"Of course they would. The few cannot rule when the many know their rights. If the poor whites realized that slavery kept them poor, would they not vote it down? But the South and the world are a long way off from general education. When it comes to that, we shall need no laws, and no slavery, for the millennium will have arrived."
"I'm glad you think slavery will not exist during the millennium," I replied, good-humoredly; "but how is it that you insist the negro is naturally inferior to the white, and still admit that the 'white trash,' are far below the black slaves?"
"Education makes the difference. We educate the negro enough to make him useful to us; but the poor white man knows nothing. He can neither read nor write, and not only that, he is not trained to any useful employment. Sandy, here, who is a fair specimen of the tribe, obtains his living just like an Indian, by hunting, fishing, and stealing, interspersed with nigger-catching. His whole wealth consists of two hounds and pups; his house—even the wooden trough his miserable children eat from—belongs to me. If he didn't catch a runaway-nigger once in a while, he wouldn't see a dime from one year to another."
"Then you have to support this man and his family?"
"Yes, what I don't give him he steals. Half a dozen others poach on me in the same way."
"Why don't you set them at work?"
"They can't be made to work. I have hired them time and again, hoping to make something of them, but I never got one to work more than half a day at a time. It's their nature to lounge and to steal."
"Then why do you keep them about you?"
"Well, to be candid, their presence is of use in keeping the blacks in subordination, and they are worth all they cost me, because I control their votes."
"I thought the blacks were said to be entirely contented?"