Another way, which is still more effective, is the practice of paying the labourer with orders on the store instead of lawful money. By this means money is kept out of the hands of the Negro, and the Negro is kept entirely in the hands of the landlord. He cannot save money because he gets no money to save. He cannot seek a better market for his labour because he has no money with which to pay his fare, and because he is, by that vicious order system, already in debt, and therefore already in bondage. Thus he is riveted to one place, and is, in some sense, a slave; for a man to whom it can be said, “You shall work for me for what I choose to pay you, and how I shall choose to pay you,” is, in fact, a slave, though he may be called a free man. We denounce the landlord and tenant system of England, but it can be said of England as cannot be said of our free country, that by law no labourer can be paid for labour in any other than lawful money. England holds any other payment to be a penal offence and punishable by fine and imprisonment. The same should be the case in every State in the American Union. Under the mortgage system, no matter how industrious or economical the Negro may be, he finds himself at the end of the year in debt to the landlord, and from year to year he toils on and is tempted to try again and again, but seldom with any better result. With this power over the Negro, this possession of his labour, you may easily see why the South sometimes makes a display of its liberality and brags that it does not want slavery back. It had the Negro’s labour, heretofore for nothing, and now it has it for next to nothing and at the same time is freed from the obligation to take care of the young and the aged, the sick and the decrepit. There is not much virtue in all this, yet it is the ground of loud boasting. ATTITUDE OF WHITE RACE TOWARDS NEGROES. A NATIONAL PROBLEM. I now come to the so-called, but mis-called “Negro Problem,” as a characterization of the relations existing in the Southern States. I say at once, I do not admit the justice or propriety of this formula, as applied to the question before us. Words are things. They are certainly such in this case, since they give us a misnomer that is misleading and hence mischievous. It is a formula of Southern origin and has a strong bias against the Negro. It handicaps his cause with all the prejudice known to exist and anything to which he is a party. It has been accepted by the good people of the North, as I think, without proper thought and investigation. It is a crafty invention and is in every way worthy of its inventors.