Daily national Republican. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1862-1866, 1865-09-18
IS FREE LABOR POSSIBLY PROF.
ITABIE!

''What have you there?" asked an eminent
lawyer of New Orleans, as We entered his Of
fee year or two ago. Extra Pioaymme :
What new disaster has befallen our coun-
try p he exclaimed, and we repeat the con.
versation now only for the purpose of show
ing those who may not know, the estimation
in which the paper from which we are about
to quote, is held by loyal men, where it is best
known. The New Orleans Picayune in an
article which is quoted by the National In
teftge"eer, as correctly representing the
state of affairs in the South, propounds as
follows
''If the negroes are left as they have been in
Jamaica, to the control and management, the
philanthropic guardianship Of the Exeter and
Faneuil Hall empires and demRgogues, the same
results Of desolaton, decay and abandonment
will follow. We have already in this State
many such pictures as may be witnessed in the
island OF Jamaica, produced by the same causes
to wit the encouragement or impunity extended
to negroes to abandon the plantations to collect
in the towns or villages, or to wander through
the country, living by stealing, begging, or
petty jobbing. The result II shOwn in the pro-
auctions Of the state, i0tics cDniduS rs.W ns0riy
the sd.as RuHJsr NJ iUbOrerS u hGd bffOre The
Ddr. From 400 900 hogsheads Of sugar and
million Of barrels Of mOlasses to eight thousand
hogsheads and ten thousand barrels OF molasses,
and from 300, 900 bales Of cotton to ten twelve
thousand, is as rapid aud la'ge a decline Of pro-
ducton as any country in the world eau exhibit.
Nor Is 70 large share of this decline due to the
war as many imagine. So far from agreeing in
the estimate OF the Boston Posi- $ correspondent
as to the coming crop Of the whole South, we
think half the Amount-to wit: G000OO bales
would be large figures. AMI get no loIr has
eTtSted during tie DhOls cotton season.
But an obstacle TO successful culture in the
South has superyeneI, which still exists, aud
will continue to exist until some practicable,
stable and Iudicious arrangement is made OF the
large class Of our laborers whose condition has
been so suddenly changed. Such arrangement
must embrace some compulsory and practical
enforcement of labor on the part of the negroes.
NO one objects 10 an equally rigorous enforce.
ment OF the obligations Of the employer. There
Is no force in the rtopian suggestion Of the de-
structives-that negroes are human beings, sub
Ject 10 the same passions and posse sing like
capacities WIN white menl and requiring only to
be controlled by the same laws. As an abstract
proposition this might be admitted; but then
reason and common sense qualify It In Its Rppli-
cation to class who, whatever they may have
been originally and naturally, have been sub
jected during their lives to q condition and cir
cumstances the very reverse Of that Of the white
man. How large share in the formation of the
character and habits of men thcir social Cundi-
tion and circumstances from childhood to man
hood have need not be elaborated here.
Whereupon we beg leave to suggest the
following very important corrections as mat
ters of fact
1. The cotton season " commences, we
suppose, with the planting. That being
granted, it is matter of history, which ap-
pears on tho files of every newspaper in the
country that at least three quarters of the
cotton producing lands of Louisiana were in
possession Of an armed force of the rebels more
than two months of the present season.
IL. The assertion that the State Of Louis
lana contains very nearly as many labOrers
now as it had before the war betrays an ig.
norance Of the subject such as we never ex-
pocted to find in any citizen of that State
intelligent enough, as A. WARD says, to
"jerk newspaper article with reasonable
regard to the most familiar rules of grammar
Great numbers of negroes, who have followed
the retreating armies of the United States
through that State, have died, after being
gathered in cOntraband camps. Governor
WELLS can give the Picayums some informa.
tion upon which it can base a calculation as
to how many negroes died in that State in the
three months that followed the Red River
disaster. Again, not less than twenty thou.
sand, and we believe not less than thirty
thousand negrOes-eyery man Of them able.
bodied, too, mind that-haYe found their