In 1919 the federal government outlawed the manufacture, transport and sale of alcoholic beverages. Yet millions of Americans still wanted their beer, wine and distilled liquor, and they were willing to pay for it. A black-market industry emerged to meet the demand.

“Jean”—who declined to be identified further—had sold alcohol on the right side of the law before Prohibition. After it began, he crossed over and sold alcohol on the wrong side. The latter was more profitable, as illegal enterprises often are. He told his story in the mid-1920s.

When the prohibition law passed I was a waiter at Sherry’s. I became a naturalized citizen of this country twenty years ago, and although I tried to get in the army they turned me down because my eyesight was not so good. So I kept on through the war at Sherry’s and during those days saved up a very good bank account. People were spending right and left, and on the gay nights tips were high—men going to France, you know, and giving a party before they left. One  the last days before prohibition. a major gave me a thousand dollar bill. I owe it to my wife that I saved all the money I earned in those days. She would take it away from me and whenever I asked her how much the bank account was she just laughed at me.

But when prohibition came and the wine cards at Sherry’s were torn up, my income deteriorated. I told my wife we would have to use the money in the bank now, but she said that was to start us off in a business of our own and I couldn't have a penny of it. Pretty soon, without my knowing anything about it, she had started up a beauty parlor.

In the meantime, once or twice every night there would be somebody at Sherry’s who would ask me where to buy liquor. They seemed to think I ought to know and they would get mad when I told them I didn't know. You see there were a lot of rich young men who had never believed we would really have prohibition, and they had not bought up anything at all. In the first six or seven months of prohibition, everything was very dry. There was no bootlegging to amount to anything. People obeyed the prohibition law then more than they ever have since. But the young men who knew me at Sherry’s seemed to take it very hard. I just thought that prohibition law was the end of everything, and began to look around for something else to do.

One night about six or seven months after prohibition I went home as usual. But about three minutes after I had entered the apartment, the bell rang and a little fellow who looked like a jockey was standing there. He said he had followed me all the way from the restaurant so that we could have a quiet talk in my apartment. I asked him who he was, but he just laughed and said one of my very good friends had sent him to see me.

Well, what he wanted to say was this. He asked me if there were not a lot of my old customers who were anxious to buy something to drink. I had to confess that this was true. He said he thought so, and that he was ready to help me give it to them. I told him I would get in trouble trying to sell liquor at the restaurant, and he laughed again. That wasn't the way it would work, he said. I didn't know much in those days.

He went on to say that a friend of his had a large supply of liquors available, very choice stuff, and that he wanted some arrangement for letting the men who could afford to pay for it know about it. With that he stood up quickly and said he would be leaving. After he was gone, I found an envelope on the table with two hundred dollars in it, and a card with an address on Forty-sixth Street. On the card it was written, “Jean, drop around tomorrow.”

So the next day I went to the address. I had a long talk with a quiet fellow who said his name was Dolan. and the result of it was that I agreed to get the addresses of all my friends who came to Sherry’s, then quit my job and call on them at their homes.

I visited during the next week about fifteen or twenty young men. And every one of them offered to take as much as I could bring them. It was fine stuff, and the prices were high. I received $150 a case for Scotch whiskey. Fifty dollars a case of that was my profit. But I had to have an automobile to deliver it, and so I conversed with my wife about selling the beauty shop. She wouldn't do it, but she agreed to get me an automobile, and the next day we went out together and bought one.

For about a year I stayed in this business, just delivering Dolan’s stuff among my customers for a nice profit. The police never bothered me and never seemed to bother Dolan. I did not know the source of his supply. But in those early days there were not many bootleggers and the police did not seem to bother much about them. I made good money.

As time went on, Dolan reduced his prices. He said it was foolish just to go after wealthy men. He said everybody wanted liquor and if the prices were brought down everybody would buy it and the business would increase. But it seemed to me that the quality of his goods began to deteriorate, and I was afraid to lower the prices to my customers for fear they would suspect something. As long as they were paying higher prices for their liquors than their friends, I knew they would think they were getting better stuff. And why not let them enjoy a little boasting? Anyway, I was not dealing in any poisonous hooch. It was real Scotch, just a little watered.

On my profits, I opened a little restaurant of my own about a year and a half after prohibition. I put a couple of barrels of wine in the cellar and sold it to my customers. I couldn't see any harm in that, and my wife said it was ridiculous to think that was breaking any law. But by now the police were getting on to bootlegging. The cop on the beat found out about my wine and started coming in for a bottle every night. That was all right, but when he started bringing all of his friends and going up to the cash register as if it was his place and taking out a ten or twenty dollar bill whenever he felt like it, I got tired of it. I told him to cease doing that. And he said he would put me in jail if I resisted him.

