- land, Virginia, and the Carolinas. They pay $150 or $200 a year each
hand, and his board, and stealing, and if that hand be present or absent, sick or well, it is all the same. His clothes cost say $30 more, and in many cases the hirer has to pay his policy of life insurance.'
For all that, labourers are being constantly sent away. I
have not been on or seen a railroad train, departing southward,
that it did not convey a considerable number of the best
class of negro labourers, in charge of a trader who was intending
to sell them to cotton-planters. Thus it is evident
that, great as is the need for more labourers here, there is a
still greater demand for them to raise cotton; and in order to
supply this demand, the Virginians suffer the most extreme
inconvenience. The wonder is, that their own demand for
labour is not supplied by free labourers. But it appears that
where negro slavery has long existed, certain occupations are,
by custom, assigned to the slaves, and a white man is not
only reluctant to engage himself in those occupations, but
is greatly disinclined to employ other whites in them. I have
often asked: "Why do you not employ white men?" (for
this or that purpose for which slaves could not be procured;)
and, almost always, the reply has been given in a tone
which indicated a little feeling, which, if I do not misapprehend
it, means that the employment of whites in duties
upon which slaves are ordinarily employed is felt to be not
only humiliating to the whites employed, but also to the
employer.
Nor is this difficulty merely a matter of sentiment. I have been answered: "Our poor white men will not do such work if they can very well help it, and they will do no more of it than they are obliged to. They will do a few days' work when it is necessary to provide themselves with the necessaries of life, but they are not used to steady labour; they work reluctantly, and will not bear driving; they cannot be
