baskets. When this cotton is taken up, some dirt must necessarily come with it. When gathering in wet weather, the hands get into their baskets with muddy feet, and thus toss in some pounds of dirt, in this way making their task easier. These things are never, or rarely, seen by the proprietor: and, consequently, when his merchant writes him that his cotton is a little dusty, he says how can it be? you are surely mistaken.
"Now, sir, for all this there is one simple, plain remedy; let the planter spend his time in ginning season at his gin; let him see every load of cotton as it comes from the field and before it goes through the gin. But, says the man of leisure, the gin is a dirty, dusty place. Yes, sir, and always will be so, until you remedy the evil by staying there yourself. You say your overseer is hired to do this dirty work. Your overseer is after quantity, sir, and the more extra weight he gets in your cotton, the more bales he will have to brag of having made at the end of the year. Don't trust him at the gin. * * *
"Probably he has a conditional contract with his employer: gets so many dollars for all he makes over a certain number of bales; thus having every inducement to put up as much leaf and dirt, or, if he is one of the dishonest kind, he may add stones, if they should abound in the neighbourhood.
"Why will not the cotton-planter take pride in his own production? The merchant prides himself on his wares; the mechanic on the work of his hands. All seem to pride themselves on the result of their labour except the cotton-planter." * * *
It cannot be admitted that the absence in the Free States
of that organization and division of labour in agriculture
which is found on a large slave-worked plantation is a necessity
attending the use of free labour. Why should it be any
more impossible to employ an army of free labourers in
moving the ground with an agricultural design than with the
intention of constructing a canal or a road, if it were profitable
to so employ the necessary capital? A railroad contractor
in one of the best cotton districts of the United States
told me, that having begun his work with negroes, he was
substituting Irish and German labourers for them as rapidly
as possible, with great advantage (and this near midsummer).
But if I were convinced with Mr. Russell upon this point, I
should still be inclined to think that the advantages which
are possessed in a free labour state of society equally by the
