New-York tribune., 1870-08-26
ANOTHER COMMERCIAL CONTENTION.


There is TO be another Southern Commercial
Convention. This time, being Southern" it
is to be held at Cincinnati, its predecessors
having met at Louisville and Memphis. Being
Southern" the call is uttered by "Millard
Fillmore, President of New-YOrk. "A
Southern Convention summoned by North
ern President, to gather in a Western city,
will need only Down East Secretary, with
ce-President from the 5. W., Treasurer
from the n. f., and few delegates from the
Pole and the Equator, to render 1t beautiful
illustration of that most useful instrument,
the mariners compass This all l-sided South
"ernr synod is fixed for October the Fourth,
in the year of Our Lord, One Thousand Eight
Hundred and Seventy. The value of CONNER
cial, as of other Conventions, may be consid-
erable OF inconsiderable. Fortunately. per-
haps, the gentlemen at Cincinnati will not bavo
a particle of legislative authority. They may
talk great deal, AZ they probably will; there
may be bushels of reports, each gOrged with
statistics and there will doubtless be dinners
and excursions, and great interchange of
hospitalities. We hope, too, that there will be
an intelligent interchange of opinion, for this
is about all that the Convention is likely to
be good for, and in this only is there any
rational hope of its having valuable result.
We shall be pleasantly astOnished, however,
if the delegates have the vaIor to touch the
heart of the matter at all. Stability aud con-
fidence are the very soul of commerce and
these are precisely what the uneasy and dis
contented and lawless persons who domineer
over whole sections of the South seem deter
mined that she shall not have.
Strictly speaking, the South is not COM
mercial but productive. A commercial people
deals in hundred different commodities, has
relations to various parts Of the world, and
exports or imports, generally by sea, though
sometimes by land. Now, the South produces
only two OF three articles of merchandise-tO-
baccO, cotton, little rice, a little sugar and,
when these have been produced, they must be
transported in ships belonging to somebody
else to foreign market. 1t is not TO be
denied that, even under these circumstances,
a quiet, busy, industrious people may be very
prosperous and become exceedingly rich. But
for this, it is, in the next place, indispensably
necessary that Labor should be fairly treated
and equitabiy remunerated, or the Laborer will
become, AZ in Ireland, inefficient, disheartened,
and Enthusiastically. The South, in conjunction
with Northern allies, may hold thousand
Commercial Conventions" and expend oceans
of ink in writing reports, and millions of
cubic feet of wind in making speeches, but to
this same favor must it come at last.
SO little, indeed, do those who arrOgate to
themselves the Southern name understand the
truth of the situation; 80 helpless are those
who will chiefly respond we presume to Mr..
Millard Fillmore's call, that actually in Ken
lucky and in the City of Lexington there has
been a meeting of agriculturists G e., of those
upon whom, in part, the commercial prosperity
of Kentucky depends), to take measures
for importing White Labor into the
State. There is, we need hardly say, no lack
of Labor there, only, unfortunately, it happens
to be Black, the very best skilled Labor which
Kentucky could wish for, if she were in her
right mind One man in the meeting said that
negro labor "instead of becoming better was
growing worse" another "a GeneraD vowed
that it was completely useless" third Ga
Doctor was sure that white Labor was des-
"tined to be the labor of the country" the
next (anOther Physcian) was for "a stream of
emigration into Kentucky" then followed
another who was convinced that the natural
tendency Of the negro was to go Backward
and the sum total of the whole was that
Committee is coming to New-York. to estab-
lish here an agency for White Emigrants to
the forlorn, denuded, depopulated State of
Kentucky.
There are absurdities over which we may not
weep, over which it is equally impossible to
laugh, and which we consequently regard with
kind of stupid wonder and mental paralysis.
These Lexington gentlemen should by all
means attend Mr.. Fillmore's " Commercial Con-
"ventionp They are the very persons to make
the longest speeches. They are the very men
to be put upon the most important committees.
Perhaps, should any of them attend at Cincin-
matt, they may be able TO tell whether the
Black in matters of contract and of wages. in