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page 3^6 ooqjg Orleans, Win.,r 1850-51
2
I was then idle for a long time in New Orleans that winer ( ofif 1850-51 ) with occasional days work at Steamers on the Levee.
The city was full of workingmen from the North, Sailors and Steamboatmen & flat boatmen, and not enough work for one quarter of them. This was the black time of my life before or since.
The "Struggle for existence" in these centres of the United States is fearful.
Whft'e^men^a r e^iir ecfctf ortvorkM hatsPlan t.erj£E££i Slave ownej&s®» would not "let-their'Slaves do. A good Slave was worth &LQQQ a wFIte man nothing, and Slaves were too valuable to be put at dangerous work where white men could be got.
Planters At Hot els Supported by Slaves
Planters would move to New Orleans for the winter and stay at the St. Charle^aa&.-other-first class Hotels and bring a few Slaves with them to work on the levees at $2 a day to keep their masters. Work was given to them in preference to white laborers on account of the BxosSlavery feeling.
White men were northerners and their lives of no value and had to work at anything, at LeM^eing-where the clay would eat into their legs. In Cypress Swamps and other dangerous employments. I was young and not overly strong, without friends, and in the fierce Struggle for work and a living I was pushed to the wall.
Reading Permit ted Survival During Rough Winter
I can't and furst not relate all I went through ad suffered for two months there in Orleans that winter. I did nothing wrong or criminal. I simply suffered. ... I did not write home that winter	and was getting so	I did not care what became	of	me.
I	never would advise	any young man to go to	any	of	these
centres of Business in the United Statesswithout friends, the crush is fearful and few come out of them alive or uncontaminated. Most of them become criminals. There is nothing like it in Canada.
Only tie mature, tjie strong, the knowing ones with means, who can crush others, survive. It indurates and hardens the character as shown in the case of Slaveholders. White labor cannot	compete with cheap	Slave or negro labor.
I	did come out of it	uncontaminated. I had	pride and self
respect, and romance in my character, from my natural disposition and my reading of good novels and Travels and Biographies, that kept me safe, besides having so spring or mercury in me as to rebound from its effects.