ten years he was never able to pay his interest. He sold from two to four bales a year, but he did not get much for it, and after taking out the cost of bagging and rope, and ginning and pressing, he scarcely ever had two hundred dollars a year coming to him, of which he had to pay his store bills, chiefly for coffee and molasses, sometimes a little clothing—some years none at all. They made their own cloth mostly in the house, but bought sheeting sometimes. He has made one payment on the principal, from a sale of hogs. Almost the only poor people who have kept up to their agreement have been some near , since the cotton factory was started there. It is wonderful what a difference that has made, though it's but a picayune affair. People who have no negroes in this country generally raise corn enough to bread them through the year, and have hogs enough ranging in the swamps to supply them with bacon. They do not often buy anything except coffee and molasses and tobacco. They are not generally drunkards, but the men will spend all the money they may have and get gloriously drunk once or twice a year, at elections or at court time, when they go to the county town. I think that two bales of cotton a year is as much as is generally made by people who do not own negroes. They are doing well if they net over fifty dollars a year from their labour, besides supplying themselves with corn. A real smart man, who tends his crop well, and who knows how it ought to be managed, can make five bales, almost always. Five bales are worth two hundred and fifty dollars, but it's very rare that a white man makes that. They have not got the right kind of tools, and they don't know how. Their crops are never half tended. If folks generally tended their crops as some do, there would be more than twice as much cotton raised as there is."
With regard to the enlargement of estates by successful
planters, having stated what were my impressions, the same
gentleman replied that I was entirely right, and gave an
instance, as follows, from his personal knowledge:—
"J. B. moved into county within my recollection. He has bought
out, one after another, and mainly since 1850, more than twenty small
landowners, some of them small slaveholders, and they have moved away
from the vicinity. I do not know how many negroes he has now, but
several hundred, certainly. His surplus must have averaged twenty
thousand dollars a year for several years, and, as far as I know, the whole
is expended in purchasing negroes or land. He spends no money for
anything else in the county, I am sure. It is a common thing to hear a man
say, 'J. B. has bought up next to me, and I shall have to quit soon.' He
never gets the land alongside of a man that within two years he does not
buy him out. In the last ten years I know of but one exception, and that
is a man who has shot two of B.'s niggers who were stealing his corn.