But I did not intend to give all of my profits to the police and their friends, so about six months later I just closed up the restaurant.

About this time I decided to branch out and go after a larger trade. I heard that a man named Immerman—he is dead now—was getting a lot of stuff from Rum Row and Cuba, good Scotch and high-priced cordials which were very rare.

I went to see him with a man who took me to a room over a garage in Brooklyn. In the garage I could see trucks piled up with all sorts of high class goods in cases. But Immerman told me that he was only running his goods in for a firm and could not do any business with me. I would have to see the firm in Times Square.

I went to this office and met the man who was introduced to me as the president. He would not talk until I told him to call up _____ ______, a famous Broadway spender that he knew would be all right. This man told him I was entirely reliable.

The president—I prefer not to mention his name—took me entirely into his confidence. And he made me feel like a piker sure enough when he told me what his company was doing. He said they had dozens of men like myself working on commission, or rather as agents, and that I could make a million dollars if I would help them with the disposal of their goods. He said their big problem was distribution.

He told me the firm could supply me with any kind of liquor that I needed for my trade in any quantity. He would guarantee me protection. And also, he said, he would show me how to expand my business so that I would only have to direct it and let other men do the work. I paid him one thousand dollars, which he said was a partnership fee and went into the lawyers’ fund. It was my first step toward really big business in the bootlegging industry.

Jean’s business was indeed really big. He concluded his story, and expressed no regrets.

I have made a lot of money. My wife handles all the cash, but I believe we have more than $100,000 invested in safe securities right now. I have never been arrested, and none of my men have ever been arrested except one, and his case never came to trial. I turned it over to the president of the syndicate, the man I have been paying $3,000 to $4,000 a year to, for “the legal fund,” and one day a lawyer called me to say the case was all over and never would be tried. I don’t know how they worked it, and I don’t care. I’ve been paying that much a year just to keep from being worried by things like that. . . .

I have gotten rich, but I have made a lot of people happy. I have never run across a man in my life who refused to take a drink because it was against the law, and I have never met a man who thought I was a crook, just because I am a bootlegger and proud of it.

From “A bootlegger’s story,” New Yorker, Sept. 25, Oct. 2, Oct. 9, Oct. 16, 1926.

Herman Melville was a keen student of the human soul; he was also an apt observer of the whaling industry, an essential part of the American economy in the nineteenth century. Ishmael, the narrator of Moby-Dick, describes the crucial moment of the chase. 

If to Starbuck the apparition of the squid was a thing of portents, to Queequeg it was quite a different object.

“When you see him ’quid,” said the savage, honing his harpoon in the bow of his hoisted boat, “then you quickly see him ’parm whale.”

The next day was exceedingly still and sultry, and with nothing special to engage them, the Pequod’s crew could hardly resist the spell of sleep induced by such a vacant sea. For this part of the Indian Ocean through which we then were voyaging is not what whalemen call a lively ground; that is, it affords fewer glimpses of porpoises, dolphins, flying-fish, and other vivacious denizens of more stirring waters, than those off the Rio de la Plata, or the in-shore ground off Peru.

It was my turn to stand at the foremast-head; and with my shoulders leaning against the slackened royal shrouds, to and fro I idly swayed in what seemed an enchanted air. No resolution could withstand it; in that dreamy mood losing all consciousness, at last my soul went out of my body; though my body still continued to sway as a pendulum will, long after the power which first moved it is withdrawn.

Ere forgetfulness altogether came over me, I had noticed that the seamen at the main and mizzen-mast-heads were already drowsy. So that at last all three of us lifelessly swung from the spars, and for every swing that we made there was a nod from below from the slumbering helmsman. The waves, too, nodded their indolent crests; and across the wide trance of the sea, east nodded to west, and the sun over all.

Suddenly bubbles seemed bursting beneath my closed eyes; like vices my hands grasped the shrouds; some invisible, gracious agency preserved me; with a shock I came back to life. And lo! close under our lee, not forty fathoms off, a gigantic Sperm Whale lay rolling in the water like the capsized hull of a frigate, his broad, glossy back, of an Ethiopian hue, glistening in the sun’s rays like a mirror. But lazily undulating in the trough of the sea, and ever and anon tranquilly spouting his vapory jet, the whale looked like a portly burgher smoking his pipe of a warm afternoon. But that pipe, poor whale, was thy last. As if struck by some enchanter’s wand, the sleepy ship and every sleeper in it all at once started into wakefulness; and more than a score of voices from all parts of the vessel, simultaneously with the three notes from aloft, shouted forth the accustomed cry, as the great fish slowly and regularly spouted the sparkling brine into the air.

“Clear away the boats! Luff!” cried Ahab. And obeying his own order, he dashed the helm down before the helmsman could handle the spokes.

