15 



x 



Gentlemen, apply these questions which I have asked in regard to 

 the period from 1840 to 1860 to the period that has elapsed from 1870 

 to 1880. Mark the changes and the improvement; mark the first 

 fruits of liberty, and tell me then if that progress which has been 

 accomplished in this last decade, great as it is, is more than the 

 faintest shadow of that which ma}* be in the near future. What do 

 we Northern men want to see in this exhibition ? 



We hear of trash-cleaners that will give a good j'ield of lint in 

 good condition from the dirtiest boll picked at the end of the sea- 

 son to save it, boll and lint together. The Ralston trash-cleaner, 

 made in Brenham, Tex., is one. The machine made b}* Mr. Clarke 

 of your own city is another. 



We want you to put up 3-0111* best cotton in one hundred and 

 twenty pound bales, pressed on the farm with the little Dederick 

 press that compresses it to forty pounds to the cubic foot, hard as 

 elm-wood, and as little liable to soak water, wired on the cotton> 

 and sent to market in a clean meal-sack. 



We want extra stapled cotton for fine spinning to be combed, not 

 carded ; and such cotton ought to be ginned on the new roller-gins, 

 now made in England, that are said to beat the saw-gin, not only in 

 quality, but in quantity. 



We want to see all the crude devices proposed to be used in 

 picking, although we don't much believe in them. 



Somebody is wrong about the Clement attachment. Who is it? 

 The exhibition will show. 



We want to see the colored farmers' cotton in competition with the 

 white farmers'. We want to prove 103*011 that education pays, and 

 that the more faith 3*011 have in the capncit3* of 3*our own black 

 laborers, the better cotton will become 3*ear by year. 



Do 3*011 know that 3*011 are the most amusingly inconsistent people 

 on the face of the earth? I have had a very wide correspondence in 

 your States, and I guess I have asked more questions of you and 

 about 3*011, by letter, circular, and by word of mouth, than any 

 Yankee that ever lived ; and now I am going to give you a summary 

 of 3'our own testimony about the nigger, spelt with two #'s, as 3*01* 

 spell it. 



You will see how conclusive it is, and you will each of 3*ou be able 

 to add some one or more facts to sustain every point. I wish you 

 would give them to me ; but I will say one thing, the harshest con- 

 demnation of the colored men I ever heard has come from Northern 

 men. Now to our testimony, positive in all its points, and good 

 before any jury in the land : 



I find that, having become free, the black women take such poor 

 care of the babies, that the colored population has increased faster 

 than the whites have migrated to Texas : therefore the census is 

 going to show a much larger relative gain of niggers than any one 

 dreamed of. 



I am informed that the nigger is the laziest and best laborer on the 

 face of the earth ; that he cares no more for comfort and cleanliness 



