Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/382

370 money by putting cheap and awkward implements in the hands of careless and unskilled slaves. It was reserved for the South to develop the theory that "Labor is only necessary to its operation, and the negro, in his common absence of reflection, is, perhaps, the best manipulatist in the world." From my own experience in cotton raising, at Port Hudson in 1864 and 1865, after the old plan, with one hundred and fifty freedmen, I am satisfied that the stock and implements on large Southern plantations deteriorate one-third in value every year. Many old planters have confirmed my own impressions. A firm somewhere in Massachusetts manufactures a "plantation hoe" that would be almost as much an object of curiosity at a Northern fair as the rude agricultural implements of an African savage. The weight of the hoe in falling, the planters say, is essential to the "chopping" motion of the implement in the hand of the negro.

The South adopted the cotton gin and then stopped, but with that exception confined itself to brute labor, neglecting to avail itself of those wonderful improvements in farm implements, labor-saving machines and processes of agriculture that, in the North, have doubled the profits of cultivating the soil and made it a pleasure, instead of a drudgery.

The cotton factor—for every considerable planter had to have a city factor, or merchant, of whom he generally borrowed the money to make the year's crop, if not even to purchase the land and negroes, of whom he procured plantation supplies, and to whom he shipped his cotton—charged, of course, a heavy rate of interest upon all advances of money, or "acceptances" of the planter's paper in case the latter had to get it discounted at the bank. Owing to the want of country stores, the planter may have had to send a distance of several hundred miles to his merchant for a single plough, and the latter charged a commission on every purchase. When the cotton arrived, in the Autumn and early Winter, the factor charged to the planter all the drayages from the steamboat to the cotton press, where the bales were compressed for shipment to New York or Europe) also the cost of weighing, sampling and classifying the cotton, although in the competition for business, these items of expense were frequently shared by the cotton press. All the insurances were also charged to the planter's account, but he was rarely credited with the scrip returned to the factor. The latter had a good handful of cotton from every bale, as a sample, and if he received fifty thousand bales during the season, "the samples" made a handsome perquisite. In fact, excepting office rent, and the pay of a book-keeper, the "labor" expenses of the cotton factor were paid out of the perquisites. The factor charged a commission of two-and-a-half per cent, on the sale of the cotton, while his part