The sum total of all the contributions of all the benevolent agencies for the evangelization and education of the Negro in the South, is seventeen cents per year for each person. This seventeen cents includes whatever is done in missionary colleges and in all educational missions, as well as in the direct church work. In twenty-one years from 1841 to 1861 there were twenty-one crops of cotton raised by slave labor, which aggregated 58,441,906 bales. {149} In the twenty-one years from 1865 to 1885 there were twenty-one crops of cotton which aggregated 93,389,031 bales. That is, by free labor there was an excess over the productions of slave labor of 34,947,125 bales, or nearly 35,000,000 bales. The value of 35,000,000 bales of cotton produced by free labor in excess of the product of slave labor cannot have been less than $2,000,000,000, or about the full valuation of all the slaves who were made free by the war, had they been sold at the ruling prices. The gain is due not only to the emancipation of the blacks, but to the emancipation of the whites from enforced idleness. The cotton factories of the world annually require about 12,000,000 bales of cotton, American weight. Good land in Texas produces one bale to the acre. The world's supply of cotton could be grown on less than 19,000 square miles, or upon an area equal to only seven per cent. of the area of Texas. * * * * * THE COLOR-LINE QUESTION: WHAT IS IT? 1. It is not the question of _social_ equality. No one doubts the right of individuals, or the family, or the social circle, to draw their lines of association and fellowship at their own pleasure, whether at wealth, rank, fashion, talent, or anything else. To confound this with the real question, is not candid. 2. Still less is it the question of the inter-marriage of the races. Here, individual preference is undeniable. To claim that this is the question, and to ask tauntingly: "Do you want your daughter to marry a _nigger_?" is ungentlemanly and unworthy of an answer. 3. The question is: Shall a line be drawn between the white and black races, giving rights and privileges in Church and State to the one race, which are denied to the other, solely because of race or color? In other words: Shall a line be drawn which shall separate the Negroes, and assign them as a race to the position of inferiors irrespective of merit or character, and merely on the ground of race or color?