"But," said Edward, laughing, "you do not sell the dew, I suppose?"
"No. Generally it evaporates, but if it does not the warehouse deducts for it."
"I noticed at one place on the way south that the people were using wheel implements, do you not find them profitable?" The colonel pointed to a shed under which were a number of cultivators, revolving plows, mowing machines and a dirt turner. "I do not, the negro cannot keep awake on the cultivator and the points get into the furrows and so throw out the cotton and corn that they were supposed to cultivate. Somehow they never could learn to use the levers at the right place, with the revolving plow, and they wear its axle off. They did no better with the mower; they seemed to have an idea that it would cut anything from blades of grass up to a pine stump, and it wouldn't."
"The disk harrow," he continued laughingly, "was broken in a curious way. I sent a hand out to harrow in some peas. He rode along all right to the field and then deliberately wedged the disks to keep them from revolving, not understanding the principle. I sometimes think that they are a little jealous of these machines and do not want them to work well."
"You seem to have a great many old negroes."
"Too many; too many," he said, sadly; "but what can be done? These people have been with me all my life and I can't turn them adrift in their old age. And the men seem bent upon keeping married," he added, good-naturedly. "When the old wives die they get new and young ones, and then comes extravagant living again."
"Of course. The men do a little chopping and cotton-picking, but not enough to pay for the living of themselves and families. What is it, Nancy?"
"Pa says please send him some meal and meat. He ain't had er mouthful in four days." The speaker was a little negro girl. "Go, see your young mistress. That is a specimen," said the old gentleman, half-laughing, half-frowning. "Four days! He would have been dead the second! Our system does not suit the new order of things. It seems to me the main trouble is in the currency. Our values have all been upset by legislation. Silver ought never have been demonetized; it was fatal, sir. And then the tariff."
"Is not overproduction a factor, Colonel? I read that your last crops of cotton were enormous."