THE TIM BUNKER PAPERS. 287 



that one has to put into the market. The unfriendliness 

 of the climate to the white laborer is greatly overestimated. 

 This story has been industriously circulated by interested 

 parties, as an apology for slave labor. When I took Mrs. 

 Bunker down to New Orleans seven years ago, I found 

 the most of the labor about the wharves and cotton presses 

 was performed by men of European birth. Irishmen and 

 Germans were plenty as laborers and mechanics, and they 

 suffered as little inconvenience from the heat as Africans. 

 When I went up on to the cotton plantations, I found the 

 planters employing Irishmen to ditch and drain where 

 they would not put their negroes. I found Scotchmen 

 and Xew Englanders settled there, and enduring the 

 climate perfectly well. It is well known that multitudes 

 of Germans and Hungarians have gone into Texas, still 

 further South, and there raise cotton quite as safely and 

 more economically than it could be done by slave labor. 

 Our soldiers have stood the climate well, and it is my 

 private opinion that labor in a cotton field isn t any harder 

 or more dangerous than fighting. That s the opinion of 

 the boys Avho have spent two and three years there in 

 places where they couldn t always take care of themselves. 

 I guess it will do to risk them when they can build houses 

 of their own, and have the comforts of northern homes 

 around them. The fact is, climate has the credit of a good 

 deal of mortality that really belongs to whiskey. Of 

 course in clearing up a new country there will be exposure 

 to malaria and sickness. But when the forests are cleared 

 and the swamps are drained, as they will be by northern 

 skill, the risk of health and life will deter no one from go 

 ing South. 



Capital will be the great want of the emigrant to the 

 South. There is plenty of cheap land to be bought, and 

 plantations enough to be cheaply leased. Money must be 

 had for this, and for stock and labor. According to John s 

 figuring, a man wants forty-four dollars for every acre in 



