laborers under their immediate supervision.
Of the 3,000 acres, one-half is devoted to corn, cotton, cane, etc.;
500 are used for pasturage and 1,000 furnish ample supply of pine, oak
and hickory timber for the greedy teeth of his saw mill and the
willing embrace of his planing mill. He has cows, cattle, mules,
horses, barns and farm implements to meet all necessities. His teams
go regularly to Montgomery markets and return with stores for the
forty families who live upon his lands and work them, and for the
community who purchase of him what things they have. Besides his
possessions in land, Mr. Benson has been able to loan to his white
neighbors some $6,000, which are secured by mortgages upon their
farms. They are running behind and he is running ahead. While I was
the guest of this man, opposite me at the table dined a white man who
was engaged on the carpentry of the new house. He was a native
Southerner but he showed no evidence of social injury, and if he did
his carpentry work as thoroughly as he did that of the table he
certainly earned his wages.

Mr. Benson has managed with his uncommon ability to pick up education
enough to achieve and handle successfully and shrewdly these large
interests; not only to know their details but also to realize their
significance and somewhat of the larger world beyond his own
dominions. The success of this self-made colored man may be somewhat
exceptional in degree, but it is not at all phenomenal. The story with
the variations of personality and place could be told a hundred times
over among the colored people who began thirty years ago without a
foot of land or a dollar of money.

Among the colored people in this rural community this man is one. For
the most part life has gone on for the others without much
advancement. They have not been left without a certain kind of school
for their children taught for three months out of twelve chiefly by
students who are themselves getting an education in institutions
sustained by Northern benevolence; but the teaching has been without
continuity and insufficient to make much impress on character. This
far-seeing colored man realized this, and his own influence in life
might have been greater if chances had come to him in his earlier
days. He has, therefore, given his son a liberal education at college
and has daughters now in the same path.

When the young man returned from his studies with Christian love in
his heart to assist his