The daily Evansville journal. (Evansville, Ind.) 1862-1863, 1863-04-29
From tie Nashville Union, 23d.
Future Demand for Labor in the
SOUfh

South.
Some malignant pl r.isans in the North
are endeavoring to work the minds of
ignorant white laborers to a pitch of
frenzy, by inducing them to believe the
Administration Is endeavoring to bring
black free labor into competition with
them. A more transparent imposition
never was practiced by demagogues. 1t
is the most improbable of all wild sup
positions; nay, it is not only improbable,
but absolutely impossible A sagacious
contemporary remarks that the destitu-
ton of the South, in consequence of the
war, will require the labor of more ne
groes than she ever possessed, to repair
damages The farms over a vast por-
ton ..of Virginia, Missouri, Tennessee,
Kentucky, and other Southern States,
with dwelling houses, mills, gins, fences,
machinery, tools, railroads, and other
products of labor, have been destroyed
or impaired to such an extent as to re-
quire the toll of years to restore them.
| The South needs not only her black la
| borers, but millions of white laborers,
| to enable her to recover from the shock
of civil war. Unless the Southern States
offer large inducements for enterprising
immigrants to transfer their labor to her
department, she will lag for a century
behind other portions of this country.
| Slave labor will be mill stone around
| her neck She must cut herself loose
| from this incubus and flourish under the
benign influence of voluntary remunera-
ted labor. The old system Of things
might serve the purposes and pockets of
a few thousand planters, who would be
| glad 10 amass fortunes at the expense OF
the great majority of their fellow-citizens,
but it will not answer the wants of an
impoverished people The emancipated
negro will not go North where his labor
is not wanted He will stay here, as a
matter of preference, until the influx of
white labor, like the advancing tide of
the ocean, shall gradually displace him.
The partisans in the North who profess
to think that negroes will go there to
compete with white labor, are as ignorant
of the negro as are those persons in the
South, who pretend to believe that eman-
cipation would be followed by insurrec-
ton. Neither evil is possible. They
are both the troubled dream of diseased
fancies, or perhaps, in some cases, the
bugbears of INSCRIPTIONS politicians,
more DESTROYS of getting Office than of
consulting for the welfare of the country.
1t will be impossible for the negro to go
North while the demand for labor is so
great in the South, even if he desired so,
as he does not. And it will be equally
impossible for him to be idle If he
should attempt to be loafer upon the
community, he would soon be aoiped out.
He has no alternative but labor. And
we think it highly probable that he will
become vastly improved laborer, from
the day when such ruffians as Forrest
can no longer seize his wife and children
and sell them on the block like mules or
horses. There will be no danger then
of instruction. The negro would have
no intolerable oppressor to rise against,
and he would no longer brood over dark
plots of arson, and midnight assasSna-
ton, to revenge himself for the cruel
whipping of his wife, or the debauchery
of his daughter These, it seems tn No,
are the views of common sense But We
vnurut prevent silly and prejudiced peo-
pie from harboring all sorts of gloomy
apprehensions of evil, in case of the
emancipation of slaves. any more than
Robert Fulton could keep the old keel
boatmen flom going into frenzy, when
he saw Fulton's steamboat putting along
the river. 'Sir," said the excited boat,
man, ''your invention will throw hun
dreds of boatmen out of employment"
"No," said Fulton, ''it will give work to
a hundred fold their number at three
times their present wages" Fulton was
right. Bnt the conservatives of his
day thought he was a mailman, who
would ruin the river trade.