“How do you do it?” I asked.
“The secret,” he said, “is to treat the Negro well and give him a chance. I have found that a Negro, like a white man, is most responsive to good treatment. Even a dog responds to kindness! The trouble is that most planters want to make too much money out of the Negro; they charge him too much rent; they make too large profits on the supplies they furnish. I know merchants who expect a return of 50 per cent. on supplies alone. The best Negroes I have known are those who are educated; Negroes need more education of the right kind—not less—and it will repay us well if we give it to them. It makes better, not worse, workers.”
I asked him about the servant problem.
“We never have any trouble,” he said. “I apply the same rule to servants as to the farmers. Treat them well, don’t talk insultingly of their people before them, don’t expect them to do too much work. I believe in treating a Negro with respect. That doesn’t mean to make equals of them. You people in the North don’t make social equals of your white servants.”
Jefferson Davis’s Way with Negroes
Then he told a striking story of Jefferson Davis.
“I got a lesson in the treatment of Negroes when I was a young man returning South from Harvard. I stopped in Washington and called on Jefferson Davis, then United States Senator from Mississippi. We walked down Pennsylvania Avenue. Many Negroes bowed to Mr. Davis and he returned the bow. He was a very polite man. I finally said to him that I thought he must have a good many friends among the Negroes. He replied:
“‘I can’t allow any Negro to outdo me in courtesy.’”
Plain Words from a White Man
A few days later on my way North I met at Clarksdale, Miss., Walter Clark, one of the well-known citizens of the state and President of the Mississippi Cotton Association. In the interests of his organisation he has been speaking in different parts of the state on court-days and at fairs. And the burden of his talks has been, not only organisation by the farmers, but a more intelligent and progressive treatment of Negro labour. Recognising the instability of the ordinary Negro, the crime he commits, the great difficulties which the best-intentioned Southern planters have to meet, Mr. Clark yet tells his Southern audiences some vigorous truths. He said in a recent speech: