Even where the Negro is employed on wages, he looks on himself as part of the concern and expects due consideration in return for what Stone calls the "proprietary interest he feels in the plantation at large, his sense of being part and parcel of a large plantation. Then, too, there is his never-failing assurance of ability to pay his account, no matter how large, by his labor, when it is not too wet or too cold, his respect, and his implicit and generally cheerful obedience." Inasmuch as more than half the Negroes are raising cotton, and most of the others are working on farms, it is important to know what kind of laborers they make. It is the opinion of their greatest leader, Booker Washington, that the best place for the Negro is in the rural South, and that he is not fitted for the strife of the great cities South or North. Is he perfectly fitted for any service? Is it true, as one of the employers of Negroes alleges, that "their actions have no logical or reasonable basis, that they are notional and whimsical, and that they are controlled far more by their fancies than by their common sense?" In cotton culture there is little to elevate a man. One of the numerous errors flying about is that the slave in the cotton fields was a skilled laborer, and that there is intellectual training in planting, weeding, and picking. The owner or renter must of course accustom his mind to consider the important questions of the times of plowing and seeding, and he must submit to the anxiety which besets the farmer all over the world; but cotton culture is a monotonous thing, the handling of the few tools is at best a matter of dexterity, and the only man who gets an intellectual training out of it is the manager. When cotton is high, a plantation is a more or less speculative investment, and many people who save money put it into land and hire a manager. Cotton broking and banking firms sometimes carry on plantations of their own. City bankers and heavy men get plantations on mortgage, or by purchase; and banks sometimes own too much of this kind of property.