. What prevents their being cleared up and put into
cultivation?
--A. Simply the overflow.

Q. Have they ever been cleared as yet?
--A. A great portion of them; and now destroyed because the
levee system is not complete. On these lands all the negro
labor which is not found profitable on the poorer lands in
the older States, could be made extremely profitable, not
only to the proprietors of the lands, but to the laborers
themselves.

Q. Do you think it would be within limit to say that one
half of the alluvial plantation lands, such as you have
described in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, is now
practically destroyed by reason of this overflow occasioned
by the destruction of the levee system?
--A. Yes, sir.

Q. At least one half?
--A. At least one half of that which has been in
cultivation, and which can be brought into cultivation.

Q. Of that which is thus useless now, what portion has been
formerly under cultivation?
--A. It would be impossible for any one to form an estimate,
because it is so varied.

Q. The amount of land that has been improved and which is
now destroyed by reason of the overflow, you cannot state?
--A. I cannot state it accurately; I will state it
approximately; I should say at least one third.

Q. One third of the entire amount that has been improved is
now destroyed by reason of the overflow, resulting from
imperfections in the levee system?
--A. Yes, sir; that is what I mean to say.

Q. And of that which has not been improved but might be
improved, how much?
--A. At least half.

* * * * *

As I have devoted some space to the general condition of labor in the
whole country, and as some of my statements and conclusions may be
looked upon as extravagant, I deem it very pertinent to add to the
appendix a portion of the testimony of Dr. R. Heber Newton, given
before Senator Blair's Committee on the "_Relations between Capital
and Labor_," in New York City, September 18, 1883 (Vol. II., p. 535).
Dr. Newton is recognized as a clear thinker and a ready writer not
only on theological but on economic questions as well. His testimony
on the points to which I have asked attention was as follows:

A LABOR QUESTION COMING

The broad fact that the United States cens