?—A. Yes, sir.Q. The central idea of the South is a national idea, then?—A. The central idea of the South is more a national idea now than it has been in this respect.Q. I would use the word "leading" rather than "central" there—the leading idea?—A. We, of course, claim that we want to manage the internal affairs of our States just as much as New York, or New Hampshire, or Massachusetts would want to manage theirs, but that it is necessary for us to have the guidance and protection of the Government: we want it just as much as either of those States.Q. Have you traveled considerably through the North?—A. I have.Q. What portions of the North have you visited within the last few years?—A. I have visited Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Hartford, and I might say a number of other points in the States of which they are the chief cities.Q. While we are speaking of this matter of reciprocal feeling between the sections of country, as you have mentioned the attitude of the South, I should like to know from you, from your personal observation and knowledge, what you find to be that of the North toward the South?—A. I think it is of the kindliest character. I have never in my life been treated with more consideration than I have been by gentlemen in the East who were most opposed to the South during the war.Q. I do not refer simply to personal courtesy, but I mean the expression of feeling as between the sections, the general tendency and drift of Northern feeling towards the Southern portions of the country, to the people of the South?—A. I think, so far as I have been able to observe, that the feeling in the East towards the South is a general anxiety for her prosperity. I would go so far as to speak of it as anxiety for her prosperity.Q. You think the war of sections is pretty much over?—A. I think it is obliterated, and for that reason I go back to this point, that our prosperity in the South has begun.Q. You have described with some minuteness the condition of things among the planters and those who work upon the plantations. I should like to ask this question further, whether any of the negroes along the alluvial bottoms are obtaining ownership of lands in fee-simple?—A. In very few instances in the alluvial lands. When they make enough money to buy a home they generally go to the hill country, where land can be bought at a much more reasonable price.Q. With what amount of accumulation will a negro get up and go to the hills?—A. There are negroes right in my section of the country who have an accumulation clear of all expenses of from a thousand to $3,500 a year.Q. Do they remain or do they go and buy homesteads for themselves?—A. They probably remain until they accumulate a few thousand dollars, and then go and buy a home. We encourage it, from the fact that we want the others behind to be stimulated to do the same thing. I will say in that connection that the future of the negro of the South is the alluvial lands.Q. These plantations?—A. Not only these plantations particularly. What I mean by alluvial lands are the alluvial lands on the coast and the alluvial lands of the Mississippi Valley, the rich lands where the negro relies on his own energy and exertion rather than on his brains. There is an immigration coming into the older States now.Q. The older Southern States?—A. The older Southern States. As they come in the negroes gradually give way and go to the richer lands. For instance, one railroad last year brought into the Mississippi Valley over 10,000 negro immigrants.Q. From what States?—A. From the Atlantic and Gulf States.Q. What became of them?—A. They were scattered along the alluvial lands of the Mississippi Valley. As the negroes of the Mississippi Valley either immigrate from that valley and go in different directions and buy land, the planters of the Mississippi Valley send out to the older States and replace them with labor from those States. A negro in the older States, probably, to make his support would have to cultivate 15 or 20 acres of land, whereas a negro in the Mississippi Valley can make his support on 8 or 10 acres of land.Q. Will this result in the ownership of the alluvial lands being transferred to the negro?—A. No, sir; because as he makes money he goes off.Q. He is a Chinese immigrant?—A. I mean by "goes off" he does not go out of the State, but he goes to the hills.Q. And to smaller ownerships?—A. To smaller ownerships.Q. And the aim of the Southern planter is to accommodate this tendency of things to smaller rentings?—A. Yes, sir.Q. Do you think a plantation is more productive where, under a general supervision by the planter or the owner, it is let out in small sections to the negroes to cultivate, or is it better to cultivate the plantation as a whole?—A. It is better to let it out, as I stated in my written answers. The cotton crop of this country is being raised to such an extent by the small white farmers that the large planter can no longer afford to hire and compete with that class of labor who only expend their own energy; consequently the tendency is to make farmers of the negroes.Q. What chance is there of the planter securing white labor to carry on these plantations?—A. There is such a small proportion of white labor in the South that it would be difficult for him to find them, and the tide of foreign immigration is just beginning to be turned in that direction. There has been a prejudice against white emigrants going to the South, on account of going among the negroes.Q. Do you think that is diminishing?—A. Diminishing yearly.Q. You mean that immigration from Europe is being employed on the plantations?—A. Not exactly upon the large cotton plantations, but the smaller plantations are now being converted into farms. For instance, there has been a large immigration of European emigrants into that section of the country between Little Rock and Fort Smith.Q. Do they, upon these farm or small plantations being converted into farms, work in companionship with the negro laborer?—A. No; they generally buy the land and work it themselves; they may hire a negro and work with him; they are laborers themselves.Q. Is there any tendency among the white and colored laborers of any class to work in companionship, or to fraternize at all in labor?—A. I cannot say that there is. A white man would not take a negro in as a partner to work with him in the field.Q. And will a white man find any difficulty in hiring another white man and negro to work together side by side in the field?—A. No, sir; I have them myself working side by side.Q. There is no prejudice of that kind?—A. None at all.Q. No white man inquires whether he can work by himself or is to work in company with a negro? Do they exhibit any reluctance to work in company with the negro?—A. The class of white people that work inour country for wages comes from Ohio, and Missouri, and Indiana, and that section of country, and I find there is some prejudice among that class of people sometimes, but still there are instances—as I say, I have men from Indiana now myself hired working right in a gang with negroes.Q. There is no strong tendency in that way, I suppose?—A. No strong tendency in that way. There are no white laborers from the South proper; at least the number we can hire for wages is so small that it is not sufficient to call it a class.Q. In the Southern States proper about two thirds of the population is white, is it not?—A. I do not recollect. According to the census returns I think there are about seven millions of negroes. The census would give the exact statement.Q. Not far from two thirds of the population, I think, is white. In the Gulf States proper at least one half the population must be white. In what way is the white laboring population of the South employed?—A. They are employed as small farmers nearly almost entirely.Q. Not to as great extent as mechanics and artisans?—A. I suppose there is a liberal proportion of them to the population; we have to have our artisans and mechanics; but as a rule the white population of the South are small farmers, either owners of the land themselves or tenants.Q. How as to their material prosperity and thrift and saving?—A. It varies very much. For instance, take the State of Georgia—and I believe it is admitted that Georgia is one of the most thrifty and prosperous of all the Southern States—I think the small farmers are generally self-sustaining; they raise their own supplies.Q. Do these small white farmers employ negro help to any extent?—A. To a certain extent. If a man has more land than his family can work he will hire a negro laborer. There is no prejudice against his doing so either on the part of the farmer hiring him or the negro hired.Q. He may hire some white and other colored laborers, I suppose?—A. Yes, sir.Q. Do they work together?—A. Yes, sir.Q. How in regard to the value of the hill lands you have spoken of in the State of Arkansas; as compared with the alluvial, what is the difference in value?—A. It is very great. There are farms in Arkansas that can be bought, partially cleared up, and with some improvements upon them, for from $5 to $20 an acre, less than the rent of fair lands on the river. There is no finer section of country in the world—I say that unhesitatingly—for a foreign immigrant, or the immigrant from the East, or from anywhere, than is afforded to-day in Arkansas and Texas.Q. And political disturbances are at an end?—A. We apprehend nothing at all; there is no reason why we should.Q. You were speaking of the necessity of the education of the laborer of the South, the negro especially. Will you not describe to us the actual condition of the masses of the colored people in the matter of education, to what extent it has progressed, and what facilities and opportunities exist, and what additional are required?—A. It varies in different sections. For instance, Georgia, and Tennessee are probably ahead of any of the Southern States in point of educating the colored people; they have more facilities; they have negro primary schools and colleges where a man is educated. The education that I was speaking of, more particularly for the negro, is a plain English education, sufficient to enable him to read and write.Q. What we call up North a common school education?—A. A common school education. I will illustrate that. Suppose a negro comes to me to make a contract that I have written for him, and he cannot read or write. I offer that contract to him, and I read it to him. He touches a pen and signs his mark to it; there is no obligation attached at all. He says at once, "That man is an educated man; he has the advantage of me; he shows me that contract; I do not know what is in it; I cannot even read it." Therefore a contract made with a negro in that way is almost a nullity; but if he could read that contract himself and sign his own name to it, it would be a very different thing. I never allow a negro to sign a written contract with me before he has taken it home with him and had some friend to read it over and consult with him about it, because I want some obligation attached to my contracts.Q. It is necessary for you as well as the negro?—A. Necessary for my protection as well as his.Q. How many of the negroes on the plantations can comprehend a written contract by reading it, because a man may be somewhat educated and not be able to decipher a contract?—A. I cannot give you an exact proportion, for it varies to a great extent. I can only say that that number is increasing rapidly.Q. From what circumstances comes this increase?—A. From their desire to gain knowledge.Q. Do you find that desire strong among the colored people?—A. Very strong indeed; and there are two ideas which a negro possesses that give me great hopes for his future. If I did not believe the negro was capable of sufficient development to make him a responsible small farmer, I should not want to remain in the business that I am any longer, becauseI believe that the development of my business is necessarily based upon the development of the negro and the cultivation of my lands. The negro possesses two remarkable qualifications: one is that he is imitative, and the other is that he has got pride; he wants to dress well; he wants to do as well as anybody else does when you get him aroused, and with these two qualifications I have very great hopes for him in the future.Q. What do you think of his intellectual and moral qualities and his capacity for development?