reasonable prudence, and consult the interest of the owners?  —­A.  No, sir; in these instances the property generally goes to decay gradually; the negro will not make an improvement on real estate at all.

Q. In these cases do the negroes work together and carry on the plantation as a whole, or is the plantation cut up into small holdings and rented out to negroes?  —­A.  It is cut into small portions and rented according to the size of the family.  Some men work two mules; some four.  It is regulated better by the number of animals he works.  For instance, a mule can cultivate in that country with ease about fifteen acres.  A man with two mules would work thirty acres; a man with four, sixty, and so on.  I know some negroes who work eight and ten mules that they have paid for; but I will say this right here, and it shows the necessity of the education of the negro and of fitting him for the condition of being able to take care of himself and make his own contracts and sign his own name to a contract:  I have known of numerous instances where negroes, working under the management of a proprietor of a plantation, have made enough money to buy a home; such a one will go back out in the hills, that section of country lying back of the alluvial lands, and buy a home.  In three or four years he will move back to the river again, having lost all his property, mortgaged it to some storekeeper, become extravagant, and that storekeeper in a short time—­three or four years probably—­will have absorbed all he had earned under the management of a planter.

Q. About that store system; how extensive is it, and how great an evil does it constitute?  —­A.  It constitutes a very considerable evil, but you cannot blame the storekeeper for it, for this reason, or he can only be blamed partially:  Capital in that country is very limited.  When you consider the fact that New Orleans, which handles the cotton crop of that country, has a smaller banking capital than any one of your little towns in Massachusetts or New Hampshire, it shows at once that there is not enough capital to be advanced to the country people at reasonable enough rates of interest for those people to conduct a strictly legitimate business.  I have known capital to cost in New Orleans, counting the commissions, 15 or 20 per cent, for money loaned.  The storekeeper who borrows money to conduct his business with has to buy his goods from some merchant at some point who must make his profit.  He cannot go directly to the producer, because he has got to have somebody to help him out if his capital falls short.  Therefore, before the goods get down to him, they cost him perhaps 30, 40, or 50 percent more than the first price.  Therefore he has to tack on an enormous profit to bring himself out whole and pay his expenses in order to meet his obligations with the factor in New Orleans.  There is, however, among a certain class, as there would be in all sections