Q. 10. How can the interest of the laborers of your section be best subserved? --A. By the establishment by the States of industrial schools, by the total elimination from Federal politics of the so-called negro question, and by leaving the solution to time, and a reduction of taxation, both indirect and incidental. It is a noteworthy fact that the improvement of my section has kept pace, _pari passu_, with the cessation of the agitation of race issues. The laborers share equally with the landowners the advantages of the improvement, and there is every reason to expect increasing and permanent prosperity if all questions between the landowners and their laborers in our section are left to the natural adjustment of the demand for labor. For many years the negroes regarded themselves as the wards of the Federal Government, and it were well for them to understand that they have nothing more to expect from the Federal Government, than the white man, and that, like him, their future depends upon their own energy, industry, and economy. This can work no hardship. The constant demand for labor affords them the amplest protection. Nothing, probably, would contribute so immediately to their prosperity as the reduction of the tariff. They are the producers of no protected articles. The onerous burdens of the tariff naturally fall heaviest upon those who are large consumers of protected articles and produce only the great staples, grain and cotton, which form the basis of our export trade, and which can, from their very nature in this country, receive no protection from a tariff. Q. In your own State, Arkansas, what portion of the land cultivated and what proportion of the acreage of the land cultivated is in the form of large plantations? --A. That lying along the Mississippi and Arkansas Rivers. It would be hard for me to estimate the proportions. I do not know that I have ever considered it, but the portions which are cultivated in large plantations lie directly on the Mississippi River in front of the State of Arkansas and on the Arkansas River. The rest of the State is cultivated very much by small white farmers. Q. And are the productions of the small holdings and large holdings similar; I inquire as to cotton particularly? --A. No, sir. In the interior of the State cotton is made a surplus crop entirely. Q. What are the principal crops there? --A. Our people are raising their own supplies, fruits and vegetables. For instance, it was stated by the land agent of the Iron Mountain Railroad at a public meeting in Little Rock some weeks ago that that road had carried out from the State of Arkansas in one week 800,000 pounds of green peas and strawberries.