The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-12-16

tests of modern courts. Men of all conditions and unmarried females werc known to be unchaste, frequently, put not married women.
 On the "Athol,' the 'Waldwic,' the 'Faunsdale," the "Brame" plantations there were handsome chapels, excin- sively for negroes, and on all conve~ nieut house room was furnished foY religious services on Sunday. White ministers were employed or assigned to the duties. The negroes had their own prayer meetings.
 The negro houses were single or double room, quite as comtortables and as roomy and far more neat than the houses of mining camps. The tenden- cy was fixed to make all plantation buildings better. The yards were swept and kept in the best order by authori' ty of the overseer. The mistress close lv observed the hospital and gave personal direction to the nurses of the sick. roomy and kept in perfect order, with out and within. They were plain frame houses, with wide halls and long gal Ieries While serious attention had not as yet been given to costly arehi- lecture the rooms were well furnish ed, the plate and glasses the best, the family well dressed the domestic ser- wants terfect, thez table appoint ments unsurpassed, the equip- ages frstclass. The family dim ner, at or o'clock, was always abundant for frequent unannounced guests; the formal dinners at later hours, and the balls were equal, as society functions, to the most refined cities of those times. None of the young ladies went out to find wages, unless in rare individual examples. Private tutors in the family gave the instruction until the University or the distant select girls schools took up the work The churches were open every Sunday and everybody went Co church. After services, everybody re- mained to chat in the yard.
 I looked over the exhibit of Booker Washingtons school at the late State Fair, at Montgomery. He is great man and an honest man. There was surely nothing in the dmirable display that had not been found, or it's equiv alent, among the products of negro labor in the shops, the fields, the kit chens of the plantations of the Cane brake. The test on the old plantation had the advantage of representing pure negro blood; not so with the Tus- kegee Institute.
 l am not engaged with a controver- sial defence of the institution of South ern slavery. l think I have said some- thing to indicate the capacity of the negro to rise out from the status of bondage to the status of wages. If the race really possesses the capacity to fill the status of a wage class, the fact of bondage in one era would not defeat or even delay q logical ascent from it in. a ripened era. Had Abra- ham Lincoln been statesman equal to his opportunity, he must have seen that the ever advancing purchase price of ehattel labor in limited supply, was the Inevitable precursor to the extinction of all price; that the inherent forces of the land, tending to develop railroad building, a great variety of manu- facturers of native cotton, native iron. native stone, must contest for labor so efficient as the negro and in the con test substitute the wage for the bond. We call it nature. or evolution, but at last it is direct and positive force of necessity that moves the world. When it became necessary to men to prolong the light into the night, the tallow can dle was invented. The tallow candle is as natural as the sun Itself. Neces- sity for more light in darkness substi- tuted the electric light, an exhibition also of nature. Because the negro has never, in a state of nature. felt the im- pulse of necessity, the whites in contact with chat race find no rivalry of achievement but an open and easy way to use of its ductile temper and un- euualled physical capacity.