A professional gentleman in Andersonville operates five large plantations without any white overseer except himself, and is making money from the land.  He states his principle to be:  “I make a short, clear contract with the Negroes and do exactly what I promise, and I require the same execution of their side of the bargain. And I pay them just what I agree to pay them. They work six days every week.  I give them a chance to attend a funeral or church service if they keep up the work.”

A prominent contractor, builder and brick-maker in Thomasville, Ga., employs from one hundred to three hundred Negroes constantly in all branches of his business.  He says:  “They are a patient, reliable class of workers.  If a man will be fair with them and do as he agrees, he will never have trouble.  They are not cranky as some white workmen.  They do the finest part of mason’s and carpenter’s work well.”

These two men are native Southerners, whose parents were large slave owners.

Fault is found with the Negro on the coast line, wherever the turpentine business exists, because he will not work on the plantations.  The turpentine work with its “boxing,” “scraping,” “gathering” and “distilling,” is all piece-work, paid in cash.  The Negroes are among the trees before daylight and work till dark.  By so doing they earn 75c., $1.00 or $1.25 per day.  The plantations pay “rations”—­a peck of common meal and four pounds of bacon per week, and 35c. to 50c. per day, the latter mostly in promises.

A lady in New Orleans who keeps a popular boarding house for tourists said, when Straight University was mentioned, “Just as soon as a colored girl goes to school she is good for nothing afterward.  She won’t work.  I’ve lost several bright, likely girls that way.”  Inquiry shows that the lady pays five dollars per month and requires the help to sleep at home.  A constant demand is made on our Normal Department for teachers for from twenty to forty dollars per month.  Strange that educated colored young men and women will not “work!”

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PARAGRAPHS.

Dr. Roy, in his lantern lectures, sometimes meets with pleasant incidents.  Recently, at East Saginaw, before the General Association of Michigan, coming to Fisk University on his programme, he had brought on his canvas pictures of the Jubilee Singers, Jubilee and Livingstone Halls and of Jowett, one of the students, and when he came to present Mr. Ousley and his wife, a venerable man jumped up and remarked, “We received Mr. Ousley and his wife at the Zulu Mission on their way to East Central Africa.  So also Miss Jones.  Within two weeks I have received from Mr. Ousley his photograph.”  This man was Rev. Dr. Rood, for forty years a missionary among the Zulus, just now back to this country.  After the lecture, Mr. Rood told Dr. Roy that Mr. Ousley was one of the most level-headed men in the mission, and so had been made the treasurer of the mission—­a good tribute to one of Fisk’s graduates.