The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1902-12-22

The Springfield Republican prints !,
the following striking article on ques- |
ton which is now of special interest |
in Honolulu. It is the testimony Of a
Southern man that the negro has de-
Perforated since slavery days. and can
no longer compete in the South with
white labor:
In an editorial article in The Repdb-
lican of November, in criticising the
study of "The Negro in Africa and in
America" by James Alexander Tillin-
ghast, you accuse him of inherited
bias against the free blacks and ask
the question:
Taking southern agriculture as a
whole how was it possible for its farm
values to increase a greater percentage
in the two decades mentioned 1850
1900) than the farm values of the
whole country, if the negro labor, up
on which Southern agriculture largely
depends, was all that time deteriorat-
ing in quality? Obviously there is a
conflict between M. Tillinghast's con-
illusions and the broad fact of the
Southern uplift in agricultural wealth.
! The is no conflict between Mr.. Til
! linghast's contentious and the fact of
Southern prosperity and development.
These are due to the white man, not
to the negro, TO the immigration of
white man from the West and to the
uplifting of the poor white of the
South, whose progress during these
two decades has been as rapid as the
decay of the negro as a laborer and a
producer. These statements of Mr..
Tillinghast are substantiated by the
+ census and every other statistical re-
port published which lets in any light
on the subject and they cannot be
+. brushed away by the general and
vague statement of a North Carolina
banker, as you suggest.
I You very properly take agriculture as
the industrial field in which the negro
makes the best showing, for he has
been an agriculturalist for generations
Of all the Southern crops, that in
which he makes the best showing is
cotton The cotton industry is based
on negro (slave) labor. The negro
was believed to be the best cotton la
borer in days of slavery, and the
planters even pretended to find that
his hand was better made to pick cot
ton than that of any other race. Orig
inally the entire cotton crop was rails
ed by negro labor; and, at the death Of
slavery, certainly nine-tenths of it was
raised and picked by the negroes
If, however, you return to the census
of 1900, statistics of agriculture, vol
ume II, you will find that the counties
producing the largest amount Of cot
ton in the South, over $4,000 bales
each, are Ellis and Williamson coun-
. ties in Texas. The negro constitutes
only one-tenth of their population, and
produces less than one-tenth of their
cotton. OF the nineteen Southern
counties producing over $4,000 bales of
cotton each, seventeen are overwhelm-
ingly white, nearly all the cotton in
them being raised by white labor, and
only two are black-Washingto coun-
ty, Miss, and Orangeburg county, S.
C. a comparison with former cen
suses will show that the cotton pro-
duction is drifting away from the black
belt to the white counties in nearly
) every Southern State. Thus in North
Carolina the big cotton counties are
/ white. In Louisiana the center of cot
ton production has shifted from the
rich alluvia1 lands of the Tensas basin
, (where the cotton is raised by negro
. labor) to the central district, where
: the population is mainly white.
, An excellent basis of comparison of
, the negro of slavery days and the free
: negro is offered in that region known
/ as the Tensas basin of Louisiana.
This is the center of cotton production
/ in the South, and is declared by Prof.
/ Hilgard, in his special report on cotton
for the census, to be the best cotton
: country in the world. The Tensas par
: ishes have always led the country,
both in the quality and yield Of cotton
/ per acre, Carroll parish being we'll in
advance of any other county. The
< Tensas district consists of four coun-
t ties, which have been unchanged. The
l land is as fertile as ever, yielding as
much cotton per acre. It has never
3 been overworked and there are several
million acres of fertile land still un-