After he takes mother back to her room, he gives an
hour to our people, the blacks of the plantation and his white tenants
throughout the county. He is a father to them all. He settles all their
troubles, big and little. Then for hours he and I go over his business
affairs. Every afternoon from four to five he devotes to his estates and
the men and women for whom he acts as trustee. He has often said to me:
'We have a clear million of money and property, and that is all any man
should have in America. It is all he is entitled to under our form of
government. Any more than that an honest man should in one way or another
return to the people from whom he has taken it. I never want my family to
have more than a million dollars.' When he went into the Seaboard affair,
he explained to me that it was to assist the Wilsons--they were old
friends, and he has acted as their solicitor for years--in building up the
South. He discussed with me the right and advisability of putting in the
trust funds. He said he considered it his duty to employ them as he did
his own in enterprises that would aid the whole people of the South,
instead of sending them to the North to be used in Wall Street as belting
for the 'System' grinder.
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