—A. There are individual instances I know of where negroes have received and taken a good education. As a class, it would probably be several generations, at any rate, before they would be able to compete with the Caucasian. I believe that the negro is capable of receiving an ordinary English education, and there are instances where they enter professions and become good lawyers. For instance, I know in the town of Greenville, Miss., right across the river from me, a negro attorney, who is a very intelligent man, and I heard one of the leading attorneys in Greenville say he would almost have anybody on the opposite side of a case rather than he would that negro. The sheriff of my county is from Ohio, and a negro, he is a man whom we all support in his office. We are anxious that the negroes should have a fair representation. For instance, you ask for the feeling existing between the proprietor and the negroes. The probate judge of my county is a negro and one of my tenants, and I am here now in New York attending to important business for my county as an appointee of that man. He has upon him the responsibilities of all estates in the county; he is probate judge.Q. Is he a capable man?—A. A very capable man, and an excellent, good man, and a very just one.Q. Do you see any reason why, with fair opportunities assured to himself and to his children, he may not become a useful and competent, American citizen?—A. We already consider him so.Q. The question is settled?—A. I thought you were speaking personally of the man I referred to.Q. No; I was speaking of the negro generally—the negro race.—A. Let me understand your question exactly.Q. Do you see any reason why the negroes, as a component part of the American population, may not, with a fair chance, come to be useful, industrious, and competent to the discharge of the duties of citizenship?—A. I think they may as a class, but it will take probably generations for them to arrive at that standard.Q. It has taken us generations to arrive at the standard, has it not?—A. Yes, sir.Q. There is some talk about our ancestors having been pirates, I believe. Now, will you state to us what the existing facilities for education are among the negroes?—A. I can only speak as regards Arkansas. Of course I do not know much of the other States. In Arkansas we have in each county a school board. These boards examine and employ teachers. We are taxed for a school fund, from which these teachers are paid.Q. What proportion of the colored children attend school, do you think?—A. On my own property there are five schools, and I think the larger portion, I might say nearly all that are capable of going to school, do go to school.Q. How many children are there on your own property?—A. I could scarcely form an idea.Q. There are five schools?—A. There are five schools, and I should suppose from 300 to 500 children.Q. Those are educated in public schools?—A. Yes, sir.Q. I understand you to say that nearly all of them attend?—A. Yes, sir.Q. For how long a time each year is school kept open?—A. The schools extend all the year except vacation, I think, which is about three months; but a number of the negroes will withdraw their children from school during cotton-picking season, to help them pick the crop.Q. Between what ages do they actually attend school?—A. From 6 to 19. I know a great many of them who are going to school who are 17, 18, and 19, who can just begin to read and write a little.Q. Do you find any inclination among the older negroes who are past school age to endeavor to read and write?—A. Not very much, but they are anxious their children should, and appeal to them. In almost every instance where a man has a child who can read and write, he will bring him along with him when he makes a contract. They are very proud of their children being able to read and write.Q. Are they satisfied, as a rule, with their simply becoming able to read and write, or do they like to have them make a little further progress in mathematics, geography, &c.?—A. As a class they look to them simply to read and write. They think when they have got that far they know everything; but then there are certain ones who have ambition, just as it is with our own race. There are some men who have tastes for literature, and receive a better education than others do, but it is not the same proportion of the negro race of course that it is with our own. There are instances where negroes are also anxious to obtain a collegiate education, and become school teachers.Q. I do not know that you are able to state to what extent they actually attend school in the hill districts?—A. I am not.Q. You speak both of your own plantation and of other plantations as well as your own in that regard?—A. I am speaking of the alluvial lands along the Mississippi River.Q. In Arkansas?—A. Not only in Arkansas, but in Louisiana and Mississippi; I will say the alluvial lands on the Mississippi River between Memphis and Vicksburg.Q. Are the negroes on those lands generally having the same opportunities for education that they do on your plantation?—A. Oh, yes, sir; there is a common school system.Q. And it is as prevalent in Louisiana and Mississippi as in Arkansas?—A. I think it is.Q. What is the nativity of those teachers, as a rule?—A. They are generally colored people from either the East or the Northwest. There are some white teachers, but very few.Q. Are any of the white teachers Southern in birth?—A. There is not a white teacher on my own property; they are all colored teachers on my own property. The proportion of white teachers is very small.Q. How much do these colored teachers themselves know?—A. Some of them are remarkably well educated.Q. And generally earnestly devoted to their work?—A. Perfectly so.Q. Or is it simply to get their money?—A. No; I think some of them really have a desire to see their scholars advance.Q. Some pride in their race, to have them get on, I suppose?—A. I think there is a certain pride in that respect; and, again, they want to gain a reputation as teachers.Q. What compensation does a teacher get?—A. I think about from $50 to $100 a month.Q. Do they pay their own expenses, board and shelter?—A. Yes, sir; but board is cheap, merely nominal.Q. About what amount?—A. I should say these teachers can get board for $10 a month.Q. Is the cost of clothing in your part of the country about the same as here?—A. This is our market.Q. You buy the ready-made clothing largely for the population in general, I suppose?—A. We buy both ready-made clothing and cloth to make up.Q. I suppose the colored population hardly buy custom goods?—A. A great many of them buy the cloth, and some of their women are as goodtailoresses as you would find anywhere. They buy the cloth and make it up themselves.Q. That must bring a suit of clothes pretty cheap in a colored family; they really expend nothing but buy the cloth themselves?—A. They sell very good jeans cloth there at 35 or 40 cents a yard; they generally wear jeans.Q. All seasons of the year?—A. Generally in all seasons of the year. In the summer time a laboring man hardly ever wears a coat at all.Q. What do you think an average colored Southern laborer expends per annum for his clothing, say the head of the family, the man—what does it cost him for clothing a year?—A. I cannot give you a definite answer. I will only say that we who are the producers of cotton are very glad to see them get in a prosperous condition in order that there may be more consumption, and when a man is prosperous he will buy two suits of clothes, where if he is not prosperous he will make one do.Q. We have had a good deal of testimony as to what it actually costs a Northern laborer a year for clothing. I have no desire to show that any laborers dress cheaply or poorly; I merely want to get an idea of the relative cost of the laboring man living North or South, in the item of clothing?—A. I can sell and do sell a man a pair of jeans pants and a coat from $7 to $12 per suit.Q. How many suits will he want in a year?—A. That will depend on his condition and his ability to pay me. If he is a prosperous man and beginning to accumulate he will make one do. Whenever a negro begins to accumulate he goes to extremes; he does not want to buy anything; he wants to accumulate rapidly. Where a man is not doing so well, and there is little doubt of his ability to pay, he would probably want several suits; but I would confine him to one or two.Q. The same is true, I suppose, of his wife and children?—A. Yes, sir.Q. But you look on the matter of clothing as a much less expensive item in the laborer's account in your country than here in the North where the climate is colder, I suppose?—A. Yes, sir. What absorbs the profit of the laborers with us is their want of providence; that is, if they get surplus money they throw it away for useless articles.Q. It has been suggested that a postal savings bank might be a good thing as a place of deposit of the savings of the colored population of the South; they might feel some confidence in an institution of that kind, and that it would be a beneficial thing to them. What is your own judgment?—A. I advocate it and approve it, and indeed propose to start a savings bank in our own neighborhood. In this connection I will mention anotherimportant feature. In the Mississippi Valley—and when I speak of the Mississippi Valley I mean both sides of the river, Arkansas and Louisiana on one side and Mississippi on the other—there are numbers of negroes who have considerable accumulations and use their surplus to advance to other negroes. For instance, there are negroes right on our property who have accumulated enough to help out certain others, as they express it, and they use their money as an investment in that way. For instance one negro who has got something will advance it to another negro and take a mortgage on his crop. Consequently there are numbers of them who are getting advances from their co-laborers, and I always give them that opportunity when they want it. My idea of the adjustment in the Mississippi Valley, seeing what I can make from the mercantile portion of my business, is that it is simply my revenue that I get from the rent of my land as an investment on my capital; and whenever a negro can get his own merchant in New Orleans—a number of them have very good factors in New Orleans and ship their cotton direct—I encourage it. When one negro wants to help out another, I give him the privilege of doing it and encourage it. There are several negroes, a great many, not a few in Chicot County to-day who have their own factors in New Orleans, ship their own goods, and receive their own accounts of sales.Q. They are not owners of alluvial lands?—A. They are not owners at all; they are tenants.Q. I suppose some time they will be liable to make some accumulations, and they will now and then own a plantation?—A. I do know of one instance on the river below Vicksburg where the old property of Mr. Davis was bought by a former slave of his.Q. Is that the only instance?—A. The only instance I know of.Q. One question we have been accustomed to put is as to the actual personal feeling that exists between the laborers and capitalists of different parts of the country. What is the feeling between the laborers, colored and white, and the owners of the land and of capital at the South?—A. I confine my replies to my own section, because I am not familiar with the others. I have answered that question in the written answers. The feeling is harmonious and good, as I have expressed it there. The negro naturally looks to the planter for advice and for assistance, and the planter looks to his laborers for the development of his property. Consequently their interests are identical and their feelings good.Q. You have alluded once or twice to the pressure of outside, and I suppose Northern, opinion; I assume that you mean political opinion in the past and the desirability that it should cease. What is the fact as to aprogressive disintegration of the solid Republican or solid negro vote of the South? What are the chances of its dividing, and of the white vote dividing? We hear now of a "solid South," colored on the one side and white on the other. What prospect is there of a division in that regard; to what extent does it exist, or is it going on?—A. The negroes of the South are already divided in their votes. There are a great many who vote with the proprietors of the properties. There are instances where they vote with what they call their Republican friends. A few years ago in the South any man who was an escaped convict from one of your penitentiaries here who would come down to that country and tell the negroes that he was one of General Grant's soldiers, and fought to free him, would vote the last one out; but any of those negroes would come to me at that very time with his money and get me to save it for him, and take care of it for him. He would put all his confidence in me so far as his money was concerned, but when it would come to politics he would vote with this man, who probably did not own the coat he had on his back. Those kind of inferences were what did do us in the South very material damage. Let me illustrate that by a riot in my own county. In Chicot County, in 1872, there was a proposition to impose upon the county a railroad tax of $250,000 for the purpose of building a railroad.Q. What proportion of the taxable property of the county would that have been?