New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1868-03-29
A GREAT OPPORTUNITY.


at the flood would lead to fortune.
Such is now the case in Louisiana. Here
is the vast and fertile delta of the Missis-
sippi. which with the lower Red river re-
gion, and the Teche country, contains sew
eral thousand square miles of the best, in
fact almost the only sugar lands in the
United States. The thirteen hundred sugar
estates Of Louisiana cleared, ditched,
leveed, supplied with costly machinery,
and most of them yet in tolerable state of
repair, produced in 1Se1-'62 nearly four
hundred and sixty thousand hegsheads OF
sugar. There are several hundred thousand
industrious freedmen in the South whose
labor is available for this kind of culture;
there are millions of unemployed capital in
the United States seeking investment; the
sugar planters of Louisiana are the most
energetic and enterprising cultivators of
the soil in the South. Why then should the
sugar interests of Louisiana languish? Why
was the product of last year scarcely fifty
thousand hogsheads? Why can one take
his choice of sugar plantations at ten
dollars, yes, in many parts of the delta, at
FIVE dollars per acre. The reason is OBJ
vious. Directly at our doors is Cuba,
which, from the character of her labor
the most cruel and abominable among any
people in the world calling themselves
Christians-enjoys the monopoly of sugar
raising. Her enormous estates are owned
by Spanish and creole grandees living for
the most part at Havana, or in Spain, and
infieting upon the island the worst evils of
absenteeism. Her soil and climate are
somewhat more favorable for the sugar
cane than in Louisiana, but these ad-
vantages are more than counterbalanced
by the superior energy and thrift of the
Louisiana planters, and the higher character
of our labor. Yet so complete is the mo-
nopoly of Cuba that Notwithstanding tariff
of three cents per pound she is able to
supply our markets and prevent the revival
of the sugar interest of Louisiana.
But abolish slavery in Cuba and you
would change ali this, You would instant
ly double, if not quadruple, the value of
the sugar lands of Louisiana. You would
give Louisiana, instead Of Cuba, the mo-
nopoly of sugar raising. You would furnish
favorite and remunerative employment for
at least half million of freedmen. You
would cover the great delta of the Mississip-
Di not with sugar plantations, but with sugar
arms, for it has been fully demonstrated
by experience that with the new portable
apparatus costing from five hundred to ff,
zen hundred dollars sugar can not only
be produced on farms of thirty, fifty, or
me hundred acres each, but produced with
more economy and profit than on the over
,rown estates of Louisiana.
True, some of the planters who formerly |
that white man could not |
abor in the open field in Louisiana still |
lain that to produce sugar successfully |
-ou must have thousand-acre plantation,
,ou must have from fifty to a hundred
and fifty thousand dollar sugar
ouse But this is of the same kind of |
alse and absurd assumption as that only
ugar and cotton. The rich mans products,
an be raised in the gulf states, while grass
nd grain, The poor mans products, can not
e grown from their soil. Both OF these
lonstrous theories, ridiculous in the eyes
political economists, and libelous upon
be bounty of GOd-theories born of slav-
ny and kept alive by the traditions of the
however, destined soon
0 be buried together in the same grave
nth secession. b
One would suppose that the sugar
lanters of Louisiana, who sympathized
nth Lopez and once believed the possess
on of Cuba essential to the prosperity and
eace Of the Union, would leap at this
olden opportunity to enrich themselves
nd at the same time beneat the country.
ct although they are by far the most en-
ghtened, liberal, and enterprising class of
alive Southern population, they are yet
welded to slaveocratie ideas, so bound
, in slaveocratic preiudices, that they are
lwilling to take even the first step to
ring about the abolition of slavery in
aba they are not even willing to be
united with those who labor to secure
at great and desirable result. Did ever
ne men stand so in their own light and in
e way of their own prosperity?
Look at slavery as it exists in the island
Cuba. The life of human being
sighed systematically against SO many
'gsheads of sugar, the production Of
hich must be forced in the shortest pos J
bic time, and the place of the poor slave
pplied by another victim of the middle
assage from an African SLAYER. Three
indrsd and fire thousand male sldcss on
e island and only sirtgJive Nousa,ld te-
ales-these worked in gangs under the
sh of Spanish drivers and at night herded
gether in great barracoons, without any
gard to age, or sex, or the family rela-
IN, forming altogether horrible con-
ton of slavery, compared with which
merican slavery was freedom ITSELF
What right has Spain to faunt this bar
lrism, this indignity, in the face Of the
vilized world, and so near to our own
lores that the groans of,her victims are
most borne to our ears on the winds Of