. That class of people do not. In the last few years--I
might say almost within the last two years--Northern capital
has begun to seek investment in our section of the country,
but only upon mortgages on real estate. The class of
storekeepers I allude to generally have no real estate at
all; they only have their stores.

Q. Your system by which the planter makes a market for the
surplus productions of the laborers upon his plantation
dispenses with a middleman, and enables the laborer to make
a saving, whereas, if he goes to the hills he makes a loss?
--A. Yes, sir. I will put it more definitely: As long as he
is under the guidance and care of the proprietor of the
plantation he prospers, the planter, as we express it in
that country, "loaning him our aid"; we make it very
expressive to the negro, we loan him our aid, that is, he
must follow our advice, and he has learned to do that, and
by doing that he accumulates; but when thrown upon his own
resources--there are individual exceptions, of course, where
a good many negroes prosper themselves when thrown upon
their own resources in Arkansas--but as a general fact,
where he leaves the guidance and care of the proprietor of a
plantation and subjects himself just as any one else does to
the common trading with storekeepers, in a very few years he
loses what he has accumulated.

Q. Under these favorable circumstances which surround the
laborer on the plantation one would think he ought to
accumulate; but I understand you that as a rule he is rather
improvident and fails to accumulate. To what do you
attribute that improvidence on the part of the negro
laborer?
--A. It is simply from the want of a proper appreciation of
the opportunities of advancement from his condition. The
negroes are just beginning, as I expressed it, to realize
the responsibilities of life, and just as they begin to
realize the responsibilities of life here, they begin to
prosper. The prosperity of the South has only begun in the
last few years, and it has begun to increase just as the
race issue has ceased. I will demonstrate that to you by a
little paragraph I cut out of the _New York Herald_ last
night, taken from the New Orleans _Times-Democrat_. If you
take the assessed valuation of real estate i