easy condition." This incubus still tyrannizes the people. This method is ruinous to any people. It is called business in the sense of trade and transactions. It is all certainty and definiteness so far as the items bought, and the footing up of the merchant's ledger are concerned, and it is all uncertainty and indefiniteness so far as the farmer is concerned.

(4) The mode of doing business is the wicked foster-mother of much carelessness, and carelessness is not the basis of prosperity. It may be business to some people, but it has a greedy heart. "I haven't had a settlement," said a farmer of ordinary intelligence, "in six years." "Do you ask your merchant to make out your account at the end of the year?" “No! I sometimes ask him how we stand; and when he says, 'You are all right,' I'm satisfied. I have done business with him for twenty years, and have never asked him for a bill." Confidence is on the rack! "Are there many in your neighborhood who never call for an account?" "A right smart of them. The niggers never ask for a bill, and don't get it if they ask for it." Granting that all merchants are honest, the poor, ignorant negro, as well as the careless white farmer, in the absence of a written statement, has no opportunity to examine his year's transactions for himself. That honest merchant may be an infidel as respects the Bible, but his faith in keeping accounts is extraordinary; there is no flaw in this confidence. The amount of blind trusting he demands of these careless, ignorant people, is immense. Infidelity here would impose a good deal of labor. Such manage

ment bodes no good to the country. Not one merchant in ten thousand would be willing to do business with other merchants in this way. Dishonesty has the power to cheat and defraud in prices, in weights, and in measures, under such circumstances, with impunity. That the spirit of discontent should show itself, and the cry of "hard times" should be heard, ought not to surprise any one. "There is no money in farming," says the planter. Certainly not, under such wild management. There is a big screw loose here, no matter how honest all parties may be. It is time to examine foundations. Silent and imperceptible are the causes that undermine the prosperity of a country. A magazine of explosives lies hid beneath this highly favored mode of business.

(5) When all the cotton made during the year has been delivered and sold, and the farmer comes out in debt on the 31st of December, that farmer has taken the first step toward bankruptcy. If he is a small farmer, $25, $50, or $75 is a heavy burden to carry. Take these cases: Hezekiah Drawbridge owes $25 at the close of the year; his credit limit was $75. Stephen Goff owes $50; his credit limit was $150. Buff Tafton owes $75; his credit limit was $250. The year during which these debts were made was fairly good, the purchases were moderate, there was no sickness in these families. The following year similar credit arrangements are made, and they purchase the full amount agreed upon between them and their merchants. From some unaccountable or accountable cause, the cotton crop is a little worse, or the price of cotton is a little less. The

winding up of the second year's farm operations finds Drawbridge, Goff, and Tafton with the following debts confronting them, respectively: $65, $115, $155. The outlook is blue for these farmers, and they feel blue. Thus, or nearly thus, this system operates in thousands of cases. Each year the plunge into debt is deeper; each year the burden is heavier. The struggle is woe-begone. Cares are many, smiles are few, and the comforts of life are scantier. This is the bitter fruit of a method of doing business which comes to the farmer in the guise of friendship, but rules him with despotic power. To a large class of men, the inscription printed in large, bold characters over the door of the credit system is: "The man who enters here leaves hope behind," and it tells a sad and sorrowful history. Anxious days, sleepless nights, deep wrinkles, gray hairs, wan faces, cheerless old age, and perhaps abject poverty make up, in part, the melancholy story. The bitter reflection about the whole matter is, that, as a general rule, there was no substantial cause for this result.

(6) "A bad crop year, Mr. Tafton." "Mighty bad, mighty bad," replies Mr. Goff. "We are ruined. I reckon our merchants won't furnish us another year unless we give a mortgage on our land. I used to think that I would see any man in Halifax before I'd do that. It's come to that now, or starvation." The end of these men as freeholders is near at hand. Drawbridge, Goff, and Tafton, and their companions in misery, wear sad and long faces. On some dreary, cold day in December, when nothing can well be

done on the farm, these men ride to town, each to execute that hard instrument called a mortgage, which in so many cases means ruin to themselves and their families. These ugly handcuffs are on, and they are hard to get off. This business method has peculiar attractions for these iron tools that chafe the flesh, but more the spirit. Independence! It is gone. Humiliation and dependence bow the head of the proud spirit. It is a rugged, thorny path these men must travel. A little earnest selfdenial faithfully practiced for a few years, would have assured them ease, comfort, and competence.

(7) Thus it is that not a few farmers in the South who held a fee-simple title to their property, lost all in ten years. They worshipped Moloch. Their adoration destroyed their independence, their self-respect, their lands, and their chattels. There are men who made an average of fifteen to twenty-five bales of cotton a year, owned from five to ten head of mules, and from five hundred to one thousand acres of land, with comfortable residences and all necessary outhouses, who found themselves homeless and poor at the end of ten years. There is a cause. It sleeps within the womb of this business arrangement. There must be an enormous abuse lurking somewhere in these operations; it involves well-meaning and innocent men who keep no accounts, and, as a rule, apply no business principles to their farm work or their expenses, in hopeless poverty. Neither the merchants alone, as a class, nor the farmers alone, as a class, are to blame for this state of things; but the commercial contract, under whose articles they

formed a joint copartnership to do business, deserves full and signal justice. It is a covenant to which the parties of the first part are thoroughly organized, thoroughly systematic in keeping accounts, thoroughly acquainted with the cost and selling price of merchandise, and thoroughly informed as to their expenses. The parties of the second part are thoroughly unorganized, thoroughly unsystematic, thoroughly uninformed as to prices and as to their ability to pay them, thoroughly in the dark as to what their product will be or its price, and thoroughly in the dark as to their expense account. The parties to the covenant are unequally matched. System, exactness, power, and risks-risks, however, provided for by high prices, and often secured by liens are on the one side; general inexactness, weakness, and heavy burdens in the form of prices are on the other side. The most certain thing about the covenant is, that the parties of the second part must pay the parties of the first part a definite sum. The price of cotton, sugar, molasses, rice, tobacco, and all other merchandise may fluctuate, but the debit side of the ledger maintains its figures with stubborn and relentless regularity. Hard times do not affect them. Storms and inundations do not change them. These figures remain unscathed amid' social and political convulsions. Sickness and death› can not discount them. Certainty and uncertainty have gone into copartnership as a basis for the country's prosperity.

(8) The many risks incident to this business involve many bad debts. The honest man must