—A. Our whole assessed valuation was about $1,500,000 at that time. This was brought out by a promise that if the appropriation was made, the levees on our river should be built and this road would run on the levees. At that time the whole of the local government in Chicot County was in the hands of men who did not own any property in the county, and had just come down there and been elected by the negroes, who have a very large majority in that county. This tax was a very great imposition upon us. At that time there was a negro attorney at Lake Village, who was one of the prime movers in this thing. The planters knew that this was only intended as a speculation upon the county, for the vote was afterwards taken, the appropriation was made, and not one foot of levee was put up, and not one foot of that railroad was built in Chicot County. Still we are mandamused now for the interest on that debt that was put on us by that kind of influence. One of our planters was remonstrating with this negro attorney about this debt and told him it was an imposition on the property owners, and that the thing ought not to be done, when the man became violent and insolent, and it resulted in a difficulty between this planter and the negro. The planter had a little pen-knife in his pocket, the blade not longer than my little finger; hestruck the negro with it and it happened accidentally to hit him on a vital point and killed him. The sheriff of the county was a negro. The planter, with two innocent parties in whose house this occurrence took place at the county-seat, in Lake Village, was arrested and lodged in jail. A few days afterwards—probably not more than two or three—nearly every negro in the county was summoned to Lake Village, and they rose like so many locusts, coming in from every direction, took those three men out of jail shot them to pieces, murdered them. It was such an outrage that the people from Memphis and Vicksburg and from the hill countries, commenced to come in there with companies, started down with companies. On investigation we found out that the sheriff of the county had exercised his authority to send out to the ignorant negroes of the county and summon them to the village, and these fellows went because they were afraid not to obey the mandate of the sheriff. At that time feeling was running very high, and these people were anxious to come in and quell this riot, but a few of us who were more prudent, a few of the leading planters of the county, got together, sent these different companies word not to come there, that we did not want them in the county; some of the companies were already on their way to Chicot County, thinking the people there were going to be massacred. A great many of our people had to run away from their homes for several days; but we took the ground that we would let the thing take its natural course. As soon as things quieted down, which they did so partially in three or four days, some of our gentlemen who had gone off with their families returned, and it resulted in our arresting a few of the ringleaders in the county. The courts and the administration were all at that time in the hands of persons not identified with the interests of the county, and it was impossible for us to get justice meted out. We saved a massacre of the negroes of the county, but we never could bring those men to any kind of punishment before the courts, and finally we came to a compromise with them, that if they would leave the county we would withdraw the suit against them, and that was the way the thing was ended. Now, I do not believe you could get up a riot in Chicot County because I think there are many intelligent negroes there who would not permit it. Those are the kind of race issues that I referred to. Relieve us of that sort of thing, and leave our government to ourselves and our people, and give to the negro the same protection the white man has, but do not give him any more. Do not let him feel that he has the United States Government standing behind him, and that he is the child of the United States Government to be taken care of, but that he must rely on his ownresources and energy for his living, and time will solve the question, and the demand for his labor will protect him.Q. Do you find that the feeling among the negroes which resulted in the exodus of a few years ago has been allayed and perhaps has disappeared?—A. I will tell you something that is rather amusing about that. The first that I heard of a negro exodus in my section of the country—it was to Kansas—was my manager coming into my room one morning and saying that the negroes were going out to the river to go to Kansas. I said, "It is several miles to the river; how are they going?" Said he, "They are toting their things out on their heads." Said I, "Go right at once there and offer them the wagons on the plantation to haul the things. What is the matter?" Said he, "I don't know; I went out this morning and summoned the hands to the field, but they say they are all going to Kansas." I got on my horse and rode out and met a negro who had been my engineer. I said to him, "What is the matter, where are you all going?" He stopped right on the road and said, "Mr. Calhoun, you never have deceived me, and I am going to tell you what is the matter. There were two men came through here last week, one night, and said 'You see this picture?' There is a picture of a farm in Kansas for me that General Grant has bought out there for me. That is so because my name is on the back of it, and here is my ticket; that carries me to Kansas." Said I, "Let me see it." He showed me a piece of pasteboard that had printed on it "Good for one trip to Kansas." Said I, "What did you pay him for this?" He said, "We paid him $2 a piece." "How many of you are in this thing?" "Over eighty of us are in this thing." Said I, "That man then swindled you out of $160; he is an imposter; there is no farm bought for you in Kansas." I saw that the time for me to remonstrate with them was not then; they were on their way to the Mississippi River, and I let them all go. After they got out there I went and expostulated with them; told them of the difference in climate, soil, and everything else that they were accustomed to, and that if they went there many of them would lose their families and children. They would not listen to me. They went on to the river bank, and those negroes who went out there owed me over $109,000.Q. How many of them were there? Eighty I think you said?—A. There were 80, I think. Once, I suppose, there were 150 negroes, perhaps more, on the bank of the river. They were not at a regular landing. They went out to the intermediate points where a boat would not be compelled to land. We notified all the boats coming up the river not to land at this point. I did not want these negroes to go off, being satisfied that they weregoing to their ruin if they did; that they were leaving comfortable homes; many of them had sold their mules or given them away at a mere sacrifice. One negro sold a mule worth $150 for $15 to get off. They opened their potato-houses, they opened their corn-cribs and scattered the corn, giving it away to everybody that would offer them five cents a bushel. I had given two of these people a piece of land, the productions of all of which they were to have for bringing it into cultivation and improving it. Knowing the negro nature as I do, and knowing that he would not want anybody to derive the benefit of something that he thought he was entitled to, I got two white men in the county to come and offer me to take this piece of land and cultivate it on shares with me, giving me one half its product, whereas with them I was entitled to nothing. As soon as those two fellows found out that I had made a good bargain for their land they went back home from the river bank, and as soon as they went back all the rest followed. Then I called the whole plantation up and told them to appoint two representatives and that I would send them to Kansas at my own expense to examine into this matter and report to them. These two men went to Kansas, came back, and reported the true condition of affairs; and now if what they call in that country "a poor white man"—the negro's expression—goes through the country and says "Kansas," they almost want to mob him. That was the result of the Kansas movement.Q. What has become of those who went to Kansas?—A. Many of them have returned and many have died; numbers of them have died. Quite a large number went to Washington County Mississippi, just opposite me.Q. From time to time, at Washington, efforts are being made to secure public lands in the Territories, the Indian Territory and elsewhere, for the purpose of colonizing such tracts with negroes. Do you think there is any sort of occasion for that?—A. None in the world. If the alluvial lands on the Mississippi River were protected from overflow and brought into a condition where they could be cultivated they would afford all the homes, and of the best character, that the negroes could possibly want in the South, and the natural tendency is to come to just such lands.Q. And the negroes prefer to be there to anywhere else?—A. Those that come, I notice, never go back.Q. You suggested the improvement of the levees. What is the necessity, and in what degree is it difficult for those residing along the river banks to protect themselves?—A. I am the president of the levee board of Chicot County. The plan which has been suggested by the Mississippi River Commission and Mr. Eads, as their chief engineer, is unquestionably the correct one for the improvement of the Mississippi River. Weknow this not only from theory, but from long experience with the river, those of us who have lived there. The Mississippi River being, as it is generally termed, the "Father of Waters," and passing through several States, it is almost a national system, and it would be impossible for any system to be adopted by the States which would be local. Consequently it is imperatively the duty of the Government of the United States to take care of the improvement of the Mississippi River. There are certain sections of the Mississippi River that are naturally above overflow, made so by cut-offs. The fall of the Mississippi River is about four inches to the mile. Consequently, when there is one of those large bends, where the river runs around where the cut-off is, no increase of water is needed. The fall being four inches to the mile, the lands just above the cut-off are made higher and above overflow, whereas just below, the lands are overflowed or become liable to overflow. The improvement of the Mississippi River itself for commercial purposes, as well as the protection of the lands, is dependent upon the building of the levees, for the levees of course confine the water within its banks, and give not only a greater volumn of water, but greater velocity for scouring purposes, which scours out the sand bars that are formed continually on the river. Captain Eads's plan of forming jetties where the banks cave, saves this deposit, as it were, in the water, which makes the sand bars. A mattress is put against the caving banks which prevents the alluvial land caving into the river which forms the sand bars below. Then the increased volumn and increased velocity of the water wash out the channel, and improve it for commercial purposes, answering the object of protecting the land, and at the same time opening that immense channel for commerce.Again, there are very important lines of railroad that are being built up and down either bank of the Mississippi River, and it is necessary they should be protected for commercial purposes, as well as that the Mississippi River should be improved for commercial purposes, and they can only be protected by the building of levees. We who have been on the river, and who feel that we are familiar with it, have closely watched the course of the Commission, and I can only say, as an expression of the opinion of the people, that we indorse what the Commission are doing.Q. And desire still more of it?