The sudden exclamations of the crew must have alarmed the whale; and ere the boats were down, majestically turning, he swam away to the leeward, but with such a steady tranquillity, and making so few ripples as he swam, that thinking after all he might not as yet be alarmed, Ahab gave orders that not an oar should be used, and no man must speak but in whispers. So seated like Ontario Indians on the gunwales of the boats, we swiftly but silently paddled along; the calm not admitting of the noiseless sails being set. Presently, as we thus glided in chase, the monster perpendicularly flitted his tail forty feet into the air, and then sank out of sight like a tower swallowed up.

“There go flukes!” was the cry, an announcement immediately followed by Stubb’s producing his match and igniting his pipe, for now a respite was granted. After the full interval of his sounding had elapsed, the whale rose again, and being now in advance of the smoker’s boat, and much nearer to it than to any of the others, Stubb counted upon the honor of the capture. It was obvious, now, that the whale had at length become aware of his pursuers. All silence of cautiousness was therefore no longer of use. Paddles were dropped, and oars came loudly into play. And still puffing at his pipe, Stubb cheered on his crew to the assault.

Yes, a mighty change had come over the fish. All alive to his jeopardy, he was going “head out”; that part obliquely projecting from the mad yeast which he brewed.*

It will be seen in some other place of what a very light substance the entire interior of the sperm whale’s enormous head consists. Though apparently the most massive, it is by far the most buoyant part about him. So that with ease he elevates it in the air, and invariably does so when going at his utmost speed. Besides, such is the breadth of the upper part of the front of his head, and such the tapering cut-water formation of the lower part, that by obliquely elevating his head, he thereby may be said to transform himself from a bluff-bowed sluggish galliot into a sharppointed New York pilot-boat.

“Start her, start her, my men! Don’t hurry yourselves; take plenty of time—but start her; start her like thunder-claps, that’s all,” cried Stubb, spluttering out the smoke as he spoke. “Start her, now; give ’em the long and strong stroke, Tashtego. Start her, Tash, my boy—start her, all; but keep cool, keep cool—cucumbers is the word—easy, easy—only start her like grim death and grinning devils, and raise the buried dead perpendicular out of their graves, boys—that’s all. Start her!”

“Woo-hoo! Wa-hee!” screamed the Gay-Header in reply, raising some old war-whoop to the skies; as every oarsman in the strained boat involuntarily bounced forward with the one tremendous leading stroke which the eager Indian gave.

But his wild screams were answered by others quite as wild. “Kee-hee! Kee-hee!” yelled Daggoo, straining forwards and backwards on his seat, like a pacing tiger in his cage.

“Ka-la! Koo-loo!” howled Queequeg, as if smacking his lips over a mouthful of Grenadier’s steak. And thus with oars and yells the keels cut the sea. Meanwhile, Stubb retaining his place in the van, still encouraged his men to the onset, all the while puffing the smoke from his mouth. Like desperadoes they tugged and they strained, till the welcome cry was heard—“Stand up, Tashtego!—give it to him!” The harpoon was hurled. “Stern all!” The oarsmen backed water; the same moment something went hot and hissing along every one of their wrists. It was the magical line. An instant before, Stubb had swiftly caught two additional turns with it round the loggerhead, whence, by reason of its increased rapid circlings, a hempen blue smoke now jetted up and mingled with the steady fumes from his pipe. As the line passed round and round the loggerhead; so also, just before reaching that point, it blisteringly passed through and through both of Stubb’s hands, from which the hand-cloths, or squares of quilted canvas sometimes worn at these times, had accidentally dropped. It was like holding an enemy’s sharp two-edged sword by the blade, and that enemy all the time striving to wrest it out of your clutch.

“Wet the line! wet the line!” cried Stubb to the tub oarsman (him seated by the tub) who, snatching off his hat, dashed sea-water into it. More turns were taken, so that the line began holding its place. The boat now flew through the boiling water like a shark all fins. Stubb and Tashtego here changed places—stem for stern—a staggering business truly in that rocking commotion.

From the vibrating line extending the entire length of the upper part of the boat, and from its now being more tight than a harpstring, you would have thought the craft had two keels—one cleaving the water, the other the air—as the boat churned on through both opposing elements at once. A continual cascade played at the bows; a ceaseless whirling eddy in her wake; and, at the slightest motion from within, even but of a little finger, the vibrating, cracking craft canted over her spasmodic gunwale into the sea. Thus they rushed; each man with might and main clinging to his seat, to prevent being tossed to the foam; and the tall form of Tashtego at the steering oar crouching almost double, in order to bring down his centre of gravity. Whole Atlantics and Pacifics seemed passed as they shot on their way, till at length the whale somewhat slackened his flight.

