The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1866-02-24

exhibited general disposition to obtain homes
on plantations, and TO return TO labor. Some
have engaged at monthly wages; others for an
interest in the crop.
The Mississippi papers tells substantially the
same story. From the northern part OF the State
the planters almost unanimously report them
selves sapguine of making fair crops with the
freedmen they have employed, and the Colum-
bus (Miss.) lrder as an illustration of what may
be done by moral suasion, tells OF one planter
who,. 'bY treating his freedmen with kindness
and forbearance, has kept with him hity or sixty
hands since Christmas" not one Of them show
ing any desire TO leave the plantation for O day.
From Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina aud
North Carolina, such favorable reports as these
could hardly be expected, since those states
have comparatively but recently been delivered
from the presence of our armies, and yet the
accounts which come to us from that section are
quite encouraging.
Let il be remembered, moreover, that these
statements are not from correspondents who are
travelling rapidly from point 70 point, and who
can observe at the best but superficially, while
various influences OF which they may themselves
be unconscious are operating to color their
accounts. The reports that we have hastily
summed up are made by journals most of which
have again come under the coutrol of their
former proprtetors and editors, who are at the
best, unwilling Witnesses and who write as they
do because the facts cannot be any longer
denied. To be sure, some of these papers tell us
that there are many sections OF the country that
have lost halt or three-fourths OF their negro
cordance with the inevitable operations of the
law of supply and demand, white laborers are
gradually finding their way to these points, and
in time will more than make good every ded-
cheney.
1t will not do to infer, however, because this
recuperatve process is progressing so satisfacto-
rily, that the yield of cotton will at once equal
that OF the prosperous years before the war;
This could not reasonably be anticipated. Be.
sides the reduced amount of labor, there are
very many CONTINGENCIES, which may almost be
called certainties, that will prevent this
Northern men who have gone South, sanguine
of making themselves rich in single season,
will probably plant three or four times as much
cotton as they can cultivate or pick Then, as
the New Orleans Price Current says, the negroes
may stop labor at one or at another critical
period, and thus neuU-alize entirely all that
they have accomplished. But whether the crop
finally gathered shall be one million or two
million bales, there is now every reason to be.
heve that the South will pass safely through the
terrible crisis that it so suddenly precipitated
upon itself, and that second or third season at
the latest will see its labor system reorganized
upon the free basis, with che negroes steadily
gaining consciousness of the fact that they are
no longer slaves, but men, while here and there
all through the South there will be little com
munities of white laborers and OF Northern men,
which shall infuse more vigorous element into
the society Of which they are to become con-
ponent part.