“The negro never has done anything by himself,” the old Confederate replied.  “He has lived as far back as time goes in one of the most fertile and well-watered countries of the world,—­Africa—­and he never had enough initiative to rise out of tribal conditions.”

“But he seems to be doing all right now,” suggested Hamilton.  “I hear the negro is getting to own quite a share of the cotton crop.”

“He has not done so well as appearances would show,” the soldier replied; “he has learned a few—­only a few—­of the tricks of modern civilization, and those only outwardly.  The few cases of leadership such as that of Booker T. Washington, for instance, are due to the white strain, not the negro.”

“I thought Booker T. Washington was a pure negro!” exclaimed Hamilton.

“He is not,” was the emphatic reply.  “In his own writings he states that his father was a white man.  His mother was a negress.  He gets his brains from his father and his color from his mother.”

“Do you think that the negroes will ever marry enough with the white to become all white?”

“Not now,” the Southerner answered.  “It is a crime in many States and punishable with imprisonment.”

“Then what’s going to be done?”

“I’m unreconstructed yet,” the old Colonel said grimly.  “I think still the negroes were better off as slaves.  They’re always going to be slaves, anyway, whether in name or not.  And as for their relation to the cotton crop.  You say they are succeeding in it.  Perhaps.  But did they learn the uses of cotton, did they develop machinery to clean and spin it, or devices for weaving?  Was it negroes who worked out the best means of cultivating the cotton or experimented on the nature of the most fertile soils?  Not a bit of it.  They simply grow cotton the way the white folks showed them.”

“But they seem to be getting a big share of it!”

“I see you’ve been talking to Ephraim.  What good would it do the negroes if they owned every foot of the cotton land?  They would still have to depend on the man that buys the crop, and the cotton exchange wouldn’t be run for the benefit of the negro.  In slavery days, too, there was some one to take an interest in the negro and help him.  Now he’s got to do it for himself, and he can’t do anything but go on in the same old groove.”

“You think it was better in the old days?”

“In some ways for the negro, yes.  But it was harder for the people of the South.  There was always trouble of some kind in the slave quarters.  Before the war you had to support all the old, the sick, the children, and the poor workers.  Under present conditions you hire just whom you want.  The cost is about even, and the responsibility is less.  Now,” he added, lunch being over, “if you’ve finished we’ll go and see what this peonage business is.  Ephraim,” he called, “is that man here?”

“Yas, sah,” answered the old negro.  “He’s hyar.”