“Haul in—haul in!” cried Stubb to the bowsman! and, facing round towards the whale, all hands began pulling the boat up to him, while yet the boat was being towed on. Soon ranging up by his flank, Stubb, firmly planting his knee in the clumsy cleat, darted dart after dart into the flying fish; at the word of command, the boat alternately sterning out of the way of the whale’s horrible wallow, and then ranging up for another fling.

The red tide now poured from all sides of the monster like brooks down a hill. His tormented body rolled not in brine but in blood, which bubbled and seethed for furlongs behind in their wake. The slanting sun playing upon this crimson pond in the sea, sent back its reflection into every face, so that they all glowed to each other like red men. And all the while, jet after jet of white smoke was agonizingly shot from the spiracle of the whale, and vehement puff after puff from the mouth of the excited headsman; as at every dart, hauling in upon his crooked lance (by the line attached to it), Stubb straightened it again and again, by a few rapid blows against the gunwale, then again and again sent it into the whale.

“Pull up—pull up!” he now cried to the bowsman, as the waning whale relaxed in his wrath. “Pull up!—close to!” and the boat ranged along the fish’s flank. When reaching far over the bow, Stubb slowly churned his long sharp lance into the fish, and kept it there, carefully churning and churning, as if cautiously seeking to feel after some gold watch that the whale might have swallowed, and which he was fearful of breaking ere he could hook it out. But that gold watch he sought was the innermost life of the fish. And now it is struck; for, starting from his trance into that unspeakable thing called his “flurry,” the monster horribly wallowed in his blood, overwrapped himself in impenetrable, mad, boiling spray, so that the imperilled craft, instantly dropping astern, had much ado blindly to struggle out from that phrensied twilight into the clear air of the day.

And now abating in his flurry, the whale once more rolled out into view; surging from side to side; spasmodically dilating and contracting his spout-hole, with sharp, cracking, agonized respirations. At last, gush after gush of clotted red gore, as if it had been the purple lees of red wine, shot into the frighted air; and falling back again, ran dripping down his motionless flanks into the sea. His heart had burst!

“He’s dead, Mr. Stubb,” said Daggoo.

“Yes; both pipes smoked out!” and withdrawing his own from his mouth, Stubb scattered the dead ashes over the water; and, for a moment, stood thoughtfully eyeing the vast corpse he had made.

Herman Melville, Moby-Dick. Chapter 61, “Stubb Kills a Whale.”

Solomon Northup had been a free man in New York before being kidnapped into slavery in the early 1840s. Rising demand and soaring prices for cotton tempted slave traders to acquire, by almost any means, black men and women for transport to the cotton regions of the South. Northup was carried to Louisiana, where he toiled on the plantation of Edwin Epps. There he learned the art of growing the white gold.

The ground is prepared by throwing up beds or ridges, with the plough—back-furrowing, it is called. Oxen and mules, the latter almost exclusively, are used in ploughing. The women as frequently as the men perform this labor, feeding, currying, and taking care of their teams, and in all respects doing the field and stable work, precisely as do the ploughboys of the North.

The beds, or ridges, are six feet wide, that is, from water furrow to water furrow. A plough drawn by one mule is then run along the top of the ridge or center of the bed, making the drill, into which a girl usually drops the seed, which she carries in a bag hung round her neck. Behind her comes a mule and harrow, covering up the seed, so that two mules, three slaves, a plough and harrow, are employed in planting a row of cotton. This is done in the months of March and April. Corn is planted in February.

When there are no cold rains, the cotton usually makes its appearance in a week. In the course of eight or ten days afterwards the first hoeing is commenced. This is performed in part, also, by the aid of the plough and mule. The plough passes as near as possible to the cotton on both sides, throwing the furrow from it. Slaves follow with their hoes, cutting up the grass and cotton, leaving hills two feet and a half apart. This is called scraping cotton.

In two weeks more commences the second hoeing. This time the furrow is thrown towards the cotton. Only one stalk, the largest, is now left standing in each hill. In another fortnight it is hoed the third time, throwing the furrow towards the cotton in the same manner as before, and killing all the grass between the rows. About the first of July, when it is a foot high or thereabouts, it is hoed the fourth and last time. Now the whole space between the rows is ploughed, leaving a deep water furrow in the center.

During all these hoeings the overseer or driver follows the slaves on horseback with a whip, such as has been described. The fastest hoer takes the lead row. He is usually about a rod in advance of his companions. If one of them passes him, he is whipped. If one falls behind or is a moment idle, he is whipped. In fact, the lash is flying from morning until night, the whole day long. The hoeing season thus continues from April until July, a field having no sooner been finished once, than it is commenced again.

