paid one fellow. A determined and perfectly relentless man—I can't recall his exact words, which were very expressive—a real devil of an overseer, would get almost any wages he'd ask; because, when it was told round that such a man had made so many bales to the hand, everybody would be trying to get him.
The man who talked in this way was a native Alabamian, ignorant, but apparently of more than ordinarily reflective habits, and he had been so situated as to have unusually good opportunities for observation. In character, if not in detail, I must say that his information was entirely in accordance with the opinions I should have been led to form from the conversations I heard by chance, from time to time, in the richest cotton districts. That his statements as to the bad management of large plantations, in respect to the waste of negro property, were not much exaggerated, I find frequent evidence in southern agricultural journals. The following is an extract from one of a series of essays published in The Cotton Planter, the chief object of which is to persuade planters that they are under no necessity to employ slaves exclusively in the production of cotton. The writer, Mr. M. W. Phillips, is a well-known, intelligent, and benevolent planter, who resides constantly on his estate, near Jackson, Mississippi:—
"I have known many in the rich planting portion of Mississippi especially,
and others elsewhere, who, acting on the policy of the boy in the
fable, who 'killed the goose for the golden egg,' accumulated property, yet
among those who have relied solely on their product in land and negroes,
I doubt if this be the true policy of plantation economy. With the former
everything has to bend, give way to large crops of cotton, land has to be
cultivated wet or dry, negroes to work, cold or hot. Large crops planted,
and they must be cultivated, or done so after a manner. When disease
comes about, as, for instance, cholera, pneumonia, flux, and other violent
diseases, these are more subject, it seemeth to me, than others, or even if
not, there is less vitality to work on, and, therefore, in like situations and
