I must not overstate the advance of white production and labor upon black in the country. In the regions of densest negro populations the whites show a backwardness in taking to work that is discouraging. A very observant man familiar with Jackson and Madison counties of Georgia, both of which are out of the Black Belt, and who now lives where negroes outnumber the whites, not long ago made this comparison, while answering my inquiries: "In Jackson and Madison the whites work. A farmer who runs but one plow does all the plowing. He hires but one negro. In my present county the one-horse farmer always hires two negroes, one to plow and the other to hoe, and the only work he does is to boss them." But the negroes are going away from many parts, in fact from nearly all, of the Black Belt. Wherever they have become scarce, the whites go to work; and, as is now occurring in that part of Greene county called "The Fork," and in places in adjoining counties, the lands rise greatly in market value. In many parts of Oglethorpe, Wilkes, Taliaferro, and Greene counties, where negroes were doing practically all the agricultural labor when I came to Atlanta, I learn that many white boys are becoming good all-around workers. It surprised me greatly to be told that in this region in different places the white women and children, as soon as the dew is off in the morning, go to cotton picking, and they become so efficient that often no extra labor need be hired to finish that greatest task of all to the farmer. Before the war, all of us white boys picked just enough of cotton to learn that our backs could never be made to stand picking all day. The whites now beating the negro in what we once thought he only could do, and white women in the old slave regions doing the family laundry,--these begin a marvellous economic revolution. The cotton mills and other manufactories rapidly springing up in many southern localities are developing a class of white operatives. Mining of various kinds is on the increase. Stone, slate, and marble cutting, cabinet making, and other trades attract greater numbers to follow them. White railroad employees, printers, engravers, stenographers, typewriters, and those in numerous other gainful occupations, grow in numbers. White women and girls stream to work for employers every morning. In all places, if you but look long enough, you catch sight of swelling crowds of the race who once lived almost entirely from slave labor now doing their own labor.