"Bring in whites."
"But I don't want poor white trash; I'd sooner have niggers."
"Now, see here," argued Taylor, "you can't have everything you want—day's gone by for aristocracy of old kind. You must have neighbors: choose, then, white or black. I say white."
"But they'll rule us—out-vote us—marry our daughters," warmly objected the Colonel.
"Some of them may—most of them won't. A few of them with brains will help us rule the rest with money. We'll plant cotton mills beside the cotton fields, use whites to keep niggers in their place, and the fear of niggers to keep the poorer whites in theirs."
The Colonel looked thoughtful.
"There's something in that," he confessed after a while; "but it's a mighty big experiment, and it may go awry."
"Not with brains and money to guide it. And at any rate, we've got to try it; it's the next logical step, and we must take it."
"But in the meantime, I'm not going to give up good old methods; I'm going to set the sheriff behind these lazy niggers," said the Colonel; "and I'm going to stop that school putting notions into their heads."
In three short months the mill at Toomsville was open and its wheels whizzing to the boundless pride of the citizens.