—A. Yes, sir; it is absolutely necessary. What has already been expended by the Government would be absolutely useless unless additional appropriations are made to complete the work. I would like to call your attention to this point. The Atchafalaya, in Louisiana, is a stream which runs from just about the mouth of Red River into the Gulf of Mexico. The fall from the mouth of the Atchafalaya andRed River to the Gulf of Mexico is very much greater than the fall from the mouth of Red River to the Gulf by way of New Orleans down the Mississippi River. A few years ago the Atchafalaya was a stream which could be waded across, but owing to the current gradually going through it, it commenced to wash out until now it has got to be a stream 100 feet deep.Q. Is there or not any perceptible increase or diminution of the column of the Mississippi itself as compared with 25, or 50, or 100 years ago?—A. We think that our waters are higher now than they have ever been before.Q. Greater extremes, or is there a uniform flow?—A. A larger uniform flow, and it is attributed to the destruction of the forests, though that is mere theory. One of the arguments, at any rate, is that it is owing to the destruction of the forests in the Northwest, which causes more rain storms and gives a larger rainfall.Q. I have heard the idea advanced that the destruction of the woods and timber about the headwaters would, in case of rain, lead to a more rapid deposit in the stream, it would not be held back by the swampy nature of the soil, and so you might have more sudden rises and falls in the river than formerly without the volume of water or the uniform flow being increased or lessened?—A. I think—at least I have heard it so expressed by men experienced on the river—that the flow of the Mississippi River is greater now than it was formerly.Q. That one year with another, more water runs down the channel?—A. We can see a slight increase of the water of the Mississippi River. I do not know how it may increase in the future, or if it will at all, but that is the opinion of people there now. The point I want to call your attention to specifically is the necessity for the prevention of the water of the Red River going down through the Atchafalaya, for if the Atchafalaya washes out it leaves New Orleans, a large commercial city, upon, as it were, an inland sea. The waters which overflow from the banks of the Mississippi River on the front of Arkansas go over into the Red River and never come back into the Mississippi River any more until they come out at the mouth of the Red River. Just at the mouth of Red River, and before Red River reaches the Mississippi, is the Atchafalaya. So that all of this overflow water that could be kept in the Mississippi River by building the levees on the front of Arkansas, now goes into Red River and helps to wash out the Atchafalaya, which will ruin the city of New Orleans if that is not prevented. It is a very strong commercial point, for the commerce of New Orleans is a matter to be considered in our affairs.Q. I suppose there is no doubt that the Atchafalaya furnishes an outlet, which relieves your plantations very much?—A. No, sir; it does not affect where I live at all.Q. Below the Red River, in Louisiana, is it not a relief in case of an overflow?—A. A partial relief; but in Louisiana, when you get down that far, they pretty much have their system of levees built, which protect the sugar district; there are only probably a few gaps; and the Mississippi River, when it gets that far down, does not rise in the same proportion that it does where I live, 500 miles above. The mouth of the Atchafalaya is 500 miles below where I am.Q. Has this increased drainage from the Atchafalaya resulted in any injury to the navigation of the river as far north?—A. Not as yet; but if it is not stopped—the commission realize the fact I am now telling you—if it is not checked, the whole Mississippi River will naturally turn through the Atchafalaya, because the fall is so much greater.Q. How do they propose to check it?—A. That is a matter the commission and scientific engineers would have to decide.Q. Can they block it at the outlet of the Red River?—A. They propose to check it principally by stopping the water from the Mississippi River that goes into the Red River. There would in that way be an enormous quantity of water kept out of Red River. That would be one method. What the engineers would consider sufficient or necessary to be done, of course I would not venture to express an opinion upon.Q. What danger is there to the large mass of capital invested in these alluvial lands, unless something is done to prevent the overflows of which you speak?—A. The lands that are now liable to overflow are almost entirely abandoned.Q. To how large an extent are they now abandoned?—A. Taking in the whole of Mississippi Valley proper, from Memphis down.Q. Has there been any computation or reasonable estimate that you know of the value of those lands affected by the overflow?—A. I have never heard of it; but I will say that those lands which are liable to overflow now, if brought into cultivation, are just as valuable as any we are cultivating; probably more so, because they have the alluvial deposits upon them. There is a deposit there from 3 to 4 inches.Q. You have no idea of the extent of those lands?—A. I cannot give you the proportion. I will simply say it is a very large proportion.Q. A third, or a half, or a quarter?—A. More than a half. I saw it estimated some time ago, at least I will give it as a statement published in thePlanters' Journal, published in Vicksburgh, that there are thirteencounties on the Mississippi River which, if all cleared up and put into cultivation, are capable of producing the entire cotton crop of the United States, and I have heard the question discussed.Q. What prevents their being cleared up and put into cultivation?—A. Simply the overflow.Q. Have they ever been cleared as yet?—A. A great portion of them; and now destroyed because the levee system is not complete. On these lands all the negro labor which is not found profitable on the poorer lands in the older States, could be made extremely profitable, not only to the proprietors of the lands, but to the laborers themselves.Q. Do you think it would be within limit to say that one half of the alluvial plantation lands, such as you have described in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, is now practically destroyed by reason of this overflow occasioned by the destruction of the levee system?—A. Yes, sir.Q. At least one half?—A. At least one half of that which has been in cultivation, and which can be brought into cultivation.Q. Of that which is thus useless now, what portion has been formerly under cultivation?—A. It would be impossible for any one to form an estimate, because it is so varied.Q. The amount of land that has been improved and which is now destroyed by reason of the overflow, you cannot state?—A. I cannot state it accurately; I will state it approximately; I should say at least one third.Q. One third of the entire amount that has been improved is now destroyed by reason of the overflow, resulting from imperfections in the levee system?—A. Yes, sir; that is what I mean to say.Q. And of that which has not been improved but might be improved, how much?—A. At least half.
There is generally an idea prevailing that the Southern States are very unhealthy. It is a point that bears directly on our labor question, and for that reason I wish to call special attention to this table, which is taken directly from the census:
ANNUAL DEATH RATE FOR EACH THOUSAND OF POPULATION
Mississippi has the smallest average death rate of any of that number of States which I have enumerated.
Q. I suppose the circumstance that the average death rate is larger in cities ought to be taken into account, the Southern population being mostly rural, is it not?
—A. The Southern population is to a very greatextent rural—Still there are cities in Georgia which I suppose in proportion to our rural population would not make the latter in excess of what it is here. If you take your rural population here and in New Jersey, where you are densely populated, we are no more densely populated in the proportion of our city population to the country than you are here, I think.
Q. Of the population, which is, as a rule, the more healthy in the South, the colored or the white population?
By Mr.Pugh:
Q. There must be some qualification of that difference between the death rate between such States as Massachusetts, for instance, and Georgia, on account of the fact—which I suppose must be conceded—that in these new States population is younger and more vigorous than in the older States. The emigration to these States has been of the younger and more vigorous population, not so liable to die as those who remain behind and are older?
—A. There has been but very little emigration into these States up to this census.
MR.Pugh. That is the fact to some extent, I suppose, anyway.
TheChairman. In that same connection, I suppose, should be borne in mind the fact that the population of these Eastern States is largely re-enforced by immigration from Europe, and that is of the younger and more vigorous European population, and I do not know but what the people in Massachusetts will insist upon it that they are as young and as vigorous as anybody.
Mr.Pugh. I have no doubt. I saw a great many very old people there.
TheWitness. I merely mentioned this because I wanted to do away with the impression which generally exists that the Southern States are very unhealthy.
Mr.Pugh. I have no doubt that what you state is true as a general fact.
TheWitness. Now, to bear out the assertion which I made that the prosperity of the negroes began to increase with the cessation of race issues in the South, which has been so apparent to me that I can almost mark the time that it began, look at the cotton crop that is being made to a great extent by small farmers; look at the increase of the cotton crop in the different States in the last few years. For instance, take Georgia: in 1870 she made 473,934 bales of cotton; in 1880 she made 814,441, an increase of 75 per cent. Alabama in 1870 produced 429,482 bales; and in 1880 699,654, an increase of 62 per cent. Mississippi in 1870 produced 564,938 bales; in 1880 she produced 955,808 bales, an increase of 69 per cent.
Here is a very significant fact also with regard to the condition of our laborers in the South, and it shows one of the disadvantages we have had to labor under. During the war, and from the results of the war, nearly all of our live stock was destroyed, a great portion of it was destroyed, which left us after the war without the means of raising our own meat and such supplies at home, and took away from the South a great portion of our wealth, for we know that cattle, hogs &c., increase in arithmetical progress. If you have a hog, this year she bears so many pigs, and in a couple of years those pigs bear so many, and so on. But we were left without live stock. I have here a table which shows, even under those difficulties, the increase in that respect in the Southern States of live stock. These are very significant figures. It is entirely an accident that I happened to get hold of them last night. The live stock of New York in 1870 was 5,286,421; in 1880, 5,422,238, an increase of 2 per cent. In Pennsylvania it was 4,484,748 in 1870; in 1880, 5,255,204, an increase of 17 per cent. In Georgia, in 1870, it was 2,275,137; in 1880, 3,139,101, an increase of 38 per cent. In Alabama it was 1,606,299 in 1870, and in 1880, 2,586,221, an increase of 61 per cent, and in Mississippi, in 1870, it was 1,724,295, and in 1880, 2,398,334, an increase of 38 per cent. This shows that with all the disadvantages the South had to contend with of their stock cattle being destroyed, the natural advantages of climate and pasturage, to which I attribute it, existing in the South have enabled them to increase more rapidly their live stock than any other of the States of the Union. That shows clearly the advantages which that country offers for immigration and labor. This is an advantage to labor. As I stated in my written reply to your submitted questions, we work but few white laborers in my section of the country. Why? Because they soon become land-owners with the opportunities which present themselves to them. The white men will not be there more than two or three years before he has bought and paid for his land in almost every instance.
By theChairman:
Q. And he becomes an employer himself?
—A. He becomes an employer himself.
Q. Does he usually locate upon the plantation lands along the rivers?
—A. No, sir; he cannot buy this land, because the planter would not divide a large plantation into tracts; he would not sell off a portion of his land without selling the whole.
Q. In how large tracts are the plantations held? Just mention theacreage of some of them that you are acquainted with.
—A. I would say variously from 500 to 2,500 acres in cultivation.
