lend money on small interest. Then he started another scheme. People
used to not have sense. They went to work and got in with the Southern
white folks and got a law passed about the fences.

"The Greeks and Italians are next to the Jews. They don't make much off
the white man; they make it off the Negro. They come 'round and open up
a place and beg the niggers to come in; and when they get up a little
bit, they shut out the niggers and don't want nothin' but white folks.
It's a good thing they do, too; because if somebody didn't shut the
Negro out, he'd never have anything.

"The slaveholders were hard, but those people who come here from across
the water, they bring our trouble. You can't squeeze as much out of the
poor white as you can out of the darkey. The darkey is spending too much
now--when he can get hold of it. Everywhere you see a darkey with a
home, he's got a government mortgage on it. Some day the government will
start foreclosing and then the darkeys won't have anything, and the
biggest white man won't have much.

"A hundred years from now, they won't be any such thing as Negroes.
There will be just Americans. The white people are mixed up with Greeks,
Germans, and Italians and everything else now. There are mighty few pure
Americans now. There used to be plenty of them right after the War.

"The country can't hold out under this relief system.

"They're sending the young people to school and all like that but they
don't seem to me to have their minds on any industry. They have got to
have backing after they get educated. Now, they'll bring these
foreigners in and use them. In the majority of states now the colored
man ain't no good unless he can get some kind of trade education and can
go into some little business.

"In slavery times, a poor white man was worse off than a nigger. General
Lee said that he was fighting for the benefit of the South, but not for
slavery. He didn't believe in slavery."

Occupation and Present Support of Hopkins

"I came to Arkansas in 1886. I got married in 1885 in South Carolina. I
never had but the one wife. I have done a little railroading, worked in
machinery. I have planted one crop. Did that in 1887 but got sick and
had to sell out my crop. For forty-six years, I worked as a plumber and
piper. I worked in piping oil, gas, water, and I worked with mechanics
who didn't mind a colored man learning. They would let me learn and they
would send me out to do jobs.