Plantation supply account $18,475 00 Amount paid to field hands 17,265 10 Amount paid to physician 300 00 Amount paid to white workmen 1,785 20 Amount paid to manager 1,800 00 Amount paid to sub-overseer 600 00 Amount paid for repairing 1,420 00 ——————————— Total expenses $41,645 30 Receipts from sale of 190 hogsheads sugar $28,500 00 Receipts from sale of 345 barrels molasses 7,590 00 Receipts from sale of 69 bales cotton 40,792 00 Receipts from sale of corn 822 00 Total receipts $77,704 00 41,645 30 ——————————— Net revenue $36,058 70 Add net revenue of 1863 108,970 75 ——————————— Profit for two years $145,029 45 In the two years, during which all his neighbors allowed their plantations to lie idle, because they knew “free niggers never would make sugar or cotton,” Mr. May thus realized a net profit of nearly one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. But for the ravages of the army-worm on his cotton in 1864, the profits for the two years would have run well up toward a quarter of a million. Much of this success was due, of course, to the high prices produced by the war. But if the prices for the products were high, so were those for every item of the expenditures. It will be observed that the negroes were fed and lodged, but not clothed. Mr. May estimated the cost of food and lodging to be at least six dollars a month. Add this to the monthly wages, and we have two hundred and sixteen dollars as the actual annual cost of each field-hand to the planter, under the free-labor system. Before the war able-bodied negroes were commanding from fifteen hundred to three thousand dollars in the New Orleans market. Counting only ten per cent. interest on the investment, we find it nearly as cheap to hire the negroes, as it was in the old days to own them and get their labor for nothing. But, as yet, slaveholders will reply to all such calculations, “Free niggers can never be depended on to grow cotton.” ----- Footnote 35: These negroes came out at the end of the year with enough cotton and sugar—after paying for their own support—to divide only a few dollars to each first-class hand. Even this result was better than one would have anticipated in June. Footnote 36: Since lost, by explosion of her boilers, with fearful sacrifice of life. CHAPTER XXVIII.