In the latter part of August begins the cotton picking season. At this time each slave is presented with a sack. A strap is fastened to it, which goes over the neck, holding the mouth of the sack breast high, while the bottom reaches nearly to the ground. Each one is also presented with a large basket that will hold about two barrels. This is to put the cotton in when the sack is filled. The baskets are carried to the field and placed at the beginning of the rows.

When a new hand, one unaccustomed to the business, is sent for the first time into the field, he is whipped up smartly, and made for that day to pick as fast as he can possibly. At night it is weighed, so that his capability in cotton picking is known. He must bring in the same weight each night following. If it falls short, it is considered evidence that he has been laggard, and a greater or less number of lashes is the penalty.

An ordinary day's work is two hundred pounds. A slave who is accustomed to picking, is punished, if he or she brings in a less quantity than that. There is a great difference among them as regards this kind of labor. Some of them seem to have a natural knack, or quickness, which enables them to pick with great celerity, and with both hands, while others, with whatever practice or industry, are utterly unable to come up to the ordinary standard. Such hands are taken from the cotton field and employed in other business. Patsey, of whom I shall have more to say, was known as the most remarkable cotton picker on Bayou Bœuf. She picked with both hands and with such surprising rapidity, that five hundred pounds a day was not unusual for her.

Each one is tasked, therefore, according to his picking abilities, none, however, to come short of two hundred weight. I, being unskillful always in that business, would have satisfied my master by bringing in the latter quantity, while on the other hand, Patsey would surely have been beaten if she failed to produce twice as much.

The cotton grows from five to seven feet high, each stalk having a great many branches, shooting out in all directions, and lapping each other above the water furrow. There are few sights more pleasant to the eye, than a wide cotton field when it is in the bloom. It presents an appearance of purity, like an immaculate expanse of light, new-fallen snow.

Sometimes the slave picks down one side of a row, and back upon the other, but more usually, there is one on either side, gathering all that has blossomed, leaving the unopened bolls for a succeeding picking. When the sack is filled, it is emptied into the basket and trodden down. It is necessary to be extremely careful the first time going through the field, in order not to break the branches off the stalks. The cotton will not bloom upon a broken branch. Epps never failed to inflict the severest chastisement on the unlucky servant who, either carelessly or unavoidably, was guilty in the least degree in this respect.

The hands are required to be in the cotton field as soon as it is light in the morning, and, with the exception of ten or fifteen minutes, which is given them at noon to swallow their allowance of cold bacon, they are not permitted to be a moment idle until it is too dark to see, and when the moon is full, they often times labor till the middle of the night. They do not dare to stop even at dinner time, nor return to the quarters, however late it be, until the order to halt is given by the driver.

The day's work over in the field, the baskets are "toted," or in other words, carried to the gin-house, where the cotton is weighed. No matter how fatigued and weary he may be—no matter how much he longs for sleep and rest—a slave never approaches the gin-house with his basket of cotton but with fear. If it falls short in weight—if he has not performed the full task appointed him, he knows that he must suffer. And if he has exceeded it by ten or twenty pounds, in all probability his master will measure the next day's task accordingly. So, whether he has too little or too much, his approach to the gin-house is always with, fear and trembling. Most frequently they have too little, and therefore it is they are not anxious to leave the field.

After weighing, follow the whippings; and then the baskets are carried to the cotton house, and their contents stored away like hay, all hands being sent in to tramp it down. If the cotton is not dry, instead of taking it to the gin-house at once, it is laid upon platforms, two feet high, and some three times as wide, covered with boards or plank, with narrow walks running between them.

This done, the labor of the day is not yet ended, by any means. Each one must then attend to his respective chores. One feeds the mules, another the swine—another cuts the wood, and so forth; besides, the packing is all done by candle light. Finally, at a late hour, they reach the quarters, sleepy and overcome with the long day's toil. Then a fire must be kindled in the cabin, the corn ground in the small hand-mill, and supper, and dinner for the next day in the field, prepared. All that is allowed them is corn and bacon, which is given out at the corncrib and smoke-house every Sunday morning. Each one receives, as his weekly, allowance, three and a half pounds of bacon, and corn enough to make a peck of meal. That is all—no tea, coffee, sugar, and with the exception of a very scanty sprinkling now and then, no salt. I can say, from a ten years' residence with Master Epps, that no slave of his is ever likely to suffer from the gout, superinduced by excessive high living. Master Epps' hogs were fed on shelled corn—it was thrown out to his "niggers" in the ear. The former, he thought, would fatten faster by shelling, and soaking it in the water—the latter, perhaps, if treated in the same manner, might grow too fat to labor. Master Epps was a shrewd calculator, and knew how to manage his own animals, drunk or sober.

