--A. I advocate it and approve it, and indeed propose to
start a savings bank in our own neighborhood. In this
connection I will mention another important feature. In the
Mississippi Valley--and when I speak of the Mississippi
Valley I mean both sides of the river, Arkansas and
Louisiana on one side and Mississippi on the other--there
are numbers of negroes who have considerable accumulations
and use their surplus to advance to other negroes. For
instance, there are negroes right on our property who have
accumulated enough to help out certain others, as they
express it, and they use their money as an investment in
that way. For instance one negro who has got something will
advance it to another negro and take a mortgage on his crop.
Consequently there are numbers of them who are getting
advances from their co-laborers, and I always give them that
opportunity when they want it. My idea of the adjustment in
the Mississippi Valley, seeing what I can make from the
mercantile portion of my business, is that it is simply my
revenue that I get from the rent of my land as an investment
on my capital; and whenever a negro can get his own merchant
in New Orleans--a number of them have very good factors in
New Orleans and ship their cotton direct--I encourage it.
When one negro wants to help out another, I give him the
privilege of doing it and encourage it. There are several
negroes, a great many, not a few in Chicot County to-day who
have their own factors in New Orleans, ship their own goods,
and receive their own accounts of sales.

Q. They are not owners of alluvial lands?
--A. They are not owners at all; they are tenants.

Q. I suppose some time they will be liable to make some
accumulations, and they will now and then own a plantation?
--A. I do know of one instance on the river below Vicksburg
where the old property of Mr. Davis was bought by a former
slave of his.

Q. Is that the only instance?
--A. The only instance I know of.

Q. One question we have been accustomed to put is as to the
actual personal feeling that exists between the laborers and
capitalists of different parts of the country. What is the
feeling between the laborers, colored and white, and the
owners of the land and of capital at the South?
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