The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-08-19
SPIRIT OF THE PRESS.
EDITORIAL OPINIONS OF THE LEADING JOURNALS
UPON CURRENT ToPICs-CoMPmED EVERY
DAY FOR THE EVENING TELEaRAPH.
Sectional Interest and National Unity.

opinion and those whose interests require a
restoration of the Union spirit throughout the
whole country, is too great to be reconciled.
Everywhere there are indications that the
men who spin cotton cannot be much longer
separated from the men who grow cotton,
nor can those who sell goods at the counters
of New York safely acquiesce in the continued
disability of their Southern customers to pur-
chase and pay for their goods There is the
levee question. The measures necessary for the
successful prosecution of the war levelled the
levees and sent the lawless Mississippi rush
ing over the whole arabic Delta. The policy
of General Banks and others has withheld
Federal aid as a new term of reconstruction.
Now, who does this policy hurt most The
Southern secessionists They are comparatively
few in numbers They have been so long
ruined as to be indurated and callous to
further misfortune. Besides, they are the land
holders, and from the little that is produced
they receive frugal maintenance. Does the
freedman feel this unusual destruction of crop
and labor? Undoubtedly. He has nothing
except his labor. This he sells for subsist-
ence; but if he knows that all planting and
ploughing is in vain where the rains descend
and the flood comes to inundate the country
for weeks at a time, he can have no more mo-
tive to toll than have those tillers around the
visit of the Arabs to carry off the fruit of their
labOrs. A correspondent mentions a CONVEX
sation with a freedman in an interior parish
of Louisiana, in which he gave as a reason
for not having hired himself to planter, that
the latter would employ him in repairing
fences and buildings digging bitches, and cut
ting down bushes and briers; that the ''water
would come, destroy the crop, and with that
the planters only means of repaying the
freedman so he had decided to cut wood for
a steamboat landing rather than plant.
The same refusal of relief which Furnishes
the Rebel with reduction of income intiicts
the same loss upon his loyal neighbor and
deprives the loyal freedman of employment.
Nor is this mischief confined to the popula-
tion of Louisiana. The sugar crop of 1860
was nearly half million hogsheads. 1t has
declined to twenty or thirty thousand. The
price of cane sugar has advanced nearly four
fold. 1t is now produced almost exclusively
by slave labor in Cuba and Brazil. Now note
the effects. The Northwest and the East once
paid for the sugar crop Of Louisiana in the
respective products of their industry. Now
they export three-fold the price of that sugar
in specie. This is in effect the destruction of
a home product to build up a slave-grown
product in foreign countries. Fanaticism is
thus stronger than the protective principle.
The reduction of the cotton crop has had an
injurious effect on the home manufacture of
cotton goods. England has opened up her
vast East Indian possessions. She has in
creased the crop until the combined supply
from countries other than the United States
has reached nearly three-fourths of her con-
sumption The stock on hand in the United
States does not now exceed one hundred and
fifty thousand bales, while in Liverpool alone
it is four times that amount. The price of
cotton is thus fixed abroad. The United
States has lost its position as a regulator
of price, and now takes whatever Liverpool
will give.
The restoration of the cotton crop would
be much promoted by rebuilding the levees,
and yet Congress has forborne to do so lest
the restoration of the Union should be thereby
postponed. 1t is not necessary to pursue
the effects of these reduced crops upon the
shipping interest, which, deprived Of out
freights by this cause, has lost its great ad-
vantage over the commercial marine of Eng
land. The Government collects tax on cot
ton by the pound, and an income tax on the
sales of the planter. 1t now receives tax on
one pound where it would formerly have re-
ceived tax on three. The subject is too ex-
tensive to treat in a cursory manner. All are
convinced that Louisiana cannot repair her
levees. She has made the effort by offer
ing her bonds at home and abroad.
Capitalists will scarcely touch them at
any discount. She has appealed to
Congress for aid. Possibly the applications
have been entrusted to improper hands. But
Congress thus far has closed its ears to the in
terests of the submerged loyalist and freed
man, the Northwestern farmer, the Eastern
shipOwner and cotton-spinner. In the next
place. the restoration of the levees is a national
matter, for it pertains to the production of
national staples and the employment of
national interests. 1t is a humane measure,
for if the Government issues rations to the
destitute people of the South, and sends its
vessels to Ireland to relieve foreign famine,
it may well lend its endorsement to bonds
having for their object the employment and
maintenance of a whole people suffering from
a calamity which the war has rendered it i'm
possible for them to control.
In this connection we may quote from the
address of the Police Jury of COncordia
Parish, Louisiana, to the Major-General COM
manding the District. 1t sets forth the
deplorable condition of the whole alluval
country as known to him, the suffering from
the devastations of the war, the successive
foundations of lS65-'66-'67 the damage done
the growing crops by the cotton-worm and the
prospect of cotton famine. With the desti-
tuition OF the people comes the utter annihila-
tiOn of public credit. Says the address,
"Our parish in its coporate capacity. and our
citizens individually, are utterly oVerWheImed
with debt IL has been found impossible for our
parochial authorities TO provide for the ordi-
nary expenses of administration, Our LegisIa-
ture has suspended the collection of taxes on
oVerfiOWed lands, and both the State and parish
are without either money or credit and utterly
powerless TO make any provision for indigents' y
Upon whom does this fall? The address
supplies an answer
''As necessary result Of this state of facts
H. A.