THE CONDITION OF THE PLANTATION NEGRO.
"From my outlook, I am free to affirm that I see nothing for the Negro of the South but a condition of absolute freedom or of absolute slavery. I see no half-way place for him. One or the other of these conditions is to solve the so called Negro-problem. Let it be remembered that the labor of the Negro is his only capital. Take this from him and he dies from starvation. The present mode of obtaining his labor in the South gives the old master-class a complete mastery over him. The payment of the Negro by orders on stores, where the storekeeper controls price, quality and quantity, and is subject to no competition, so that the Negro must buy there and nowhere else—an arrangement by which the Negro never has a dollar to lay by, and can be kept in debt to his employer year in and year out, puts him completely at the mercy of the old master-class. He who could say to the Negro when a slave, you shall work for me or be whipped to death, can now say to him with equal emphasis, you shall work for me or I will starve you to death. This is the plain, matter-of-fact and unexaggerated condition of the plantation Negro in the Southern States to-day."