The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-07-17

late that they were expected to live in huts which would not keep out the rain and were not supplied with any of the comforts to which they had been accus- toned. They had a. perfect right to go away, but they left the planter who had helped them to Independence without the slightest compunction, and this Is gen era,ly the result of almost every effort honestly made by humane planters for the betterment of the negro'
 Mir. Stone echoed what I was told at Indianola as to the extraordinary condi- tions in the Yazoo delta growing out of the rapid developments of cotton produc- ton in that section. Cotton there will bring half cent a pound more than in any other section, except Sea Island, and it is generally known as wonders" be- cause 1t Is the class of product which was formerly collected by small steamboats plying through the bends and bayous.
 We have found such a great demand for labor in the delta that we have been forced to import negroes from Alabama and Georgia. As you are aware, those States impose license tax of $500 or so in each county for emigration agents who seek to send negroes out of the State Our tenants and field hands drift away from us, and the cotton area has been increas- edso largely that we have been forced to send to the nearby States and to pay these excessive rates by which Alabama and Georgia are seeking to stop the drain upon their negro population
 Blacks and Whites Ceasing to Mix. Discussing the subject merely from the point of view of his personal observation, in his own section of Mississippi. Mir. Stone corroborated what I was told all over the South, and even by we'll informed d 0r1A --Nd hN- Nhak AAR amalgamation of the black and the white races is rapidly disappearing.
 There was a vast amount of this ama1- gama tion," he said, up to a dozen or twenty years ago. Since then there has been decided change of sentiment on the part of Southern white men. I know that not so long ago it was not an uncom- mon thing to find an overseer or superin- tendent on a plantation who would have from one to half a dozen concubines. This practice has now practically been done away with. The planters will not permit their overseers to do such things, and the overseers themselves seldom off, fend in this regard. although they are placed in an extraordinary position, ire quently being the only white person in a great mass of colored people. The mix ture of the races is quite evidently dying out, at least for the present. and this | increases the importance of the mulatto and renders it easier for them to assume | actual leadership
 In response to my usual question as to what could be done at the present time either to solve the negro question or to | render the friction between the races less acute, Mir Stone said:
 Outcome Only Can Be Waited. "T do not see that there is anything yaif For k. solve the question. No Ill tempered agi- tation, either by whites or negroes, will do the slightest good. I believe, however, that the people of the North are gradual ly coming around to understand that the South is confronted with great social problem, and that the South, must solve 1t sooner or later. If the negro could be dispersed throughout the entire coun- try. it is true that he would be swallow ed up, but this Is an impossibility at the present time. The negro has no money to move away, and besides that his labor Is necessary to the continued prosperity of the South unless we can find a substi- tute for it. Few Northern people un- derstand either the peculiar character istics of the negro and his ability to take care Of himself, or the generally friendly attitude of the Southern people toward him. We do not hate the negro and Northern people who say so are simply ignorant of the situation. We were brought up with the negro, and I think we understand his capacity and are much more tender for his faults than Nothern people would be. In return for this they should give the South credit for an honest desire to do the best thing DOS sible for he negro. We need his labor and it is to our interest to make him self-supporting in as much as the South is an agricultural country, and inasmuch as there is no livng being who knows as we'll how to take care of the cotton plant as the American negro"