Q. How valuable are these plantations per acre?
—A. That is a question which cannot be answered definitely except in this way: where a planter owns the land, and he is out of debt, the land is not for sale, because he cannot invest his money in anything that is so profitable; but where a planter's property is mortgaged, and the mortgagee wants to foreclose and will foreclose, and there is not in that country the money which the planter can borrow to relieve himself of his indebtedness, he will probably sell his land at a small excess of his debt in order to save something. You see there is a want of capital in that country, and if a planter is involved, as many planters are and have been ever since the war, he must do the best he can. There are many planters in that country who are nothing but agents of the factors, from the fact that the interest and commissions they pay upon the debt amount to more than the rent for the property, and they hold on to it as a home. Therefore, a planter in that condition will sell at a nominal price, whereas a plantation owned and paid for is not for sale.
By Mr.Pugh:
Q. There is really no established market price?
—A. None at all, owing to the necessity of the one to sell and the desire of another to buy.
By theChairman:
Q. At what rates per acre have you known the title to change in some instances?
—A. I have known lands to be bought there, including woodlands and cleared lands, at from $20 to $25 an acre, which would be, say, $40 or $50 an acre for the cleared land, and I have known other planters to refuse $80 an acre, cash.
Q. Do you think that $80 or $100 per acre would be a reasonable price for these plantation lands?
—A. They sold before the war for $120 an acre.
By Mr.Call:
Q. You are speaking now of the alluvial lands?
—A. I am speaking of the alluvial lands on the Mississippi River, cleared, ready for cultivation, with the improvements existing upon them.
By theChairman:
Q. Improved plantations?
—A. Yes, sir.
Q. Upon what price per acre do you think those lands would pay, one year with another, an interest of 6 per cent?
—A. I will best answer that question by the figures of rents which I have given. The rent, without any responsibility attached to the proprietor at all, is from $8 to $10 an acre.
Q. In money?
—A. In money. I will say further that I have been living in that country since 1869, and I have never yet known a year when there has not been a sufficient crop made to pay the rent, without a single exception.
By Mr.Call:
Q. What is left to the tenant after he pays this $10 an acre?
—A. That land produces on an average 400 pounds of lint cotton to the acre, which at 10 cents a pound is $40.
By theChairman:
Q. To what extent is Northern capital availing itself of opportunity to invest in these plantations?
—A. I might say it is limited.
Q. From what fact does that arise?
—A. From the fact that the safety of investments there is just becoming apparent to capitalists. Capitalists up to this time have been afraid to go to the South, owing to the disturbed condition of affairs politically and this very race-issue question. A man does not want to carry his money down there and put it into a country that might be involved in riots and disturbances. Those questions are now just beginning to settle themselves, and capital is beginning to find its way.
Q. Do you anticipate in the near or remote future any further difficulty from the race question?
—A. Not at all, and if we are left to ourselves things will very soon equalize themselves.
Q. You are left to yourselves now, are you not?
—A. We are now.
Q. All you ask is to continue to be let alone?
—A. Just to be let alone. The South, with her natural resources and advantages of climate and soil, feels that she is perfectly able to take care of herself and her affairs, and all she wants is that the legislation of the country, both Federal and State, should be that which will mete out justice to all her citizens, colored as well as white.
Q. Does the South feel as though all she had got to do was to take care of herself, or does she feel a little responsibility for the other section of the country?
—A. She feels, more immediately now, responsibility for that section, for this reason, that the negro population of the South, compared with the white population of the South, might be a dangerous element, butthe negro population, compared with the whole white population of the United States as an integral body, sinks into insignificance. Therefore, the forces which are at work in the South today make us strongly Union. They are directly contrary to what were existing before the war, and there are no people in this Government today who have the same interest in the Federal Union that the people of the Southern States have, and they appreciate it.
Q. You feel that it is to your advantage that the negro population should be dealt with by the forty or fifty millions of whites, that the races should be balanced in that proportion rather than in the proportion that exists between them and the white population of the South alone?
—A. Yes, sir.
Q. The central idea of the South is a national idea, then?
—A. The central idea of the South is more a national idea now than it has been in this respect.
Q. I would use the word "leading" rather than "central" there—the leading idea?
—A. We, of course, claim that we want to manage the internal affairs of our States just as much as New York, or New Hampshire, or Massachusetts would want to manage theirs, but that it is necessary for us to have the guidance and protection of the Government: we want it just as much as either of those States.
Q. Have you traveled considerably through the North?
—A. I have.
Q. What portions of the North have you visited within the last few years?
—A. I have visited Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Hartford, and I might say a number of other points in the States of which they are the chief cities.
Q. While we are speaking of this matter of reciprocal feeling between the sections of country, as you have mentioned the attitude of the South, I should like to know from you, from your personal observation and knowledge, what you find to be that of the North toward the South?
—A. I think it is of the kindliest character. I have never in my life been treated with more consideration than I have been by gentlemen in the East who were most opposed to the South during the war.
Q. I do not refer simply to personal courtesy, but I mean the expression of feeling as between the sections, the general tendency and drift of Northern feeling towards the Southern portions of the country, to the people of the South?
—A. I think, so far as I have been able to observe, that the feeling in the East towards the South is a general anxiety for her prosperity. I would go so far as to speak of it as anxiety for her prosperity.
Q. You think the war of sections is pretty much over?
—A. I think it is obliterated, and for that reason I go back to this point, that our prosperity in the South has begun.
Q. You have described with some minuteness the condition of things among the planters and those who work upon the plantations. I should like to ask this question further, whether any of the negroes along the alluvial bottoms are obtaining ownership of lands in fee-simple?
—A. In very few instances in the alluvial lands. When they make enough money to buy a home they generally go to the hill country, where land can be bought at a much more reasonable price.
Q. With what amount of accumulation will a negro get up and go to the hills?
—A. There are negroes right in my section of the country who have an accumulation clear of all expenses of from a thousand to $3,500 a year.
Q. Do they remain or do they go and buy homesteads for themselves?
—A. They probably remain until they accumulate a few thousand dollars, and then go and buy a home. We encourage it, from the fact that we want the others behind to be stimulated to do the same thing. I will say in that connection that the future of the negro of the South is the alluvial lands.
Q. These plantations?
—A. Not only these plantations particularly. What I mean by alluvial lands are the alluvial lands on the coast and the alluvial lands of the Mississippi Valley, the rich lands where the negro relies on his own energy and exertion rather than on his brains. There is an immigration coming into the older States now.
Q. The older Southern States?
—A. The older Southern States. As they come in the negroes gradually give way and go to the richer lands. For instance, one railroad last year brought into the Mississippi Valley over 10,000 negro immigrants.
Q. From what States?
—A. From the Atlantic and Gulf States.
Q. What became of them?
—A. They were scattered along the alluvial lands of the Mississippi Valley. As the negroes of the Mississippi Valley either immigrate from that valley and go in different directions and buy land, the planters of the Mississippi Valley send out to the older States and replace them with labor from those States. A negro in the older States, probably, to make his support would have to cultivate 15 or 20 acres of land, whereas a negro in the Mississippi Valley can make his support on 8 or 10 acres of land.
Q. Will this result in the ownership of the alluvial lands being transferred to the negro?
—A. No, sir; because as he makes money he goes off.
Q. He is a Chinese immigrant?
—A. I mean by "goes off" he does not go out of the State, but he goes to the hills.
Q. And to smaller ownerships?
—A. To smaller ownerships.
Q. And the aim of the Southern planter is to accommodate this tendency of things to smaller rentings?
—A. Yes, sir.
Q. Do you think a plantation is more productive where, under a general supervision by the planter or the owner, it is let out in small sections to the negroes to cultivate, or is it better to cultivate the plantation as a whole?
—A. It is better to let it out, as I stated in my written answers. The cotton crop of this country is being raised to such an extent by the small white farmers that the large planter can no longer afford to hire and compete with that class of labor who only expend their own energy; consequently the tendency is to make farmers of the negroes.
Q. What chance is there of the planter securing white labor to carry on these plantations?
—A. There is such a small proportion of white labor in the South that it would be difficult for him to find them, and the tide of foreign immigration is just beginning to be turned in that direction. There has been a prejudice against white emigrants going to the South, on account of going among the negroes.
Q. Do you think that is diminishing?
—A. Diminishing yearly.
Q. You mean that immigration from Europe is being employed on the plantations?
—A. Not exactly upon the large cotton plantations, but the smaller plantations are now being converted into farms. For instance, there has been a large immigration of European emigrants into that section of the country between Little Rock and Fort Smith.
Q. Do they, upon these farm or small plantations being converted into farms, work in companionship with the negro laborer?
—A. No; they generally buy the land and work it themselves; they may hire a negro and work with him; they are laborers themselves.
Q. Is there any tendency among the white and colored laborers of any class to work in companionship, or to fraternize at all in labor?
—A. I cannot say that there is. A white man would not take a negro in as a partner to work with him in the field.
Q. And will a white man find any difficulty in hiring another white man and negro to work together side by side in the field?
—A. No, sir; I have them myself working side by side.
Q. There is no prejudice of that kind?
—A. None at all.
Q. No white man inquires whether he can work by himself or is to work in company with a negro? Do they exhibit any reluctance to work in company with the negro?
—A. The class of white people that work inour country for wages comes from Ohio, and Missouri, and Indiana, and that section of country, and I find there is some prejudice among that class of people sometimes, but still there are instances—as I say, I have men from Indiana now myself hired working right in a gang with negroes.
Q. There is no strong tendency in that way, I suppose?
—A. No strong tendency in that way. There are no white laborers from the South proper; at least the number we can hire for wages is so small that it is not sufficient to call it a class.
Q. In the Southern States proper about two thirds of the population is white, is it not?
—A. I do not recollect. According to the census returns I think there are about seven millions of negroes. The census would give the exact statement.
Q. Not far from two thirds of the population, I think, is white. In the Gulf States proper at least one half the population must be white. In what way is the white laboring population of the South employed?
—A. They are employed as small farmers nearly almost entirely.
