The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-02-13
Eetters tc tbe Gditcr
The Labor Question.

hQltOr 1He aAuFeTLlS6I.
 You have had two letters on the labor question, and If you will publish d symposium on the subject 1 am quite sure you will find the vast majority in the gentleman who thinks that there is no labor question. and that the negro is an ideal laborer. l have yet to see T man or woman who does not speak feeiingly of the extreme scarcity and unreliability of negro labor. have lived in several South Alabama towns, in Eastern Mississippi. and in West Tennessee, and everywhere It IS the same .crY, Cant get labor" In the towns kt IS next to an impossibility to get Q mar to work your garden or cut your W wood. Indeed. 1t is impossible to get 1t done at the proper time. By exercising 6 good deal of industry in scurrylng around. and uncommon pa tience in waiting. you may possibly finally get your work half done. IT you engage a negro, as likely as not he will declare positively, I'll be there sure Tuesday morning" You'll see nothing of him till about Thursday, when he will saunter around about 7 o'clock loaded with very improbable story in explanation of his non-appear- ance at the appointed time. With cooks and laundresses it is the same. Many ladies are forced to do their own cook ing, while the town is full of Idle negro women. And when one is hired, 1t is taken into the calculation that you must feed from one to five or six more at her home, for it is the rare excep- tion that they do not keep pan or basket which they carry home well filled. A lady of my acquaintance in searching for washerwoman came across a strapping young woman, and asked her If she could get her to do her washng Cgs Ths reR soTt with do % now of washing A lady in a neighboring town met a negro woman on the street and asked her if she would cook for sgN .1.s. sl.. drew herself up and haughtily replied T was just thinking about going around to your house to see if couldn't get you to cook for me.
 It is particularly difficult to secure agricultural labor. Such employments as railroading, milling and turpentin- ing pay smuch higher wages than the farmers can afford to pay, and thus it has come about that farm hands are scarce in number and poor in quality.
 An acquaintance of mine. profess sional man. who probably never plowed a row in his life, after riding d good do some blowing, found a negro and offered him a dollar and a half day. The negro laughed and said, I'm get ting two dollars and a half now" Some cannot get the labor at all. and must let the land lie out. And, if we must continue to look to the negro, our women had just as well begin tO learn to do all their own work, for they will, III d lCW years UG uFtNGn NO ltllI EAl- gency. Now, MT. Editor, tbera Is one simple anG evident solutiLI. or the prob lem, and that is-Chinese. I know 1t has not been popular to suggest the importation of Chinese cheap labor" but I will risk the prophecy that 1t will be popular in the South within a brief period. The Chinese are intelli- gent, industrious. tractable, truthful and honest, and, therefore, make ideal laborers. True, they stay a few years and then go back to their native land, taking their money with them. But there are no anarchists among them, and the walking delegate" is conspic- uous for his absence. They will never prove the cause or the occasion of elec- tion frauds, nor disturb any social sys- tenn. It seems evident that a wise and liberal modification of the Chinese ex- cIusion law would result not only in improving the labor conditions in the South, but in saving and extending the Chinese market for our cotton, which, because of the existing boycott, is like ly to be greatly restricted. Since they are to take action shortly on the Chi nese exclusion act, it would be the part of wisdom for every Southern man to sit down at once and eXhort his Con gressman and Senators to give us, by all means. "Chinese cheap labor "
 J. Floyd Collins.
 ozark, Ala, Feb. 2, 1906.