The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-01-20

Rd,tor,nI OpinIons Of tho Leading Journals
Upon Current TOpics-COmpiled Every
Day for the Evening TeIegrnph.
THE SOUTHERN EXODUS.

Of all the idle bugaDooS NnereWlUn Gne
Northern politicians in league with the slave
power alarmed and ruled their dupes from
ten TO thirty years ago. none has been so
utterly laughed to scorn as that which pre-
dicted and deprecated a general migration
northward of the blacks so soon as they
should be emancipnted That they would
utterly refuse to work, preferring to steal or
beg, and that they would nevertheless work
so obeap and so much that white laborers
could no longer earn living, were PROPOSE
tions reiterated by Democratic orators and
resolution-mongers till some OF these must
have come at last, by mere force Of repeti-
ton to believe them but that ''the niggers'
would all break for the North when liberated,
and roam necessarily from the Penobscot to
the Columbia, stealing and giving odor,
was as undoubted dogma OF the Democratic
faith as free trade or a specie currency.
We have now passed seven years since
emancipation, and nearly five since peace, and
where are those locust swarms OF vagrant,
mendicant predatory, malodorous 'niggers?"
Echo answers, where? Northern eye hath not
seen them. Northern hen-roosts and clothes
lines bear no testimony to their visitation.
Northern white laborers have work or want
it. obtain good wages or poor; but are in
neither case helped or hindered by 'niggers.
We doubt that the census soon to be taken
will return so many blacks north of the Poto-
mac and the Ohio as there were in 1860,
adding barely two per cent. per annum for
natural increase. AS for negro beggars, we
are not accosted by one where we used to be
by two; for the pretext of fleeing from slavery
often false, but always plausible, and gene
rally effective-no longer avails; and the
''nigger" who hates to work-(and alas! he
and his white counterpart are both too COM
mon)-must now tell another story altogether;
and he does not find ears so receptive or
hearts so sympathetic as he did ten years ago.
In this region, the negro vagabond and prac-
ticer ON the credulity of soft-hearted philan-
thropists is nearly played out.
There is no perceptible current OF black
migration northward, but q very large and
strong one southwark and southwestward.
Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas and Ken
tucky are losing their poor blacks as we'll
as their poor whites, by thousands, while
Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Florida
are gaming the former, and Illinois, Missouri,
Kansas Arkansas, and Texas, the latter
Texas is gaining both blacks and whites inn
men 'ely Arkansas in lesser volume, yet still
considerably. And the current of emigration
deepens and broadens as the days roll on
1t is evident that the landholders and old
standbys of Virginia, the Carolinas, and Ala
bama are perplexed and disheartened by this
movement, which battles all their calculations.
They have been confidently expecting great
and rapid influx of Northern capital and labor
this they see their poorer neighbors and ex-
slaves departing by thousands. 1t is even
doubtful this moment that the States named
in this paragraph will have so many inhabit-
ants in 1870 as they had in 1860.
This movement of population seems to us
natural, benefcent, inevitable. The old status
under slaveholding domination has irrevoca-
bly, passed away; the deluge is slowly sub
siding, but the dry land is not clearly mani
fest. There is an abundance of cheap land in
The old South; but it is held in large tracts,
and not offered for sale in such parcels nor on
such terms as are calculated to induce poor
men to purchase it. Even the poor whites,
who formerly lived about the edges of the
great plantations, and picked up meagre,
precarious livelihood by little hunting, a
little fishing very little downright work,
and an occasional hunt for fugitive negro,
do not find place to suit them in the new
order of things. Like one of old, they ''can-
not dig"-that is, where negroes do most of
the digging-while 'to beg they are
ashamed;" if they must work for living,
choose to do it where work will not be a
badge of social inferiority, at least in their
own estimation: so they set forth in quest of
'fresh fields and pastures new" They will
evince more energy, more ambition, in a
new country than they ever would in that
where they were born; just as the Irish in
America are more energetic, more hopeful,
more helpful, than In Ireland.
The blacks migrate under an impulse at
least equally Ineligible Crops have in the
average been poor and earnings meagre in
Virginia and the Carolinas since peace they
cannot find steady work, even at low wages,
this side of the Savannah; while they are
promised all the work they can do and better
pay for it farther South Ample experience
has established the value of the Southern
negro as the best ''ield-hand" on earth; no
other labor can be hired which will make as
much cotton to the hand as his will Both
cotton and sugar have paid we'll for the last
two years. hence, the planters not merely
willing but able to hire more and pay better
this year. Under the bygone regime, the
average cotton-planter was usually two crops
behind-hand; owing one to his factor for sup
plies and another to the negro-trader for
hands, if he had good crop and good price
for it, he bought more land and more negroes:
if he had poor crop or low price for it.,
he paid nothing-how could he pay? Thus,
ne was never out of debt, but generally sink
ing deeper and deeper into it; but now he
yells his crop and is astonished to find a
balance on the right side of his ledger.
True, he must now pay his ''hands, either
Sutright wages or q share of the crop; but
many of them are improvident, and have
traded out and eaten up the most of their
share or their wages by New Years, and he
owns the whole and owes hardly half OF it.
Formerly, he had food to provide, clothes to
buy and doctors to fee, for raft of blacks
whereof not half appeared in the cotton-feld
except at picking time; many of them not
even them now he pays those who work, and
these must keep the rest Not from isolated
districts, therefore, but from the entire cot
knu and an uOar-p ma lrip Ua haar thai