THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW 51 



siderable addition to his small fortune. Even when he had no 

 occasion himself for the labor of the young Negroes as soon as 

 they were strong enough to work, he could hire them at a profit ; 

 many small landowners derived a good income from this letting 

 of slaves who had been trained by them for some mechanical 

 trade. 



The landowner whose entire holding consisted of soil on the 

 ridge was by no means so well off as the members of his own 

 class who owned land on the small streams. The expression 

 "po' white," so freely used by the slaves as a term of opprobrium, 

 was applied especially to these inhabitants of the highlands. 

 The narrowness of their fortunes was disclosed in many ways 

 in the sallowness of their complexions, resulting chiefly from in- 

 sufficient and unwholesome food in the raggedness of the cloth- 

 ing in the bareness and discomfort of their cabins, which were 

 mere hovels with the most slovenly surroundings and in the 

 thinness and weakness of the few cattle they possessed. No- 

 where could there be found a population more wretched in some 

 respects than this section of the Southern whites, the in- 

 habitants of the ridge and pine barrens, men and women who had 

 no interest in the institution of slavery and whose condition of 

 extreme poverty was partly due to the system of large planta- 

 tions. The abundance of Negroes diminished the calls for the 

 labor of white men, which might have been furnished by this 

 class, and the engrossment of land into great states shut them off 

 from the most productive soil. 



The poor white man of energy and intelligence could look 

 forward to but one career which gave him a certain opportunity 

 to improve his condition. He could not hope to get anything but 

 a bare livelihood out of his impoverished acres; the slave me- 

 chanics stood in the way of his securing work in any local handi- 

 craft, and there were no manufacturing towns where he could 

 obtain a position in a factory; but throughout the South there 

 was a constant need of faithful and resolute overseers. From 

 the point of view of the indigent class of whites, the overseerships 

 were most desirable, not only as indicating a social advance in 

 life, but as offering a very sure prospect of accumulating a com- 

 petency. This was the beginning of many considerable fortunes 

 in lands and slaves. 