Q. Not to as great extent as mechanics and artisans?
—A. I suppose there is a liberal proportion of them to the population; we have to have our artisans and mechanics; but as a rule the white population of the South are small farmers, either owners of the land themselves or tenants.
Q. How as to their material prosperity and thrift and saving?
—A. It varies very much. For instance, take the State of Georgia—and I believe it is admitted that Georgia is one of the most thrifty and prosperous of all the Southern States—I think the small farmers are generally self-sustaining; they raise their own supplies.
Q. Do these small white farmers employ negro help to any extent?
—A. To a certain extent. If a man has more land than his family can work he will hire a negro laborer. There is no prejudice against his doing so either on the part of the farmer hiring him or the negro hired.
Q. He may hire some white and other colored laborers, I suppose?
—A. Yes, sir.
Q. Do they work together?
—A. Yes, sir.
Q. How in regard to the value of the hill lands you have spoken of in the State of Arkansas; as compared with the alluvial, what is the difference in value?
—A. It is very great. There are farms in Arkansas that can be bought, partially cleared up, and with some improvements upon them, for from $5 to $20 an acre, less than the rent of fair lands on the river. There is no finer section of country in the world—I say that unhesitatingly—for a foreign immigrant, or the immigrant from the East, or from anywhere, than is afforded to-day in Arkansas and Texas.
Q. And political disturbances are at an end?
—A. We apprehend nothing at all; there is no reason why we should.
Q. You were speaking of the necessity of the education of the laborer of the South, the negro especially. Will you not describe to us the actual condition of the masses of the colored people in the matter of education, to what extent it has progressed, and what facilities and opportunities exist, and what additional are required?
—A. It varies in different sections. For instance, Georgia, and Tennessee are probably ahead of any of the Southern States in point of educating the colored people; they have more facilities; they have negro primary schools and colleges where a man is educated. The education that I was speaking of, more particularly for the negro, is a plain English education, sufficient to enable him to read and write.
Q. What we call up North a common school education?
—A. A common school education. I will illustrate that. Suppose a negro comes to me to make a contract that I have written for him, and he cannot read or write. I offer that contract to him, and I read it to him. He touches a pen and signs his mark to it; there is no obligation attached at all. He says at once, "That man is an educated man; he has the advantage of me; he shows me that contract; I do not know what is in it; I cannot even read it." Therefore a contract made with a negro in that way is almost a nullity; but if he could read that contract himself and sign his own name to it, it would be a very different thing. I never allow a negro to sign a written contract with me before he has taken it home with him and had some friend to read it over and consult with him about it, because I want some obligation attached to my contracts.
Q. It is necessary for you as well as the negro?
—A. Necessary for my protection as well as his.
Q. How many of the negroes on the plantations can comprehend a written contract by reading it, because a man may be somewhat educated and not be able to decipher a contract?
—A. I cannot give you an exact proportion, for it varies to a great extent. I can only say that that number is increasing rapidly.
Q. From what circumstances comes this increase?
—A. From their desire to gain knowledge.
Q. Do you find that desire strong among the colored people?
—A. Very strong indeed; and there are two ideas which a negro possesses that give me great hopes for his future. If I did not believe the negro was capable of sufficient development to make him a responsible small farmer, I should not want to remain in the business that I am any longer, becauseI believe that the development of my business is necessarily based upon the development of the negro and the cultivation of my lands. The negro possesses two remarkable qualifications: one is that he is imitative, and the other is that he has got pride; he wants to dress well; he wants to do as well as anybody else does when you get him aroused, and with these two qualifications I have very great hopes for him in the future.
Q. What do you think of his intellectual and moral qualities and his capacity for development?
—A. There are individual instances I know of where negroes have received and taken a good education. As a class, it would probably be several generations, at any rate, before they would be able to compete with the Caucasian. I believe that the negro is capable of receiving an ordinary English education, and there are instances where they enter professions and become good lawyers. For instance, I know in the town of Greenville, Miss., right across the river from me, a negro attorney, who is a very intelligent man, and I heard one of the leading attorneys in Greenville say he would almost have anybody on the opposite side of a case rather than he would that negro. The sheriff of my county is from Ohio, and a negro, he is a man whom we all support in his office. We are anxious that the negroes should have a fair representation. For instance, you ask for the feeling existing between the proprietor and the negroes. The probate judge of my county is a negro and one of my tenants, and I am here now in New York attending to important business for my county as an appointee of that man. He has upon him the responsibilities of all estates in the county; he is probate judge.
Q. Is he a capable man?
—A. A very capable man, and an excellent, good man, and a very just one.
Q. Do you see any reason why, with fair opportunities assured to himself and to his children, he may not become a useful and competent, American citizen?
—A. We already consider him so.
Q. The question is settled?
—A. I thought you were speaking personally of the man I referred to.
Q. No; I was speaking of the negro generally—the negro race.
—A. Let me understand your question exactly.
Q. Do you see any reason why the negroes, as a component part of the American population, may not, with a fair chance, come to be useful, industrious, and competent to the discharge of the duties of citizenship?
—A. I think they may as a class, but it will take probably generations for them to arrive at that standard.
Q. It has taken us generations to arrive at the standard, has it not?
—A. Yes, sir.
Q. There is some talk about our ancestors having been pirates, I believe. Now, will you state to us what the existing facilities for education are among the negroes?
—A. I can only speak as regards Arkansas. Of course I do not know much of the other States. In Arkansas we have in each county a school board. These boards examine and employ teachers. We are taxed for a school fund, from which these teachers are paid.
Q. What proportion of the colored children attend school, do you think?
—A. On my own property there are five schools, and I think the larger portion, I might say nearly all that are capable of going to school, do go to school.
Q. How many children are there on your own property?
—A. I could scarcely form an idea.
Q. There are five schools?
—A. There are five schools, and I should suppose from 300 to 500 children.
Q. Those are educated in public schools?
—A. Yes, sir.
Q. I understand you to say that nearly all of them attend?
—A. Yes, sir.
Q. For how long a time each year is school kept open?
—A. The schools extend all the year except vacation, I think, which is about three months; but a number of the negroes will withdraw their children from school during cotton-picking season, to help them pick the crop.
Q. Between what ages do they actually attend school?
—A. From 6 to 19. I know a great many of them who are going to school who are 17, 18, and 19, who can just begin to read and write a little.
Q. Do you find any inclination among the older negroes who are past school age to endeavor to read and write?
—A. Not very much, but they are anxious their children should, and appeal to them. In almost every instance where a man has a child who can read and write, he will bring him along with him when he makes a contract. They are very proud of their children being able to read and write.
Q. Are they satisfied, as a rule, with their simply becoming able to read and write, or do they like to have them make a little further progress in mathematics, geography, &c.?
—A. As a class they look to them simply to read and write. They think when they have got that far they know everything; but then there are certain ones who have ambition, just as it is with our own race. There are some men who have tastes for literature, and receive a better education than others do, but it is not the same proportion of the negro race of course that it is with our own. There are instances where negroes are also anxious to obtain a collegiate education, and become school teachers.
Q. I do not know that you are able to state to what extent they actually attend school in the hill districts?
—A. I am not.
Q. You speak both of your own plantation and of other plantations as well as your own in that regard?
—A. I am speaking of the alluvial lands along the Mississippi River.
Q. In Arkansas?
—A. Not only in Arkansas, but in Louisiana and Mississippi; I will say the alluvial lands on the Mississippi River between Memphis and Vicksburg.
Q. Are the negroes on those lands generally having the same opportunities for education that they do on your plantation?
—A. Oh, yes, sir; there is a common school system.
Q. And it is as prevalent in Louisiana and Mississippi as in Arkansas?
—A. I think it is.
Q. What is the nativity of those teachers, as a rule?
—A. They are generally colored people from either the East or the Northwest. There are some white teachers, but very few.
Q. Are any of the white teachers Southern in birth?
—A. There is not a white teacher on my own property; they are all colored teachers on my own property. The proportion of white teachers is very small.
Q. How much do these colored teachers themselves know?
—A. Some of them are remarkably well educated.
Q. And generally earnestly devoted to their work?
—A. Perfectly so.
Q. Or is it simply to get their money?
—A. No; I think some of them really have a desire to see their scholars advance.
Q. Some pride in their race, to have them get on, I suppose?
—A. I think there is a certain pride in that respect; and, again, they want to gain a reputation as teachers.
Q. What compensation does a teacher get?
—A. I think about from $50 to $100 a month.
Q. Do they pay their own expenses, board and shelter?
—A. Yes, sir; but board is cheap, merely nominal.
Q. About what amount?
—A. I should say these teachers can get board for $10 a month.
Q. Is the cost of clothing in your part of the country about the same as here?
—A. This is our market.
Q. You buy the ready-made clothing largely for the population in general, I suppose?
—A. We buy both ready-made clothing and cloth to make up.
Q. I suppose the colored population hardly buy custom goods?
—A. A great many of them buy the cloth, and some of their women are as goodtailoresses as you would find anywhere. They buy the cloth and make it up themselves.
Q. That must bring a suit of clothes pretty cheap in a colored family; they really expend nothing but buy the cloth themselves?
—A. They sell very good jeans cloth there at 35 or 40 cents a yard; they generally wear jeans.
Q. All seasons of the year?
—A. Generally in all seasons of the year. In the summer time a laboring man hardly ever wears a coat at all.
Q. What do you think an average colored Southern laborer expends per annum for his clothing, say the head of the family, the man—what does it cost him for clothing a year?
—A. I cannot give you a definite answer. I will only say that we who are the producers of cotton are very glad to see them get in a prosperous condition in order that there may be more consumption, and when a man is prosperous he will buy two suits of clothes, where if he is not prosperous he will make one do.
