SOUTHERN AGRICULTURE. 253 



importance, I will only say, in the absence of positive proof, that it is 

 not improbable. Certainly, far more of the hands that actually hold 

 the plow are white than is popularly supposed. These laborers gener- 

 ally work for themselves or their parents ; and as they do not ostensibly 

 enter the labor market, their numerical importance goes unnoticed. 



Secondly, there is the negro farm hand, who contributes the great 

 bulk of the hired labor and is a sort of pace-maker to the white 

 laborer. 



Negro Labor in Southern Agriculture. 



I shall speak later of the better qualities of the negro ; but at this 

 point I must call attention to the widespread prevalence of certain 

 evils which constitute a serious problem in southern agriculture. 

 The generation of the race not yet sobered by middle age, who have 

 never known, on the one hand, the fine discipline of the ante-bellum 

 masters, nor have yet, on the other hand, learned self-discipline in the 

 more trying conditions of freedom, have degenerated to a level lower 

 than any occupied by their race since its African barbarity, and lower, 

 let us hope, than it will ever occupy again. Not only the morals, but 

 — what bears more directly on the present inquiry — the efficiency and 

 reliability of the mass of the negro laborers below the age of forty are 

 injured to a considerable degree by the group of vices represented by 

 the pocket pistol, liquor, a deck of cards and a mistress. A certain 

 dash of wildness marks youth under all colors; but such general 

 statements are by no means adequate to cover the case of the post- 

 bellum southern negro. 



Not only are the higher qualities of the laborer depending on 

 character thus destroyed, but this moral degradation has necessarily 

 incurred physical degeneration by initiating the negro into a cata- 

 logue of diseases to which his race was forty years ago a stranger. 

 Some investigators assert that something like 70 per cent, of the race 

 are infected with a dangerous type of disease incident to vice.* And 

 yet he works ; for his constitution offers a strange resistance to a form 

 of poison that completely invalids the white man, but frequently in- 

 jures the negro no further than seriously to impair with lassitude and 

 weakness that splendid body his inheritance by nature. 



Not only is the negro, like all ignorant labor, inefficient, expen- 

 sive and unprogressive, but he is suited to only a few staple crops, to 

 the culture of which he has been reared. The negro is an inveterate 

 'eottontot' and conspires with the lien system to keep southern agri- 

 culture to that staple. His preference for cotton is shown by the fact 

 that 71.9 per cent, of the negro farmers of the south are cotton farmers, 

 as against 28.5 per cent, of the white farmers. 



* Undeniably the condition is appalling; I would, however, accept such large 

 per cents, with caution. 



