A most important step was the uniform issue to each person on the Red Cross books. How was it to be done? What could be done? All important questions were as familiar to each officer as his own department questions. The president would call her staff together (and many times it was in the small hours of the morning) and present the question for consideration. It was at one of these meetings the fact had been presented that the prime problem was "How to feed 30,000 people with $30,000 for one year?" It was evident that they must be provided with a way to produce something themselves, and to this end all assistance was given. One peck of grits and one pound of pork to a family of seven for one week was the regular Red Cross supply, and this was given to all who needed assistance, and the laboring men received one peck and one pound for their work. The description given us of the negro on our arrival was not flattering. "He cannot be trusted!" "He'll steal anything he can get!" "You can't make him work!" and similar expressions came from all sides. But Miss Barton had seen the negro before and knew the best way to lift him up, and her wisdom was manifest all through that field, as the splendid gardens (producing more than the people could eat or sell), the mended condition of the clothing, the division of cottages into rooms, the carefully selected, bottled and labeled seeds for next year's planting, and the general elevation of their habits proved beyond argument. They were treated like gentlemen and they felt the responsibility. They were trusted and told so, and they lived up to the trust. They were shown the necessity of work, and they worked like men and women. No race of people could have borne their affliction better, more cheerfully (they are pre-eminently a cheerful, happy people) and with less record of crime than did these 30,000 people, the vast majority of whom were negroes. One important and erroneous impression among some of the less intelligent was that seeds were of little account which they raised in their own garden, and the proper procedure was to buy each year from the merchants "new and good seeds," and that practice was common. One day one of the sub-committee men brought in a very large, magnificent onion, and with some pride presented it as a result of his work, and said, "Miss Barton, if I could git some ob dat y'ar seed, I reckon I could raise onyun 'nough to pay fo a critter nex' year." "Well," said Miss Barton, "do you think you could not raise seeds enough from those onions?" "Oh, bress you, no marm. You see dem ain' good what we raise; we has to buy de seed." Then followed a long explanation and agricultural logic such as Jack Owen (for that is his name) had never heard before, and when he left he said: "To tink dat I could'n know befo' dat a good onyun mus' bring good seed, and dat good seed mus' bring good onyun. I sabe my seed now, sho."