The corn mill stands in the yard beneath a shelter. It is like a common coffee mill, the hopper holding about six quarts. There was one privilege which Master Epps granted freely to every slave he had. They might grind their corn nightly, in such small quantities as their daily wants required, or they might grind the whole week's allowance at one time, on Sundays, just as they preferred. A very generous man was Master Epps!

I kept my corn in a small wooden box, the meal in a gourd; and, by the way, the gourd is one of the most convenient and necessary utensils on a plantation. Besides supplying the place of all kinds of crockery in a slave cabin, it is used for carrying water to the fields. Another, also, contains the dinner. It dispenses with the necessity of pails, dippers, basins, and such tin and wooden superfluities altogether.

When the corn is ground, and fire is made, the bacon is taken down from the nail on which it hangs, a slice cut off and thrown upon the coals to broil. The majority of slaves have no knife, much less a fork. They cut their bacon with the axe at the wood-pile. The corn meal is mixed with a little water, placed in the fire, and baked. When it is "done brown," the ashes are scraped off, and being placed upon a chip, which answers for a table, the tenant of the slave hut is ready to sit down upon the ground to supper.

By this time it is usually midnight. The same fear of punishment with which they approach the gin-house, possesses them again on lying down to get a snatch of rest. It is the fear of oversleeping in the morning. Such an offence would certainly be attended with not less than twenty lashes. With a prayer that he may be on his feet and wide awake at the first sound of the horn, he sinks to his slumbers nightly.

The softest couches in the world are not to be found in the log mansion of the slave. The one whereon I reclined year after year, was a plank twelve inches wide and ten feet long. My pillow was a stick of wood. The bedding was a coarse blanket, and not a rag or shred beside. Moss might be used, were it not that it directly breeds a swarm of fleas.

The cabin is constructed of logs, without floor or window. The latter is altogether unnecessary, the crevices between the logs admitting sufficient light. In stormy weather the rain drives through them, rendering it comfortless and extremely disagreeable. The rude door hangs on great wooden hinges. In one end is constructed an awkward fire-place.

An hour before day light the horn is blown. Then the slaves arouse, prepare their breakfast, fill a gourd with water, in another deposit their dinner of cold bacon and corn cake, and hurry to the field again. It is an offence invariably followed by a flogging, to be found at the quarters after daybreak. Then the fears and labors of another day begin; and until its close there is no such thing as rest. He fears he will be caught lagging through the day; he fears to approach the gin-house with his basket-load of cotton at night; he fears, when he lies down, that he will oversleep himself in the morning. Such is a true, faithful, unexaggerated picture and description of the slave's daily life, during the time of cotton-picking, on the shores of Bayou Bœuf.

In the month of January, generally, the fourth and last picking is completed. Then commences the harvesting of corn. This is considered a secondary crop, and receives far less attention than the cotton. It is planted, as already mentioned, in February. Corn is grown in that region for the purpose of fattening hogs and feeding slaves; very little, if any, being sent to market. It is the white variety, the ear of great size, and the stalk growing to the height of eight, and often times ten feet. In August the leaves are stripped off, dried in the sun, bound in small bundles, and stored away as provender for the mules and oxen. After this the slaves go through the field, turning down the ear, for the purpose of keeping the rains from penetrating to the grain. It is left in this condition until after cotton-picking is over, whether earlier or later. Then the ears are separated from the stalks, and deposited in the corncrib with the husks on; otherwise, stripped of the husks, the weevil would destroy it. The stalks are left standing in the field.

The Carolina, or sweet potato, is also grown in that region to some extent. They are not fed, however, to hogs or cattle, and are considered but of small importance. They are preserved by placing them upon the surface of the ground, with a slight covering of earth or cornstalks. There is not a cellar on Bayou Bœuf. The ground is so low it would fill with water. Potatoes are worth from two to three "bits," or shillings a barrel; corn, except when there is an unusual scarcity, can be purchased at the same rate.

As soon as the cotton and corn crops are secured, the stalks are pulled up, thrown into piles and burned. The ploughs are started at the same time, throwing up the beds again, preparatory to another planting. The soil, in the parishes of Rapides and Avoyelles, and throughout the whole country, so far as my observation extended, is of exceeding richness and fertility. It is a kind of marl, of a brown or reddish color. It does not require those invigorating composts necessary to more barren lands, and on the same field the same crop is grown for many successive years.

Ploughing, planting, picking cotton, gathering the corn, and pulling and burning stalks, occupies the whole of the four seasons of the year. Drawing and cutting wood, pressing cotton, fattening and killing hogs, are but incidental labors.

