nor are they liable to be thrown out of employment by "suspensions " or by "panics;" for agriculture does not suspend. They are beginning to appear upon the tax books as land owners. Thus, in Georgia, according to the "Report of the Comptroller-general" for 1880, the colored people own of "improved lands,” 586,664 acres. The white peo

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ple own 29,823,581 acres of "improved lands." That is, of the farming lands in Georgia the negroes own a little less than one acre in every fifty. All things considered, this is a very creditable showing for them. It may be doubted whether the average is quite so high in other Southern States.

With few exceptions the best lands are owned by the white people. It is easy to explain this. First, the whites have, as a rule, been reluctant to sell their lands to anybody. They cling to the land; it is an instinct. They have been doubly reluctant to sell lands to negroes; not because they have felt unkindly to them, but chiefly because they have been afraid that negro land owners would frighten immigrants from the South. Whether this fear is well grounded may be doubted. Some, it may be, have not wished to see the negroes land owners, from a vague prejudice, or a vaguer fear. This, I think, is clear; the negroes who own land in Georgia are more satisfactory as citizens and neighbors than those who do not. This is undoubtedly true of my negro neighbors.

The majority of the negroes live in small and, generally speaking, very uncomfortable and ill-furnished cabins. They have few comforts. But this gives them comparatively little trouble, for they live very plainly, and most of them have enough to eat, and, in winter, wood enough to keep warm. Most of them will spend their last dime for food or fuel; if it come to the pinch, some of them will get it elsewise, as will some white men. A fence rarely survives a cold winter if it be close to a settlement of negroes. The average negro will burn his own fence without hesitation. The necessity generally arises through his habit of putting off till to-morrow what he is not obliged to do to-day. Many of them are much like the improvident white man whose roof was out of repair. His explanation was: "It don't leak in dry weather, and I wont patch any man's roof in the rain." I have a negro neighbor who has burned his own fence and part of mine for four winters past. Next spring we will make a new fence. It is left to the reader's ingenuity to find out my reason for waiting till warm weather.

Nearly all of them are field-hands and common laborers; few of them are skilled workmen; the best mechanics among them "learned their trades" before the war. Free negroes and Southern white boys are alike at least in this-they are impatient of apprenticeship. This is one reason why the South is behind in the mechanic arts.

し

As a class the negroes in the South are not

They are not Few of them

systematic in their plans and labors. thrifty, or frugal, or economical. know how to "lay by for a rainy day." When they were slaves they never thought of such things; when sick, or old, or worn out, they were taken care of better than any class of superannuated laborers in the world. The exceptions to this statement were few. No railroad, or mining company, or great manufactory, can match the care the "old masters took of their disabled or worn-out servants. And thousands of the old servants still look to their former masters for help, and receive it. The old customs made it unnecessary for the negro to provide for sickness or old age. Very naturally, therefore, the habit of forecasting has not been largely acquired among them. They spend their money freely while it lasts, much as children do. Instance, a colored man, who lives near me and who has no income but his wages as a common laborer, recently gave seven dollars for a flashily bound family Bible, being overcome by the arrangement at the back of it for receiving the family photographs.

Their weaknesses are perhaps partly in their blood; they may well be more in their antecedents. (Some of these "antecedents," it may be remarked, antedate their coming to America.) But, poor as they all are, and thriftless as most of them are, they are improving in their condition. The tax books show

that they are beginning to produce a little more than they consume. They live better, dress better, have better furniture, than they had ten years ago.

Some things I am about to say will be disputed by a good many people, but I give my opinion. Many of them drink whisky when they can get it. As a race, they are fond of strong drink, but I believe that, as to sobriety, they will compare favorably with the poorer class of common laborers of any color or country. Their moral code is, it must be admitted, flexible enough to allow more margin than consists with sound ethics. Many of them have some loose notions on several of the fundamentals of morality; but they are many have represented them to be. on the morals of the negro in the consider-perhaps do not know—what are the facts in other countries as to the poorest and most ignorant of common laborers. Too much attention has been concentrated on the South for just judgments as to either the white people or the negroes. It has been like reading small type in a bright sunlight-bad reading and blurred vision.

not so bad as

Many writers South do not

During the past summer I passed over perhaps as many as a thousand miles of country roads by private conveyance. Some negro families I saw crowded in most wretched cabins, but they were not worse than the illustrations given in "Harper's Magazine" some months ago of attic and cellar

life in New York city. Nor were they worse than the illustrations and letter-press declared to be the condition of a great multitude of families who keep miniature truck-gardens about the suburbs of our metropolis.

One of the saddest facts of their lot is that most of them are very ignorant. The vast majority of them are untaught. (Many of our white people are in the same condition.) Few ex-slaves can read at all. While slavery lasted there was small chance to teach them. For this state of things the masters were not alone to blame. Some were taught, nevertheless. It would surprise some people to know how many of them were taught by "young masters" and "young mistresses" to read the Bible. I made a faithful effort on "Uncle Jim," who taught me to ride and to plow; who was my skillful instructor in the lore of the fields and the woods. Whether he was too old, or his teacher too unskilled, has never been determined, but he never got beyond "words of one syllable." The house girl, Alice, made better progress; a sister had her schooling in hand.

A few ex-slaves have learned to read since they became free, greatly to their credit. There are some pathetic instances of old people learning, slowly and with difficulty, that they might read the Bible for themselves. Thousands of the younger race can read and write and cipher-if not after