they're sick, and now they know a cure
fo' it, why hookworm is being driven right out o' the South."

"Was there so much of it?"

"Puttin' an end to it will make useful American citizens out o'
thousands o' poor critters that never knew what ailed them."

"But where did the 'poor whites' come from, Uncle Eli? What made them
that way?"

"Whar they come from I jes' don' rightly know. I reckon I saw more o'
them when I was down in Georgia, but the Florida 'crackers' are still
worse off. Thar's not so many in the mount'ns an' those that are here
live 'way up in the gullies. The sure 'nough po' whites, or 'Crackers'
as they call them, belong to the pine belt, between the mount'ns an' the
swamps o' the coast."

"Why are they called 'Crackers'?"

"I don' know, unless because they live on cracked corn and razor-back
hog. It an't so easy to say how they begun. Thar's a lot o' French
names, an' thar's a tradition that two shiploads o' Huguenots were
wrecked off Georgia in the early days an' foun' their way inland,
settlin' down without anythin' to start with, an' not knowin' for a
generation or two whar any settlements could be foun'. An' thar's a lot
o' folks that have just drifted down, down,--livin' jes' like the
'Crackers' an' often taken to be the same. An' the slavery system made
it worse because thar was no middle white class--either rich or po',
thar was nothin' between,--that is, down in that part o' the country.
But yo' mus' remember that thar has been a great change in the last
twenty years, an' that the children o' 'Cracker' families are doin' jes'
as well as anybody in the South."

"How is that, Uncle Eli?"

"Wa'al, in the days befo' the war, the po' whites were jes' trash. The
planters wouldn' have 'em, because the slaves did all the work; they
wouldn' work themselves, an' they didn' own slaves. So they were worse
off than the negroes an' even the black race looked down on 'em. But the
war waked them up."

"They all fought for the South, didn't they?"

"Mos'ly all. They were food fo' powder, but I always reckoned they
hindered more'n they helped. For the 'Cracker,' however, the war meant
everythin'. It placed him side by side with the Southern gentleman, it
strengthened the color line, an' jes' enough o' them made good to show
the others thar was a chance fo' them, too."

"Then they started in to improve right after the war, did they?"

The Kentuckian shook his head negatively.

"No," he said, "at