THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
visit, the spectacle suddenly changed; fields free from weeds, the cotton-plants healthy, the cornfields promised a rich yield, everything breathing thrift, order and prosperity. We passed by a large log house in which a colored preacher was exhorting his congregation, for it was Sunday. At last we found the lessee in his dwelling, a modest frame house in a grove of magnificent live oaks. We found in him a middle-aged man of plain manners, but keen intelligence. He did not seem to regard his enterprise at all as one of extraordinary difficulty. His system, as he explained it, was very simple. Most of the negroes he employed, he had found on the place. In addition he had selected some outside applicants, with reasonable care. His laborers were paid by the task. Certain kinds of work requiring skill, such as plowing, were better remunerated than others. Every family had a patch of ground assigned to it upon which vegetables or some cotton might be raised. The only incentive to faithful labor was self-interest, which he considered sufficient. No physical coercion, he thought, was necessary. He had met with only one instance of refractory conduct. He threatened the evil-doer with arrest by the provost-marshal of the nearest military post, whereupon the delinquent ran away, never to show his face again. Aside from this case everything had gone on smoothly. All he had to do was to ride over his plantation once in a day or two and to spend with each gang of laborers a few minutes—long enough to inspect the work and to give directions. The negroes were living well, seemed to be saving something, had their school and their meeting house, and their frolics, and the employer looked for a prosperous business. Such was the report of the lessee.
It struck me that—unless this man lied, which I had no reason for supposing—here was proof, not that the general
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