Des Arc weekly citizen., 1867-11-30
SELF-RELIANCE.

I
 reliance, with it an individual or peo. pie can and will succeed; without il nothing great or worthy is ever achiev. ed. The want of self-reliance will al. ways make man or community de- pendent; so the first step towards inde. pendence is self-reliance: Hence we sec in the history of the world that most oi the truly great men that have immor- talized themselves as benefactors oi theirrace have been born poor, and by dint of their individual efforts and ex- ertions have attained eminence and dis tinction in their day and country. It is an egregious error that man is born heir to greatness. It may sometimes be the case that man is born heir to po- sition, power and distinction, but never to true greatness, which is always the result of exertion and perseverance, and what in this respect, is true of an individual, is equally true of nation. Hence the failure, in part at least, of the Southern people to attain that in- dependence to which they are so emi- nently entitled; for it may be safely assumed that there is not people of any cline or country more noble and deserving than the people of the South ern States of the North America Union 1; the essential characteristics of high toned, chivalric and magnanimous spir- it they have always maintained and ex- hibited. But there is one leading and essential error into which they have suffered themselves to drift for three- fourths of a century-it is the delusion that cotton is King, and that their wealth and financial prosperity depend ed upon the amount of cotton that they could produce, in fact it became the shrine at which we as a people wor- shipped, and in our eagerness to grow and produce cotton, we lost sight of everything else-we were trained to regard cotton from our earliest boy hood, as our Shiboleth, kind of "sine quanon," and all our efforts and re- sources were directed to cotton-meat and bread were lost sight of; the me- chanic arts were ignored, schools and education were neglected, religion was sighted, in fact cotton, like the rod of Moses, swallowed up and devoured everything else, until it has well nigh devoured us as people. Yet strange to say, that we, like Ephraim of old, are still joined to our idol cotton; for many madly insist that we cannot live unless we raise cotton. But look at the facts, we spend all our time, labor and resources in producing cotton, and when it is produced, our Northern friends fix the price upon it, and we send it to them, then they turn about and fix the price upon our meat, tlour meal, domestics, shoes, iron and in fact, every thing we consume, for we pro- duce nothing for market but cotton, and yet we have no power. to regulate it's price. But is it asked what the Southern people are to do in order to become independent. In the first place, let us become self-reliant, by becoming self-sustaining. Let us cease to expend all our means and labor in producing cotton, and in it's stead plant corn, SOW grain, grass, cultivate all the varieties of vegetables that grow and flourish so readily in the fertile soils of the South raise stock such as horses, mules, cows, hogs, sheep, goats, &c; or in other words, make at home our meat and bread--and this done, let Us turn our attention to the building up of manu- factures, machine shops, and sustain our own mechanics and artists in every department of handicraft; the wagon maker, coach maker, saddler, harness maker, shoe and boot maker, timer, and every other useful artist and me- chanic. Till this is done, it is simply
 nonsense to be for ever talking of our independence, or of our ability to man. age the affairs of our own peculiar sec tion of country. Again let us patron- ize our own home newspapers, and en- courage those that tare laboring to build up and establish something in the way of Southern Literature, and not be so prompt to get up clubs and send money away to support and build up news papers and magazines in distant North ern cities. Let us educate and prepare al .s,@a
 These are some of the things that we must do. Look at the facts that de- mand a change in our policy. Go into any private house and look around you {; the carpets, the chairs, the furniture, everything, made and brought on from that section against which we are all ways railing and it does seem strange that we as people do not bestir our
 selves and change our system of oper- ations, especially since the system of labor has been so thoroughly changed by the results of the recent war. We can be an independent people if we will--we have all the natural advan- tages and resources that any people could wish, it only remains for us to
 resolve, and then act in the proper di-
 rection; let us resolve to be self-reli-
 ant, and then we will become great,
 free and independent people; self-pro-
 ducing and self-sustaining, by living
 within the limits of our own produc-
 lions. This is subject matter in which
 we are all immediately interested, and
 every patriot and lover of his country
 desires to realize. Then let us keep ! c.al;1a4 h..f lx.x aoa..lo ~