Illustration is included in Chapter LXI, "A Visit to Lynchburg in Virginia," and corresponds with the following passage, which clearly aims to present the tobacco factories in a positive, and even romantic light: "It [Lynchburg] has thirty-five tobacco factories, employing great numbers of negroes, men, women, and children. These negroes earn good wages, work faithfully, and turn out vast quantities of the black, ugly compound known as "plug," which has enslaved so many thousands, and promoted such a sublime disregard for the proprieties in the matter of expectoration. . . . In the maufacturies the negro is the same cheery, capricious being that one finds him in the cotton or sugar-cane fields; he sings quaintly over his toil, and seems entirely devoid of the sullen ambition which many of our Northern factory laborers exhibit. The men and women working around the tables in the basements of the Lynchburg tobacco establishments croon eccentric hymns in concert all day long; and their little children, laboring before they are hardly large enough to go alon, join in the refrains." (p. 556) Correspondingly, the engraving shows four small children stripping tobacco leaves alongside the adults., Illustration in Edward King's The Great South (Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Company, 1875), p. 557., Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Work Scenes.
Date
[1875]
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare Am 1875 King 3379.Q p 557, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2828