Q. We have had a good deal of testimony as to what it actually costs a Northern laborer a year for clothing. I have no desire to show that any laborers dress cheaply or poorly; I merely want to get an idea of the relative cost of the laboring man living North or South, in the item of clothing?
—A. I can sell and do sell a man a pair of jeans pants and a coat from $7 to $12 per suit.
Q. How many suits will he want in a year?
—A. That will depend on his condition and his ability to pay me. If he is a prosperous man and beginning to accumulate he will make one do. Whenever a negro begins to accumulate he goes to extremes; he does not want to buy anything; he wants to accumulate rapidly. Where a man is not doing so well, and there is little doubt of his ability to pay, he would probably want several suits; but I would confine him to one or two.
Q. The same is true, I suppose, of his wife and children?
—A. Yes, sir.
Q. But you look on the matter of clothing as a much less expensive item in the laborer's account in your country than here in the North where the climate is colder, I suppose?
—A. Yes, sir. What absorbs the profit of the laborers with us is their want of providence; that is, if they get surplus money they throw it away for useless articles.
Q. It has been suggested that a postal savings bank might be a good thing as a place of deposit of the savings of the colored population of the South; they might feel some confidence in an institution of that kind, and that it would be a beneficial thing to them. What is your own judgment?
—A. I advocate it and approve it, and indeed propose to start a savings bank in our own neighborhood. In this connection I will mention anotherimportant feature. In the Mississippi Valley—and when I speak of the Mississippi Valley I mean both sides of the river, Arkansas and Louisiana on one side and Mississippi on the other—there are numbers of negroes who have considerable accumulations and use their surplus to advance to other negroes. For instance, there are negroes right on our property who have accumulated enough to help out certain others, as they express it, and they use their money as an investment in that way. For instance one negro who has got something will advance it to another negro and take a mortgage on his crop. Consequently there are numbers of them who are getting advances from their co-laborers, and I always give them that opportunity when they want it. My idea of the adjustment in the Mississippi Valley, seeing what I can make from the mercantile portion of my business, is that it is simply my revenue that I get from the rent of my land as an investment on my capital; and whenever a negro can get his own merchant in New Orleans—a number of them have very good factors in New Orleans and ship their cotton direct—I encourage it. When one negro wants to help out another, I give him the privilege of doing it and encourage it. There are several negroes, a great many, not a few in Chicot County to-day who have their own factors in New Orleans, ship their own goods, and receive their own accounts of sales.
Q. They are not owners of alluvial lands?
—A. They are not owners at all; they are tenants.
Q. I suppose some time they will be liable to make some accumulations, and they will now and then own a plantation?
—A. I do know of one instance on the river below Vicksburg where the old property of Mr. Davis was bought by a former slave of his.
Q. Is that the only instance?
—A. The only instance I know of.
Q. One question we have been accustomed to put is as to the actual personal feeling that exists between the laborers and capitalists of different parts of the country. What is the feeling between the laborers, colored and white, and the owners of the land and of capital at the South?
—A. I confine my replies to my own section, because I am not familiar with the others. I have answered that question in the written answers. The feeling is harmonious and good, as I have expressed it there. The negro naturally looks to the planter for advice and for assistance, and the planter looks to his laborers for the development of his property. Consequently their interests are identical and their feelings good.
Q. You have alluded once or twice to the pressure of outside, and I suppose Northern, opinion; I assume that you mean political opinion in the past and the desirability that it should cease. What is the fact as to aprogressive disintegration of the solid Republican or solid negro vote of the South? What are the chances of its dividing, and of the white vote dividing? We hear now of a "solid South," colored on the one side and white on the other. What prospect is there of a division in that regard; to what extent does it exist, or is it going on?
—A. The negroes of the South are already divided in their votes. There are a great many who vote with the proprietors of the properties. There are instances where they vote with what they call their Republican friends. A few years ago in the South any man who was an escaped convict from one of your penitentiaries here who would come down to that country and tell the negroes that he was one of General Grant's soldiers, and fought to free him, would vote the last one out; but any of those negroes would come to me at that very time with his money and get me to save it for him, and take care of it for him. He would put all his confidence in me so far as his money was concerned, but when it would come to politics he would vote with this man, who probably did not own the coat he had on his back. Those kind of inferences were what did do us in the South very material damage. Let me illustrate that by a riot in my own county. In Chicot County, in 1872, there was a proposition to impose upon the county a railroad tax of $250,000 for the purpose of building a railroad.
Q. What proportion of the taxable property of the county would that have been?
—A. Our whole assessed valuation was about $1,500,000 at that time. This was brought out by a promise that if the appropriation was made, the levees on our river should be built and this road would run on the levees. At that time the whole of the local government in Chicot County was in the hands of men who did not own any property in the county, and had just come down there and been elected by the negroes, who have a very large majority in that county. This tax was a very great imposition upon us. At that time there was a negro attorney at Lake Village, who was one of the prime movers in this thing. The planters knew that this was only intended as a speculation upon the county, for the vote was afterwards taken, the appropriation was made, and not one foot of levee was put up, and not one foot of that railroad was built in Chicot County. Still we are mandamused now for the interest on that debt that was put on us by that kind of influence. One of our planters was remonstrating with this negro attorney about this debt and told him it was an imposition on the property owners, and that the thing ought not to be done, when the man became violent and insolent, and it resulted in a difficulty between this planter and the negro. The planter had a little pen-knife in his pocket, the blade not longer than my little finger; hestruck the negro with it and it happened accidentally to hit him on a vital point and killed him. The sheriff of the county was a negro. The planter, with two innocent parties in whose house this occurrence took place at the county-seat, in Lake Village, was arrested and lodged in jail. A few days afterwards—probably not more than two or three—nearly every negro in the county was summoned to Lake Village, and they rose like so many locusts, coming in from every direction, took those three men out of jail shot them to pieces, murdered them. It was such an outrage that the people from Memphis and Vicksburg and from the hill countries, commenced to come in there with companies, started down with companies. On investigation we found out that the sheriff of the county had exercised his authority to send out to the ignorant negroes of the county and summon them to the village, and these fellows went because they were afraid not to obey the mandate of the sheriff. At that time feeling was running very high, and these people were anxious to come in and quell this riot, but a few of us who were more prudent, a few of the leading planters of the county, got together, sent these different companies word not to come there, that we did not want them in the county; some of the companies were already on their way to Chicot County, thinking the people there were going to be massacred. A great many of our people had to run away from their homes for several days; but we took the ground that we would let the thing take its natural course. As soon as things quieted down, which they did so partially in three or four days, some of our gentlemen who had gone off with their families returned, and it resulted in our arresting a few of the ringleaders in the county. The courts and the administration were all at that time in the hands of persons not identified with the interests of the county, and it was impossible for us to get justice meted out. We saved a massacre of the negroes of the county, but we never could bring those men to any kind of punishment before the courts, and finally we came to a compromise with them, that if they would leave the county we would withdraw the suit against them, and that was the way the thing was ended. Now, I do not believe you could get up a riot in Chicot County because I think there are many intelligent negroes there who would not permit it. Those are the kind of race issues that I referred to. Relieve us of that sort of thing, and leave our government to ourselves and our people, and give to the negro the same protection the white man has, but do not give him any more. Do not let him feel that he has the United States Government standing behind him, and that he is the child of the United States Government to be taken care of, but that he must rely on his ownresources and energy for his living, and time will solve the question, and the demand for his labor will protect him.
Q. Do you find that the feeling among the negroes which resulted in the exodus of a few years ago has been allayed and perhaps has disappeared?
—A. I will tell you something that is rather amusing about that. The first that I heard of a negro exodus in my section of the country—it was to Kansas—was my manager coming into my room one morning and saying that the negroes were going out to the river to go to Kansas. I said, "It is several miles to the river; how are they going?" Said he, "They are toting their things out on their heads." Said I, "Go right at once there and offer them the wagons on the plantation to haul the things. What is the matter?" Said he, "I don't know; I went out this morning and summoned the hands to the field, but they say they are all going to Kansas." I got on my horse and rode out and met a negro who had been my engineer. I said to him, "What is the matter, where are you all going?" He stopped right on the road and said, "Mr. Calhoun, you never have deceived me, and I am going to tell you what is the matter. There were two men came through here last week, one night, and said 'You see this picture?' There is a picture of a farm in Kansas for me that General Grant has bought out there for me. That is so because my name is on the back of it, and here is my ticket; that carries me to Kansas." Said I, "Let me see it." He showed me a piece of pasteboard that had printed on it "Good for one trip to Kansas." Said I, "What did you pay him for this?" He said, "We paid him $2 a piece." "How many of you are in this thing?" "Over eighty of us are in this thing." Said I, "That man then swindled you out of $160; he is an imposter; there is no farm bought for you in Kansas." I saw that the time for me to remonstrate with them was not then; they were on their way to the Mississippi River, and I let them all go. After they got out there I went and expostulated with them; told them of the difference in climate, soil, and everything else that they were accustomed to, and that if they went there many of them would lose their families and children. They would not listen to me. They went on to the river bank, and those negroes who went out there owed me over $109,000.
Q. How many of them were there? Eighty I think you said?
—A. There were 80, I think. Once, I suppose, there were 150 negroes, perhaps more, on the bank of the river. They were not at a regular landing. They went out to the intermediate points where a boat would not be compelled to land. We notified all the boats coming up the river not to land at this point. I did not want these negroes to go off, being satisfied that they weregoing to their ruin if they did; that they were leaving comfortable homes; many of them had sold their mules or given them away at a mere sacrifice. One negro sold a mule worth $150 for $15 to get off. They opened their potato-houses, they opened their corn-cribs and scattered the corn, giving it away to everybody that would offer them five cents a bushel. I had given two of these people a piece of land, the productions of all of which they were to have for bringing it into cultivation and improving it. Knowing the negro nature as I do, and knowing that he would not want anybody to derive the benefit of something that he thought he was entitled to, I got two white men in the county to come and offer me to take this piece of land and cultivate it on shares with me, giving me one half its product, whereas with them I was entitled to nothing. As soon as those two fellows found out that I had made a good bargain for their land they went back home from the river bank, and as soon as they went back all the rest followed. Then I called the whole plantation up and told them to appoint two representatives and that I would send them to Kansas at my own expense to examine into this matter and report to them. These two men went to Kansas, came back, and reported the true condition of affairs; and now if what they call in that country "a poor white man"—the negro's expression—goes through the country and says "Kansas," they almost want to mob him. That was the result of the Kansas movement.
