The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-12-16

Clarke. was one of the strong men of Alabama. or, as to that, one of the strong among men. Again and again, regret the restraints of space and leave of, less than half done. with recall of the names of the planters and their families of the several communi- ties.
 The dead plantationI The founder of organized labor in all the world; the producer of the most influential and valuable commerce of civilization; the nursery of the highest refinement of civics in the history of man; the homo of virtue and va1or,. published abroad in the life of Lee. Plantation life had a meaning in the Canebrake peculiar to the locality.
 Y The number of slaves ranged, per- haps. from 150 to 400 to the plantation. The acreage of each estate ran from one land section. 1,2sO acres, to 2,56O. Cotton was the only market crop, and 1t was a cause of suspicion to sell any other; but corn, oats, wheat, yams,. peas, beans, pork, colts, sheep, cattle, poultry, were raised for home use and consumption. Patrons of meat and vegetable markets of London or New York had no greater variety or better quality or, perhaps, so great an abund- ance, on their daily tables as the plant CTS. The food of the blacks, who were domestic servants. was precisely the same as the masters. The food of the field labor and the children of "the quarters" was the best-corn bread, hominy, bacon; greens, potatoes, peas. It was the food which kept away tu- berculosls from the negroes-imparted energy and astonishing muscular pow CTS. The yield in cotton to the planta- tion ranged, according to the number of laborers,. for the soil was produce tive on all. Two hundred to five hum dred bales may be said to have been the ordinary clop. The Income, there fore, was from $10,00O to $26,000. It was income that suffered no inroads for rent, none for meat, or bread, none for servants hire, none for keep of pleasure horses. The masters shirts were cut and made in the best manner by the domestic seamstress negro: the dresses of the wife and daughters came largely from the same unfailing source.
 What of the black toilers? They were not serfs, not hirelings, not a peasantry. They were not a class but a kind. They were as surely a part of the masters ceaseless care and provi- dence as the wife and children under his roof. They were beneficiaries of the statute laws of Alabama that com pelled the masters provision for them in sickness and In health. in infancy and old age. He must feed. employ and clothe well every one he owned, pay doctors bills or suffer not only the prescribed penalty of the written law but of public opinion.
 The negro was not "educated'' we read. on the old plantations. Political emergency has hung around the fact dense we'll of ignorance. The neeronf of the Canebrake plantations were a body of the best trained and most etfi- cient helps in agricultural pursuits and domestic life the world ever saw. Ths service rendered was varied, intricate and intelligent. The manual art of rhOpping cotton was in itself a men tai exercise, requiring unrelaXing men% tai applica ton every instant of tims engaged in 1t. It was the result O1 training. severe and protracted. The negroes manufactured the blows from timbers prepared by them; they buul the wagons and the houses, shod ths horses, rocked the white morneTs cra- dle, butchered the beef, cultivated the orchard, cooked the most sumptuous meals, handled the finest live stock. They were not towards but distinctly brave; they were not discontented bus happy and proud of their relation tq their master and his family. Nature was triumphant when the masters house filled with guests to be welcomed