34 NEGRO AND WHITE MECHANICS. [CHAP. XXII. 



their game, has caused the soil, previously level and 

 unbroken, to be cut into by torrents, so that deep 

 gullies may everywhere be seen ; and I am assured 

 that a large proportion of the fish, formerly so 

 abundant in the Chatahoochie, have been stifled by 

 the mud. 



The water-power at the rapids has been recently 

 applied to some newly-erected cotton mills, and 

 already an anti-free-trade party is beginning to be 

 formed. The masters of these factories hope, by 

 excluding coloured men or, in other words, slaves 

 from all participation in the business, to render it 

 a genteel employment for white operatives ; a mea 

 sure which places in a strong light the inconsistencies 

 entailed upon a community by slavery and the an 

 tagonism of races, for there are numbers of coloured 

 mechanics in all these Southern States very expert 

 at trades requiring much more skill and knowledge 

 than the functions of ordinary work-people in fac 

 tories. Several New Englanders, indeed, who have 

 come from the North to South Carolina and Georgia, 

 complain to me that they cannot push on their 

 children here, as carpenters, cabinet-makers, black 

 smiths, and in other such crafts, because the planters 

 bring up the most intelligent of their slaves to these 

 occupations. The landlord of an inn confessed to 

 me, that, being a carrier, he felt himself obliged to 

 have various kinds of work done by coloured artisans, 

 because they were the slaves of planters who employed 

 him in his own line. &quot; They interfere,&quot; said he, 

 &quot;with the fair competition of white mechanics, by 

 whom I could have got the work better done.&quot; 



