Q. Do they remain or do they go and buy homesteads for themselves? --A. They probably remain until they accumulate a few thousand dollars, and then go and buy a home. We encourage it, from the fact that we want the others behind to be stimulated to do the same thing. I will say in that connection that the future of the negro of the South is the alluvial lands. Q. These plantations? --A. Not only these plantations particularly. What I mean by alluvial lands are the alluvial lands on the coast and the alluvial lands of the Mississippi Valley, the rich lands where the negro relies on his own energy and exertion rather than on his brains. There is an immigration coming into the older States now. Q. The older Southern States? --A. The older Southern States. As they come in the negroes gradually give way and go to the richer lands. For instance, one railroad last year brought into the Mississippi Valley over 10,000 negro immigrants. Q. From what States? --A. From the Atlantic and Gulf States. Q. What became of them? --A. They were scattered along the alluvial lands of the Mississippi Valley. As the negroes of the Mississippi Valley either immigrate from that valley and go in different directions and buy land, the planters of the Mississippi Valley send out to the older States and replace them with labor from those States. A negro in the older States, probably, to make his support would have to cultivate 15 or 20 acres of land, whereas a negro in the Mississippi Valley can make his support on 8 or 10 acres of land. Q. Will this result in the ownership of the alluvial lands being transferred to the negro? --A. No, sir; because as he makes money he goes off. Q. He is a Chinese immigrant?--A. I mean by "goes off" he does not go out of the State, but he goes to the hills. Q. And to smaller ownerships?--A. To smaller ownerships. Q. And the aim of the Southern planter is to accommodate this tendency of things to smaller rentings? --A. Yes, sir. Q. Do you think a plantation is more productive where, under a general supervision by the planter or the owner, it is let out in small sections to the negroes to cultivate, or is it better to cultivate the plantation as a whole? --A. It is better to let it out, as I stated in my written answers. The cotton crop of this country is being raised to such an extent by the small white farmers that the large planter can no longer afford to hire and compete with that class of labor who only expend their own energy; consequently the tendency is to make farmers of the negroes.