In the month of September or October, the hogs are run out of the swamps by dogs, and confined in pens. On a cold morning, generally about New Year's day, they are slaughtered. Each carcass is cut into six parts, and piled one above the other in salt, upon large tables in the smoke-house. In this condition it remains a fortnight, when it is hung up, and a fire built, and continued more than half the time during the remainder of the year. This thorough smoking is necessary to prevent the bacon from becoming infested with worms. In so warm a climate it is difficult to preserve it, and very many times myself and my companions have received our weekly allowance of three pounds and a half, when it was full of these disgusting vermin.

Although the swamps are overrun with cattle, they are never made the source of profit, to any considerable extent. The planter cuts his mark upon the ear, or brands his initials upon the side, and turns them into the swamps, to roam unrestricted within their almost limitless confines. They are the Spanish breed, small and spike-horned. I have known of droves being taken from Bayou Bœuf, but it is of very rare occurrence. The value of the best cows is about five dollars each. Two quarts at one milking, would be considered an unusual large quantity. They furnish little tallow, and that of a soft, inferior quality. Notwithstanding the great number of cows that throng the swamps, the planters are indebted to the North for their cheese and butter, which is purchased in the New-Orleans market. Salted beef is not an article of food either in the great house, or in the cabin.

Master Epps was accustomed to attend shooting matches for the purpose of obtaining what fresh beef he required. These sports occurred weekly at the neighboring village of Holmesville. Fat beeves are driven thither and shot at, a stipulated price being demanded for the privilege. The lucky marksman divides the flesh among his fellows, and in this manner the attending planters are supplied.

The great number of tame and untamed cattle which swarm the woods and swamps of Bayou Bœuf, most probably suggested that appellation to the French, inasmuch as the term, translated, signifies the creek or river of the wild ox.

Garden products, such as cabbages, turnips and the like, are cultivated for the use of the master and his family. They have greens and vegetables at all times and seasons of the year. "The grass withereth and the flower fadeth" before the desolating winds of autumn in the chill northern latitudes, but perpetual verdure overspreads the hot lowlands, and flowers bloom in the heart of winter, in the region of Bayou Bœuf.

There are no meadows appropriated to the cultivation of the grasses. The leaves of the corn supply a sufficiency of food for the laboring cattle, while the rest provide for themselves all the year in the ever-growing pasture.

There are many other peculiarities of climate, habit, custom, and of the manner of living and laboring at the South, but the foregoing, it is supposed, will give the reader an insight and general idea of life on a cotton plantation in Louisiana. The mode of cultivating cane, and the process of sugar manufacturing, will be mentioned in another place.

Solomon Northup finally managed to smuggle information of his kidnapping to a friend in New York, who arranged his rescue and restoration to freedom.

From Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave.

In the autumn of 1805 Meriwether Lewis, William Clark and their Corps of Discovery emerged from the mountains that separated the rivers flowing east toward the Atlantic from those running west toward the Pacific. To this point their journey had been slow and wearisome, with gravity their constant enemy. Now gravity became their friend, carrying them swiftly down the Clearwater River, the Snake and the Columbia.

Sometimes gravity got too friendly, pulling the water at precipitous speed over cataracts and falls. At once such place the broad Columbia was compressed by sheer rock walls into a narrow chute through which the snowmelt and runoff from many thousands of square miles hurtled at terrifying velocity. Lewis and Clark prudently ordered the canoes of the party to shore, intending to portage around the narrows.

No such option was afforded salmon swimming up the Columbia from the Pacific toward their spawning grounds in the smaller streams of the Columbia Plateau. The salmon had to fight the current and leap over the falls, often falling back before trying again.

And sometimes being intercepted by the nets and spears of the native peoples who controlled this richest fishing ground on the North American continent. These peoples were an amalgam of the Chinooks of the Lower Columbia and the Sahaptins of the Columbia Plateau. They and their predecessors had occupied this spot for thousands of years; the population density along this portion of the river was greater than anywhere else in the Far West.

The American explorers arrived in late October, after most of the netting and spearing had subsided for the season. They observed the results and inferred the post-catch processing. “Took our baggage and formed a camp below the rapids in a cove on the starboard”—right—“side,” Clark recorded in his journal, “having passed at the upper end of the portage 17 lodges of Indians, below the rapids and above the camp 5 large lodges of Indians, great numbers of baskets of pounded fish on the rock islands and near their lodges. Those are neatly pounded and put in very new baskets of about 90 or 100 pounds weight.”

The explorers continued downstream the next day. “A fine morning calm and fair,” Clark wrote. “We set out at 9 o’clock past a very bad rapid at the head of an island close under the starboard side. Above this rapid on the starboard side is six lodges of natives drying fish. At 9 miles passed a bad rapid at the head of a large island of high, uneven rocks jutting over the water; a small island in a starboard bend opposite the upper point, on which I counted 20 parcels of dried and pounded fish; on the main starboard shore opposite to this island five lodges of Indians are situated. Several Indians in canoes killing fish with gigs”—spears—“and nets.”

