"I remain Resptfully
"———"
Hamilton laughed as he returned the letter to the supervisor, who had just come back with his hat and gloves as the boy finished reading the epistle.
"I don't think I need have been afraid of any of those three as rivals," he said, "that is, if our friend is right. His information, however, may not be any more correct than his spelling."
"It's exaggerated, of course," the supervisor answered, "that's easy to see, but setting aside the question of jealousy there's a good deal of truth in what he says. Selecting and teaching enumerators was no light job, let me tell you. You take seventy-five to a hundred absolutely green hands, who have never done anything like it before, and it is a hard proposition to make them understand. When you have to try and teach them in a few weeks just how to do what is really difficult to do well, you have a heavy task on your hands."
"You didn't appoint any colored enumerators, I suppose?" Hamilton questioned.
"No," the supervisor answered decidedly. "My judgment was against it to start with and I couldn't see that any of my districts warranted it. It may be different in counties where the proportion of colored population runs as high as eighty and ninety per cent, but there are none like that in Kentucky."
"Just in Georgia and Mississippi?"
"Alabama, South Carolina, and Arkansas have a few scattering 'black' counties too," the supervisor answered, "for I wrote to several places about this very colored enumerator question. I found the supervisors over those districts about evenly divided for and against. I have been able to get suitable men all through, I think, though I might have had difficulty in securing a good appointee for your district."
"It's pretty wild out there evidently," Hamilton said anticipatorily.