Of course it is not to be demanded that the southern woman exactly reproduce the New England system of fifty years ago just described by Mrs. Stowe. But she must learn to be entirely independent of servants in the era of co-operation, electric dish-washers, and other helping machines, about to begin. Let us see how it has been with the fathers and boys. The planting of the old south required proportionally less cash outlay annually than any common business that I now call to mind. The owner of 750 acres of land--an ordinary plantation--worth $6,000, thirty slaves worth $18,000, and mules and live-stock worth $1,000, had usually but five considerable items of expense: the overseer with his family was "found"--to use the then current vogue--and paid not more than $150 yearly wages; a few sacks of salt to save the pork--a little to be given the live animals occasionally; a few bars of iron for the plantation blacksmith shop--the latter being furnished with bellows, anvil, tongs, screwplate, vise, and a few other tools, all hardly amounting to $100 investment; sometimes coarse cotton and woollen cloth for the clothes of the negroes, made by the slave-women tailors (even in my day this cloth was, on many plantations, spun and wove at home from the cotton and wool grown by the owner); and the fifth item was a moderate bill of the family physician for attendance upon the sick slaves. The whole would seldom amount to $350; and remember the income yielding capital was $25,000. This planter paid no wages for his labor; he bred his slaves, and all animals serving for work, food, or pleasure;--in short, the establishment was self-supporting. The good manager sold every year more than enough of meat, grain, and other produce to pay the expense itemed a moment ago, and so the $1,200 from the sale of his crop of thirty bales of cotton was often net income. The natural increase of slaves which I have explained above operated in many cases to encourage wastefulness and idleness. But even in the majority of these cases the estates more than held their own.