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much length, say by the year ; they prefer “job-work.” There is a great inclination to 
work only at certain times of the year, during harvest, hemp-breaking, and corn- 
cutting. At these times they will demand the most exorbitant prices, in order to spend 
a large portion of the year in idleness. 
Princess Anne, Va.—The great and only remedy for all of our “ills” is immigration. 
Our large tracts must be divided up into small farms, and these farms cultivated by 
the owners. The farmers in Princess Anne and Norfolk Counties are growing poorer 
every year. 
Loudoun, Va.—Farmers should adopt some modification of what is known in Europe 
as the “allotment” system of labor: provide our colored laborers with homes on the 
farms, and, through their known strong local attachments, fix them to the freeholds. 
Educate them, increasing their wants and raising them in the scale of being. 
Charlotie, Va.—Tiie alone can settle the labor question. Nor are we prepared to say 
that the labor of the free blacks will eventually be that to be relied upon or that 
which will cultivate the lands of Virginia. The indications at present are that it will 
be set aside, and that white labor and that of the owners of the soil will eventually be 
the only reliable sort. 
These evils can be modified, if not effectually remedied. In the first 
place, the tenant-share system—the partnership in which the responsi- 
bility is all on one side; a business in which one party furnishes all the 
money and vacates all control in its use, and the other supplies the 
muscle for the work without brains to direct it—is a confessed failure, 
verifying the predictions made in the monthly report of January, 1870: 
1. It is not a voluntary association from similarity of aims and interests, but an un- 
willing concession to the freedman’s desire to become a proprietor, or an inability to 
make prompt payments of wages in cash. 
2. It is a complicated copartuership, opening the door to fraud on one side and un- 
faithfulness and desertion on the other. 
3. It is not equitable between the freedmen, as it renders impossible a proper dis- 
crimination between the industrious and the idle, the dexterous and the incapable. 
4, It leaves uncontrolled and almost undirected those who have neyer been subject 
to self-management or self-restraint. 
5. It almost invariably inspires exaggerated expectations, leads to improvident 
drafts upon an uncertain future income, and ends in disappointment and discourage- 
ment. 
6. It debars the proprietor from exercising a control over the plantation and its 
operations essential to present success, and the permanent improvement of the estate. 
As was said then, “ the best labor contract is the simplest: stipulated 
wages for faithful service, which shall be paid promptly, asagreed, in cash, 
with an equitable portion reserved to the end of the year, both to secure 
the planter against having his cotton unpicked and to give the freedman 
a surplus for accumulation or the supply of other than daily wants.” If 
he refuses to work in this way—and the change might be difficult—he 
should be patiently taught to submit his ]ebor to the direction of higher 
intelligence. Opposed to the wages plan is his natural desire for inde- 
pendence, which isillustrated by a statement of our Winston (Mississippi) 
correspondent, that “freedmen are buying up homes of their own, and 
carnot now be hired to any extent by the white population.” If he will 
not hire for wages, it has been shown that the best form of co-operation 
is that which enables the employer to control his property, not allowing 
his provisions to be eaten up in junketing and his forage by horses and 
mules that do not plow; one in which he directs personally or by a com- 
petent manager the operations of the plantation, and advances only the 
requisite amount of provisions in lieu of board. An equitable share 
system, in which labor should be wisely directed by friendly co-opera- 
tion, would avoid the evils of the irresponsible tenant-share system. 
The principal objection to it—and one which begs the whole question— 
is that the two parties cannot co-operate, even to this extent. If such is 
the case, and the incompatibility cannot be overcome, and if then the 
wages system cannot be accepted, let each go to work on his own account 
and solve the labor question according to individual preferences and 
capabilities. 
