small hickory poles divided in halves are frequently used for the same purpose. In Virginia and North Carolina, staves are often made by sawing cuts of the old field pines into the proper dimensions; these make very cheap staves, but they will not bear rough usage. In Kentucky and Tennessee, hogsheads are made of hived oak staves, or sweet oak, or of any other tough, hard wood.

There are several ways of packing tobacco in hogsheads. One is to run two courses across the bottom of the hogshead, the heads of the central bundles in the course being about eight inches from the staves, and the distance of the heads from the staves decreases each way in the course until they come in contact with the staves. Two more courses are run at right angles to the first two, and this is continued until the hogshead is filled, the pressure of the screw, or prize, being put on at intervals. This is called the "square pack," as shown in Fig. 93. Another way is to run two courses, as in the square pack, and then two more courses, the bundles lying in the same directions, but with the heads jammed against the staves of the hogshead. In the leading heavy-shipping districts from 1400 to 1800 pounds of the best grades are put in a hogshead, averaging about 1600 pounds, and from 1800 to 2200 pounds of lugs, though the weights vary from 1000 pounds for fancy to 2500 pounds for black shippers or balers.

NEGRO LABOR.*

The Laborers Chiefly Employed in the heavy-shipping-tobacco districts are negroes, who are exceedingly efficient in the work of cultivating, worming, suckering, housing and preparing the crop for market. Trained

*It may be well to state that Col. Killebrew, the writer of this article, was an extensive slave owner before the war, and since then has been a large employer of negro labor on his plantations.

FIG. 97. A TOBACCO FIELD IN "OLD VIRGINY."

From a photograph taken for this work of Mr. Edgar M. Ward's oil painting, by consent of the painter and kindness of Mr. James D. Gill.

through successive generations in the tobacco fields and directed by highly intelligent managers, the negroes in the tobacco-growing districts of Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee take naturally to the work and seem to prefer it to any other. They are diligent, careful, patient and faithful, and yield a ready and cheerful obedience to their employers. Their physical vigor

gives them the strength to endure and perform the severe labor required in transplanting and housing the crop. Many of them become expert curers, assorters and packers of tobacco. They are peculiarly fitted to withstand the climate of the Southern states. They are scarcely affected in health by the malarial districts. The burning heat of a summer's sun only awakens in them a higher sense of enjoyment. They are children of the sun, and are as much distressed by extreme cold as the Northern laborers are by extreme heat.

They are not only preferred by the planters, but the warehousemen find them most desirable in the work of stripping the casks from the tobacco, and preparing it for sale. Their cheerful faces are seen and their merry laughter is heard in every warehouse of the South, where they are employed in rolling the heavy casks in and out, applying the break lever for the inspectors, reprizing the loose tobacco in the cask and doing all other heavy manual work. They are always good humored, good natured, obliging and respectful to white people, though fond of guying each other in a friendly spirit.

The negro rarely seeks a higher aim in life than a modest living. His earnings are spent with a lavish hand, and however large his wages he rarely makes any provision for old age. He lives for the present, happy, thoughtless, contented. His emotional nature is extreme and hence he enjoys above all things the excitement of a "big meeting," a dance, or a horse race. Social by nature, he will spend every moment of leisure

with his companions. He is not given to seclusion, or to thoughtfulness. He is moved by impulse rather than by reason. This social instinct makes him a discontented laborer when working alone, and he will take less wages where he can mingle with a large number of his own race. The negro is liberal to a fault. He will often work a whole week and give his earnings to a church festival on Saturday night, or hire a costly equipage for a drive with his wife and children, or with his sweetheart, on Sunday. He will wear ragged, dirty clothes six days in the week and a costly tailor-made suit when he goes to church, or to a dance, or to spend a holiday. Yet, notwithstanding this want of frugality, it must be said to the credit of the negro that he very seldom leads an idle or vagrant life, and is rarely dissipated. His race indulges in no anarchistic or socialistic ideas. The negro never questions the right of another to take his place when he has been discharged, or when he voluntarily surrenders it. The idea of a boycott is repugnant to his nature. In many respects he is eminently conservative and his greatest weakness is a lack of firmness. Oftentimes he is tempted to do what a firmer judgment would condemn.

The negro farm laborers of the South are probably the most independent laborers in the United States. When one is discharged, unless for some heinous crime, he finds no difficulty in securing employment at once on some neighboring farm. And yet it cannot be said that the negro laborer is wanting in constancy. When he is treated fairly and honestly by his employer and paid promptly, he is averse to a change. Possibly in this particular the negro excels every other nationality, or race, as a laborer. Rarely does he cherish ill will, much less revenge, towards his former employer. He entertains a warm feeling for a generous man, but cordially despises a parsimonious one. Generosity in

the employer oftentimes goes further with him than justice.

It is often alleged by Northern writers and statisticians that the wages paid Southern laborers are much less than are paid for the same class in the North. This is more apparent than real. A Northern farm laborer, with a family, has generally to pay rent for his house and garden, purchase his supply of fuel and pay for the pasturage of any stock that he may own. All this is given freely to the negro farm laborers of the South and they are employed throughout the whole twelve months. In the stemming factories many negro women are employed in stemming tobacco. They easily earn from 50 cents to $1.50 per day.

The wages of a Northern man may be $20 to $25 per month, but much of this will be absorbed in buying what the Southern farm laborer has given him, and it rarely happens that he is employed for the whole year at the wages named. The Southern laborer has more money to spend for his pleasures and is rarely oppressed with debt. In the Northwestern States, with the bleak, cheerless climate of that region, the wages of $30 per month to a laborer will not provide near as many of the comforts of life as one-half this amount paid to a Southern laborer. The winters of the Northwest are long and dreary; fuel is expensive and necessary to comfort for at least six months in the year. The character of the clothing also, suitable to such a climate, makes it much more costly than that required by the laborer of the South.

The great and leading difference between the white labor of the North and the colored labor of the South is this: The first has ambitions, calculates possibilities, and looks forward to the future; the latter enjoys the present, is indifferent about what is to come, and is utterly incapable of that self-denial which makes thrift