They were approaching the largest of the waterfalls, later called Celilo Falls. “On the starboard side is 17 lodges of the natives,” Clark wrote. “We landed and walked down accompanied by an old man to view the falls, and the best route for to make a portage.” Below the falls was another set of rapids. “At the lower part of those rapids we arrived at 5 large lodges of natives drying and preparing fish for market,” Clark recorded.

This was an important observation, implicit in the large scale of the operations they had seen but now acknowledged explicitly. The Indians controlling this stretch of the river caught and processed far more salmon than they could consume; the pounded fish in all those baskets was for sale to customers from up the river and down. The trade network sustained by the salmon industry at this location stretched from the Pacific on the west to the Missouri River on the east.

Clark recorded further details of the operations. He described a place where the basaltic islands in the river served as platforms for fishing and processing. “On those islands of rocks as well as at and about their lodges, I observed great numbers of stacks of pounded salmon beautifully preserved in the following manner: after sufficiently dried, it is pounded between two stones fine, and put into a species of basket neatly made of grass and rushes, of better than two feet long and one foot diameter, which basket is lined with the skin of salmon stretched and dried for the purpose. In these it is pressed down as hard as is possible. When full, they secure the open part with the fish skins across which they fasten, through the loops of the basket, that part very securely. And then on a dry situation they set those baskets, the corded part up. Their common custom is to set 7 as close as they can stand, and 5 on the top of them, and secure them with mats which are draped around them and made fast with cords and covered also with mats. Those 12 baskets of from 90 to 100 weight each form a stack. Thus preserved, those fish may be kept sound and sweet several years, as those people inform me.”

The explorers moved on, reaching the Pacific weeks later. The Indians of Celilo Falls maintained their business of catching and drying salmon for another century and a half, until a dam at the narrows of the river created a lake that submerged the falls.

From William Clark journal, Oct. 22, 1805

Tom Wolfe covered the last Apollo moon launch, in December 1972, for Rolling Stone. But he found himself more interested in the astronauts than in the mission. He spoke with them and heard a collective voice, which he transcribed for the magazine’s readers.

You want to get down to the main business, to Apollo 17—you want to know what it's really like, Tom. We've always been willing to describe it, all of it, but so few people really wanted to listen, or else they didn't really know the nature of the question itself. The main thing to know is that the capsule right now is filled with three colossal egos.

Titanic egos, one might say, but of a type you've probably never known in your life, Tom, because it is extremely doubtful that you have ever been involved in a particular competition known as the Right Stuff.

That's what flying happens to be about. It's a vast competition, which no one involved will acknowledge the existence of, we being such cagey souls, called the Right Stuff. The main thing to know about an astronaut, if you want to understand his psychology, is not that he's going into space but that he is a flier.

The Right Stuff is not bravery in the simple sense; it is bravery in the most sophisticated sense. Any fool can put his hide on the line and throw his life away in the process. The idea is to be able to put your hide on the line—and then to have the moxie, the reflexes, the talent, the experience, to pull it back in at the last yawning moment—and then to be able to go out again the next day and do it all over again—and, in its best expression, to be able to do it in some higher cause, in some calling that means something.

Gus Grissom once mentioned that when he first went out to Korea to fly in combat, they used to go out to the field before dawn, in the dark, in buses, and the pilots who had not been shot at by a MIG in man-to-man combat had to stand up. At first he couldn't believe it, and then he couldn't bear it—those bastards sitting down were the only ones with the right stuff! The way Gus told it, and he wouldn't have lied about a thing like that, the next morning, as they rumbled out there in the dark, he was sitting down. He had gone out there the first day and had it out with some howling supersonic Chinee just so he could have a seat on the bus.

The truth is that unless you have flown in combat, you can never be truly accepted into the Brotherhood of the Right Stuff, no matter what else you may do. There were plenty of pilots in their thirties who, to the consternation of their moms, dads, wives, bosses, Buddy & Sis—they just couldn't freaking believe it—who confounded all by volunteering to go active and fly in Korea. In Godforsaken Korea! But it was simple enough. Half of them were fliers who had trained during World War II but never seen combat, and this was their last crack at it—at the ascension, at the Right Stuff.

This may be hard to believe, but there are astronauts—including some of us who have been to the moon—who have it gnawing at our hearts that we are not truly accepted into the Brotherhood of the Right Stuff because we have never stood that particular trial, which is combat.

From Tom Wolfe, “The Brotherhood of the Right Stuff,” Rolling Stone, Jan. 4, 1973.