Q. What has become of those who went to Kansas?
—A. Many of them have returned and many have died; numbers of them have died. Quite a large number went to Washington County Mississippi, just opposite me.
Q. From time to time, at Washington, efforts are being made to secure public lands in the Territories, the Indian Territory and elsewhere, for the purpose of colonizing such tracts with negroes. Do you think there is any sort of occasion for that?
—A. None in the world. If the alluvial lands on the Mississippi River were protected from overflow and brought into a condition where they could be cultivated they would afford all the homes, and of the best character, that the negroes could possibly want in the South, and the natural tendency is to come to just such lands.
Q. And the negroes prefer to be there to anywhere else?
—A. Those that come, I notice, never go back.
Q. You suggested the improvement of the levees. What is the necessity, and in what degree is it difficult for those residing along the river banks to protect themselves?
—A. I am the president of the levee board of Chicot County. The plan which has been suggested by the Mississippi River Commission and Mr. Eads, as their chief engineer, is unquestionably the correct one for the improvement of the Mississippi River. Weknow this not only from theory, but from long experience with the river, those of us who have lived there. The Mississippi River being, as it is generally termed, the "Father of Waters," and passing through several States, it is almost a national system, and it would be impossible for any system to be adopted by the States which would be local. Consequently it is imperatively the duty of the Government of the United States to take care of the improvement of the Mississippi River. There are certain sections of the Mississippi River that are naturally above overflow, made so by cut-offs. The fall of the Mississippi River is about four inches to the mile. Consequently, when there is one of those large bends, where the river runs around where the cut-off is, no increase of water is needed. The fall being four inches to the mile, the lands just above the cut-off are made higher and above overflow, whereas just below, the lands are overflowed or become liable to overflow. The improvement of the Mississippi River itself for commercial purposes, as well as the protection of the lands, is dependent upon the building of the levees, for the levees of course confine the water within its banks, and give not only a greater volumn of water, but greater velocity for scouring purposes, which scours out the sand bars that are formed continually on the river. Captain Eads's plan of forming jetties where the banks cave, saves this deposit, as it were, in the water, which makes the sand bars. A mattress is put against the caving banks which prevents the alluvial land caving into the river which forms the sand bars below. Then the increased volumn and increased velocity of the water wash out the channel, and improve it for commercial purposes, answering the object of protecting the land, and at the same time opening that immense channel for commerce.
Again, there are very important lines of railroad that are being built up and down either bank of the Mississippi River, and it is necessary they should be protected for commercial purposes, as well as that the Mississippi River should be improved for commercial purposes, and they can only be protected by the building of levees. We who have been on the river, and who feel that we are familiar with it, have closely watched the course of the Commission, and I can only say, as an expression of the opinion of the people, that we indorse what the Commission are doing.
Q. And desire still more of it?
—A. Yes, sir; it is absolutely necessary. What has already been expended by the Government would be absolutely useless unless additional appropriations are made to complete the work. I would like to call your attention to this point. The Atchafalaya, in Louisiana, is a stream which runs from just about the mouth of Red River into the Gulf of Mexico. The fall from the mouth of the Atchafalaya andRed River to the Gulf of Mexico is very much greater than the fall from the mouth of Red River to the Gulf by way of New Orleans down the Mississippi River. A few years ago the Atchafalaya was a stream which could be waded across, but owing to the current gradually going through it, it commenced to wash out until now it has got to be a stream 100 feet deep.
Q. Is there or not any perceptible increase or diminution of the column of the Mississippi itself as compared with 25, or 50, or 100 years ago?
—A. We think that our waters are higher now than they have ever been before.
Q. Greater extremes, or is there a uniform flow?
—A. A larger uniform flow, and it is attributed to the destruction of the forests, though that is mere theory. One of the arguments, at any rate, is that it is owing to the destruction of the forests in the Northwest, which causes more rain storms and gives a larger rainfall.
Q. I have heard the idea advanced that the destruction of the woods and timber about the headwaters would, in case of rain, lead to a more rapid deposit in the stream, it would not be held back by the swampy nature of the soil, and so you might have more sudden rises and falls in the river than formerly without the volume of water or the uniform flow being increased or lessened?
—A. I think—at least I have heard it so expressed by men experienced on the river—that the flow of the Mississippi River is greater now than it was formerly.
Q. That one year with another, more water runs down the channel?
—A. We can see a slight increase of the water of the Mississippi River. I do not know how it may increase in the future, or if it will at all, but that is the opinion of people there now. The point I want to call your attention to specifically is the necessity for the prevention of the water of the Red River going down through the Atchafalaya, for if the Atchafalaya washes out it leaves New Orleans, a large commercial city, upon, as it were, an inland sea. The waters which overflow from the banks of the Mississippi River on the front of Arkansas go over into the Red River and never come back into the Mississippi River any more until they come out at the mouth of the Red River. Just at the mouth of Red River, and before Red River reaches the Mississippi, is the Atchafalaya. So that all of this overflow water that could be kept in the Mississippi River by building the levees on the front of Arkansas, now goes into Red River and helps to wash out the Atchafalaya, which will ruin the city of New Orleans if that is not prevented. It is a very strong commercial point, for the commerce of New Orleans is a matter to be considered in our affairs.
Q. I suppose there is no doubt that the Atchafalaya furnishes an outlet, which relieves your plantations very much?
—A. No, sir; it does not affect where I live at all.
Q. Below the Red River, in Louisiana, is it not a relief in case of an overflow?
—A. A partial relief; but in Louisiana, when you get down that far, they pretty much have their system of levees built, which protect the sugar district; there are only probably a few gaps; and the Mississippi River, when it gets that far down, does not rise in the same proportion that it does where I live, 500 miles above. The mouth of the Atchafalaya is 500 miles below where I am.
Q. Has this increased drainage from the Atchafalaya resulted in any injury to the navigation of the river as far north?
—A. Not as yet; but if it is not stopped—the commission realize the fact I am now telling you—if it is not checked, the whole Mississippi River will naturally turn through the Atchafalaya, because the fall is so much greater.
Q. How do they propose to check it?
—A. That is a matter the commission and scientific engineers would have to decide.
Q. Can they block it at the outlet of the Red River?
—A. They propose to check it principally by stopping the water from the Mississippi River that goes into the Red River. There would in that way be an enormous quantity of water kept out of Red River. That would be one method. What the engineers would consider sufficient or necessary to be done, of course I would not venture to express an opinion upon.
Q. What danger is there to the large mass of capital invested in these alluvial lands, unless something is done to prevent the overflows of which you speak?
—A. The lands that are now liable to overflow are almost entirely abandoned.
Q. To how large an extent are they now abandoned?
—A. Taking in the whole of Mississippi Valley proper, from Memphis down.
Q. Has there been any computation or reasonable estimate that you know of the value of those lands affected by the overflow?
—A. I have never heard of it; but I will say that those lands which are liable to overflow now, if brought into cultivation, are just as valuable as any we are cultivating; probably more so, because they have the alluvial deposits upon them. There is a deposit there from 3 to 4 inches.
Q. You have no idea of the extent of those lands?
—A. I cannot give you the proportion. I will simply say it is a very large proportion.
Q. A third, or a half, or a quarter?
—A. More than a half. I saw it estimated some time ago, at least I will give it as a statement published in thePlanters' Journal, published in Vicksburgh, that there are thirteencounties on the Mississippi River which, if all cleared up and put into cultivation, are capable of producing the entire cotton crop of the United States, and I have heard the question discussed.
Q. What prevents their being cleared up and put into cultivation?
—A. Simply the overflow.
Q. Have they ever been cleared as yet?
—A. A great portion of them; and now destroyed because the levee system is not complete. On these lands all the negro labor which is not found profitable on the poorer lands in the older States, could be made extremely profitable, not only to the proprietors of the lands, but to the laborers themselves.
Q. Do you think it would be within limit to say that one half of the alluvial plantation lands, such as you have described in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, is now practically destroyed by reason of this overflow occasioned by the destruction of the levee system?
—A. Yes, sir.
Q. At least one half?
—A. At least one half of that which has been in cultivation, and which can be brought into cultivation.
Q. Of that which is thus useless now, what portion has been formerly under cultivation?
—A. It would be impossible for any one to form an estimate, because it is so varied.
Q. The amount of land that has been improved and which is now destroyed by reason of the overflow, you cannot state?
—A. I cannot state it accurately; I will state it approximately; I should say at least one third.
Q. One third of the entire amount that has been improved is now destroyed by reason of the overflow, resulting from imperfections in the levee system?
—A. Yes, sir; that is what I mean to say.
Q. And of that which has not been improved but might be improved, how much?
—A. At least half.
As I have devoted some space to the general condition of labor in the whole country, and as some of my statements and conclusions may be looked upon as extravagant, I deem it very pertinent to add to the appendix a portion of the testimony of Dr. R. Heber Newton, given before Senator Blair's Committee on the "Relations between Capital and Labor," in New York City, September 18, 1883 (Vol. II., p. 535). Dr. Newton is recognized as a clear thinker and a ready writer not only on theological but on economicquestions as well. His testimony on the points to which I have asked attention was as follows: