THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 13, 22 April 1871, Page 3

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH.

The special correspondent of the " Glasgow Herald" in the Southern States in a letter says :—The " fairs" in the South afford a good opportunity for obtaining information on country affairs. The hotels are filled with intelligent men, who all seem to know each other, and who are ready enough to enter into conversation with a stranger, while the railway cars form a sort of free assembly, in which affairs are discussed with all openness. In my travels from Columbia tdtvards Georgia I gathered much opinion, as it were, in the mass. The dissatisfaction of these country folks of South Carolina with the present state of government in the United States is palpable enough. They exclaim bitterly against the corruption which prevails in legislation and in public measures from Washington downwards ; they are utterly opposed to the high tariff on European goods, looking upon it simply as a means of plundering the cultivators of the soil in the South and West for the benefit of Northern manufacturers, overgrown in wealth, and adepts in bribery and lobbyrolling ; they point to the enormous prices of goods sold in the Southern towns, and they long for the growth of manufactures among themselves, and the direct importation of foreign goods into their own seaports ; they express disappointment that more direct trade has not sprung up with the South since the close of the war, the high tariff notwithstanding ; and they declare American statesmen of the present day to be dwarfs and nobodies compared with those of former times ; and, when the whole gamut of political discontent has been sounded, one often hears the remark, so startling to a European admirer of American Independence, that Washington made a capital mistake, and that it would have been better for the country to have remained under the rule of England. To such an appeal to my British patriotism 1 could only reply that England could scarcely, in any circumstances, have continued to govern so great a country as the United States, and would certainly not be inclined to undertake the responsiblity now. On political subjects the people are very emphatic, if not a little excited, and the party newspapers are more emphatic and excited still. But on agricultural and business matters they at once become cool, practical, and reasonable, and talk with acute apprehension of the point in hand, whatever it may be. It •is felt that the old system of cultivation, or rather want of cultivation, is no. longer suitable or possible, and that there must be deeper ploughing, more attention to stock and to the formation of good [farm yards, with

plenty.of manure and vegetable compost from the forest and ditches, so as to give heart, vigor, and greater variety of elements to the soil. There is little or no disparagement of the negro as a laborer among respectable countrymen, who need his services and employ him. On the contrary, there is much appreciation of his good qualities, a good deal of kindly patience towards his bad qualities, and much greater satisfaction with what .he has done and may yet be trained to do, as a free laborer, than one might be prepared to find. How to shape his relations as a farm laborer is thoroughly well canvassed. The alternative presented is that of paying him by a share of the crop or by wages, both of which plans .have obtained a footing, and each of which is acknow T ledged by the practical mind of the planter to have its advantages. A. summary of the arguments I have already heard pro and con on this question would occupy a considerable space. But on the whole, so far, the preponderance of reason, as well as weight of testimony, inclines to the side of wages. One objection to the share system, which goes much deeper in my opinion than at first appears, is that it renders the negro indifferent to, and reluctant to perform any kind of work on a plantation which does not bear immediately on the corn and cotton crop in which he has a share. A planter who cultivates on the share system must see his fences out of order, his manure heaps a diminishing quantity, and his hogs and cattle strayed, stolen, or starved; or, .resorting to the wages system after all, employ special hands to do these and other kinds of farm work. As the system of agriculture improves, the necessary labor on plantations will become more and more varied, and yet have all a direct influence in increasing the abundance of the corn and cotton crops per acre; and to pay wages to one class of men, probably whites, to do various kinds of work in order that another class, certainly blacks may share an increased abundance to which they have contributed nothing, will prove too unjust to be practicable. The rapid and regular picking of the cotton crop, which is the greatest difficulty of the planter, has kept the share system more in countenance than probably anything else, but in practical experience it seems to fail at this point as at others. The share system implies rations to the negro from the beginning of the year to the end, and if the rations for a week are consumed in half that time, an additional supply must. be given', which (daces the negro so heavily in debt to his employer by the time the picking season has come on that he is apt, more especially under declining prices as this year, to be regardless of the financial results of the partnership with his employer into which he entered in January. The picking of cotton,, as far as I know, does not involve any greater difficulty naturally than harvest season in all countries, when extra labor, stimulated by higher pay, flows * freely into the fields and crowns the labours of the husbandman with a success in which all feel that they have a personal interest. But in the thinly populated cotton states of America, with labor on every plantation all too inadequate for its ordinary routine of work, and vast spaces of mere wood, without town or village betwixt one plantation and another, tbe social conditions are, of course, different. Yet some planters in South Carolina succeed in employing extra hands in the picking season, giving rations and 50 cents per 100 lbs. of cotton picked The production of cotton per acre is no doubt very but one hand and a mule in general cultivate SO acres of cotton and 10 of corn, producing JO bales of cotton and 100 bushels of corn. One bale of cotton on good land per acre, wrought by one hand and a mule, and with the help of phosphates and good picking, is attained in some instances, and may be more and more attainable ; but half a bale of cotton per acre seems the general average in these parts. _