Jasper County Democrat, Volume 15, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 August 1912 — Down Where the "Niggers Do the Work.” [ARTICLE]

Down Where the "Niggers Do the Work.”

Mr. and Mrs. Sylvester Galbraith returned last week from Arkansas, where Mr. Galbraith has been employed on a dredge boat near Elaine. It was pretty hot down there and the fear of malatla finally decided them to return* to God’s country. Where this dredge was working was for general drainage purposes near where the government levee broke last spring. A strip of level country about 60 miles wide and 80 miles long, between the Mississippi and Yellow rivers, protected from overflow by a dyke or levee on the Mississippi side, w’as where the dredge is working. The levee for about a half mile was washed out by the recent floods and this whole territory nearly was covered with water from 6 to 14 feet in depth.

It is quite a heavy timbered country, in part, and many trees from 4 to 6 feet In diameter were chopped down in front of the dredge, which was cutting a 50 foot channel. Fine timber, too—oak, cottonwood, elm, hickory, etc. The bottom lands comprising this territory, Mr. Galbraith says, is the finest soil one ever saw, and will grow anything. The population down in , that country is practically all negro, at least 90 per cent of it, and t*e few white men tliere do little or no manual labor.