Next as to _industry_. The laborers, during their first year under the new system, have acquired the idea of ownership, and of the security of wages, and have come to see that labor and slavery are not the same thing. The notion that they were to raise no more cotton has passed away, since work upon it is found to be remunerative, and connected with the proprietorship of land. House-servants, who were at first particularly set against it, now generally prefer it. The laborers have collected the pieces of the gins which they destroyed on the flight of their masters, the ginning being obnoxious work, repaired them, and ginned the cotton on the promise of wages. Except upon plantations in the vicinity of camps, where other labor is more immediately remunerative, and an unhealthy excitement prevails, there is a general disposition to cultivate it. The culture of the cotton is voluntary, the only penalty for not engaging in it being the imposition of a rent for the tenement and land adjacent thereto occupied by the negro, not exceeding two dollars per month. Both the Government and private individuals, who have become owners of one-fourth of the land by the recent tax-sales, pay twenty-five cents for a standard day's-work, which may, by beginning early, be performed by a healthy and active hand by noon; and the same was the case with the tasks under the slave-system on very many of the plantations. As I was riding through one of Mr. Philbrick's fields one morning, I counted fifty persons at work who belonged to one plantation. This gentleman, who went out with the first delegation, and at the same time gave largely to the benevolent contributions for the enterprise, was the leading purchaser at the tax-sales, and combining a fine humanity with honest sagacity and close calculation, no man is so well fitted to try the experiment. He bought thirteen plantations, and on these has had planted and cultivated eight hundred and sixteen acres of cotton where four hundred and ninety-nine and one twelve-hundredth acres were cultivated last year,--a larger increase, however, than will generally be found in other districts, due mainly to prompter payments. The general superintendent of Port Royal Wand said to me,--"We have to restrain rather than to encourage the negroes to take land for cotton." The general superintendent of Hilton Head Island said, that on that island the negroes had, besides adequate corn, taken two, three, and in a few cases four acres of cotton to a hand, and there was a general disposition to cultivate it, except near the camps. A superintendent on St. Helena Island said, that, if he were going to carry on any work, he should not want bettor laborers. He had charge of the refugees from Edisto, who had been brought to St. Helena village, and who had cleared and fenced patches for gardens, felling the trees for that purpose.