the Federal constitution. In
the sugar-growing districts of Louisiana the colored and white people
live upon terms of friendship and cordiality. In these districts there
are thousands of colored men, who before the war were slaves, who now
pay taxes upon property, assessed in their own names, ranging in value
from five hundred to fifty thousand dollars. They produce principally
rice and sugar. It is a self-evident fact that the labor of the
colored men produces two-thirds of all the cotton raised in the South,
four-fifths of the sugar, and nine-tenths of all the rice.

"In the cotton sections of Louisiana the colored men work mostly on
shares, and here and there some of them have accumulated a little
money; but, as a rule, they make fortunes for the landlords and die in
poverty because of no fault of their own. Rent here, as everywhere
else, pulls the laborer down, and keeps him down. What remains to him
after the landlord has taken his _share_, goes to the Jew shopkeepers
and other middle men at crossroads, who will not be satisfied with any
profit less than one hundred to one hundred and fifty per cent.

"But the sugar districts of Louisiana are like oases in the desert.
Vacuum pans, steam cars, fine machinery and smiling faces are to be
met on every hand. Colored laborers find employment very readily in
the sugar districts from October to February; and during
cultivation-time, in many places, the colored laborers receive _as
high as one dollar and twenty cents per day_, and during the grinding
season, which is the harvest time, laborers receive from one dollar
and twenty-five cents to one dollar and fifty cents per day in the
field and seventy-five cents for one half of the night. At this
season we run the sugar machinery night and day. I should not omit to
state that colored men are, in the majority of cases, employed as
engineers at our sugar mills, and receive from two to two and a half
dollars per day:

"You will be surprised when I tell you that the most of the
bricklaying and plastering work, and the blacksmithing and
carpentering work is done in the sugar districts by colored men, who
average three dollars per day for their work.

"There are fifty-eight parishes in Louisiana, twenty-four of them
being sugar districts. To illustrate the degree of toleration which
obtains in the cotton and sugar growing districts, take the following
statement: In the Louisiana House of Representatives there are
thirteen co