The obvious defects of this system, the tendency to extravagance, the not knowing where you stand, the prevention of saving habits, are aggravated for the Negro because the white man keeps the books. The Negro is accustomed to be charged prices which in many cases are a half higher than the cash price of the same article in the nearby stores; he knows that there will be an interest charge at the rate of from ten per cent to forty per cent on his running account, and he suspects (sometimes with reason) that the bookkeeping is careless or fraudulent. Some planters make a practice of ending the settlement of every account with a row, and the consequent frame of mind of the Negro is illustrated by a stock story. A Negro has been trading with a local merchant and goes to a new store because they offer twelve pounds of sugar for a dollar instead of ten. On his way back he passes the old place, where they ask him in, weigh up his sugar, and show him that he has actually only nine pounds instead of twelve. "Yes, boss, dat's so, but after all, perhaps he didn't get the best of it; while he was weighing out that sugar, I slips dis yere pair of shoes into my basket." The story precisely illustrates the futility of cheating the Negro; for whenever he thinks his accounts are juggled, he will see to it that his labor is no more conscientious than the bookkeeper's. Many of the really long-headed planters see that the less the relations of employer and hand are matters of favor, and the more they become affairs of business, the easier it will be to get on with their hands. Many of them have a fixed basis for advances, not more than about fifteen dollars a month for a family, and that in provisions only; others keep no book accounts for such advances, but issue coupon books of say fifteen dollars every month. A few pay their wage hands and give out the advances in cash, allowing people to buy where they will. A very few decline to have anything to do with advances in any form; but inasmuch as the Negroes must eat, in such cases the hands usually get somebody else to furnish them. Some planters close up their accounts at the end of the year, compelling the Negroes to turn in whatever they have in property to close out their accounts, and then start in afresh.