"Bates Training Center" is a highly acclaimed, exciting, and fascinating tale about a poor innocent kid in Pittsburgh, Jonathan Randolph Bates, who suddenly inherits from an obscure great-uncle one of the countries most renowned slave training centers along with hundreds of already trained slaves, a most competent staff of slave trainers who are themselves slaves, and several company executives who know exactly how to do their jobs. Despite his ignorance about slaves and their management, Jonathan picks up on the trade quickly with an almost intuitive grasp of what's needed in training, maintenance, breeding, and sales of human livestock. Within a few months, Bates Training Center is reaching new heights of highly profitable sales under Jonathan's leadership, and, eventually, branching out into an attempt to develop specialized 'breeds' of slaves designed for specific tasks. Years later, this new venture finally proves to be highly successful and leads to national recognition and prominence in the trade. Jonathan, however, despite all his new wealth, remains the same humble and inquiring person he always was, proving his late great-uncle right in leaving everything to his only, but obscure, relative. Readers state: "Absolutely the best book in this genre I've ever read;" "At last, an absorbing tale about slaves that hangs together, is very well written, and so interesting you can't put it down;" "Bill Smith remains at the top of the list when it comes to writing great stories about slaves."