“Oveh half a billion dollahs, sah, Ah was told at the last census, an’ it’s worth a lot mo’ now.”

“But,” said Hamilton, “the negro doesn’t seem able to make use of it.  Even if he does own the land and is making money, he still goes on living in a shiftless way.  One would hardly believe the kind of shacks I’ve seen in the last couple of days.”

“Ah’m ashamed to say you’re right, sah,” the old negro answered, “Ah reckon one-third of all the negroes in the South still live in one-roomed cabins, cookin’, eatin’, and sleepin’ in the same room, men, women, an’ children all together.  But they’re improvin’ right along.”

“They ought,” said the boy, “if they’re working on cotton, because, I’ve been told, that is always a cash crop.  But why does every one leave the cotton crop to the negro.  It isn’t a hard crop to raise, is it?”

“Thar’s no one else c’n do it but the negro, sah,” the preacher answered.  “It’s the hardes’ kin’ of work, an’ it has to be done in summer, an’ thar’s no shade in a cotton fiel’.  Right from the sowin’ until the las’ boll is picked, cotton needs tendin’, an’ yo’ don’ have much cool weather down hyar.”

“You sow cotton something like corn, don’t you?” asked the boy, who had never seen a cotton plantation and wanted to know something about it.

“Yas, sah, jes’ about the same way, only it has to be hilled higher an’ hoed more’n corn.  An’ weeds jes’ spring up in the cotton fiel’s oveh night.  The pickin’, too, is jes’ killin’ work.  Yo’ see a cotton plant doesn’ grow mo’n about fo’ feet high an’ thar’s always a lot of it that’s shorter.  The bolls hang low, sometimes, an’ yo’ve got to go pickin’, pickin’, stoopin’ halfway oveh an’ the hot sun beatin’ down on yo’ neck an’ back.  Since the war the planters have tried all sorts o’ labor, but thar’s no white man that c’n pick cotton, they get blindin’ headaches an’ fall sick.  I reckon their skulls are too thin or maybe it’s jes’ because they’re not black, seem’ that it’s harder fo’ a mulatto th’n a full-blood negro.”

[Illustration:  “’WAY DOWN YONDER IN DE COTTON FIEL’.”  Typical picking scene.  Working under a blazing sun and a haze of heat, without any shade in sight. (Brown Bros.)]

“You would make all the negroes cotton planters?”

“Ah’d have all the cotton crop in the hands o’ the negroes, sah,” the old man answered, “an’ the trade schools would provide fo’ all the workers in towns in the cotton district, an’ in solid negro towns thar’d be room fo’ all the colored doctors an’ lawyers an’ preachers.”

“I see your idea,” said Hamilton.  “You would just make the cotton section solid negro.  Would you try and be independent of the whites?”

“No, sah,” the other answered decidedly.  “It’s jes’ those No’thern niggehs that are talkin’ that way all the time.  Thar’s a lot o’ talk up No’th, but down hyar an’ furtheh South, whar the mos’ o’ the colored people are, they’re willin’ enough to be let alone.  Thar’s a lot o’ talk about a race war, an’ it might come some time, but not likely fo’ a good many hundred years, an’ somethin will come up to settle it befo’ then.  But Ah’m reckoning sah, that yo’ll be wantin’ to make war unless Ah let yo’ go to bed.  Thar’s a bell, sah, if yo’ want anythin’.”