New national era. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1870-1874, 1871-04-06
A Business View of the Southern
Negroes.

The following extracts from the Cotton CIR
culGr of Neill Bros. e. Co., London, will be
found interesting as facts, brought forward
purely as business arguments, but bearing
directly on the question Of Southern labor
Few things in this strange world are so I'm
accountable, or at least so extraordinary, as
the ignorance which has uniformly prevailed,
so lar as our experience has extended among
the great majority of white residents of the
Southern States as to the cL lractsr and capa-
city of the negro population, among whom
their lives have been passed Both before
and for some time after the abolition of slavery,
the darling theory of the South, and of all
imbued with Southern ideas, was that the ne
groes would not work without the benign
influence of the slave-driver's whip and in a
heightened tour in the cotton States made by
the present writer In the latter end of 1865
there was no wish he heard so Frequently ex-
pressed as that the whole cOlOred population
could be got rid of To his objection that if
he could trust his eyes, nearly all the physical
labor Of the country was done by them, the
general answer was that this was temporary
owing to the season being cold, and the pres
sure of hunger and want but all would be
changed in spring and summer, when vegeta
bles could be had for little more than the
trouble of gathering them And if
one delusion was stronger than another, it was
that the colored population was dying cut so
rapidly that its days were numbered An esti-
mate of One-half of the population of 1860 as
likely TO remain in 1870 was common. Even
so lately as a few months ago we put the ques-
ton to an Englishman of great intelligence,
who has lived most of his life at New Orleans,
and his reply was that the reduction must be
fully half. We appealed to the large cotton
crop of last year, aud the admittedly larger
one OF this season, but these we were told were
explained by fabulous amounts of white labor !
The blacks were rooted out by the war, driven
from pillar to post, first by their old masters
when abandoning their plantations, then by
one army, and again by another, and when
peace came, children still died off like sheep
for want of the medical attendance and kind
care of their old masters In this picture there
was much truth. The poor negroes were
driven about in the manner described during
the war, thousands of them perishing, and were
LETT to their own resources at the end of it,
without means to provide habitations or cloth
ing, stepped IN ignorance, as it had been a
penal ofense to teach them to read, and of
course destitute of medical attendance No
doubt, too many children have died. Yet look
at the RESULT As regards industry we are
counting up crop of 3, 100000 to 1000 600
OF bales, equal to the average of the last four
years before the war And, as to population
We submit the following preliminary census
return from Washington which has reached us
this week. 1t is incomplete as regards South
Carolina and many counties in the other States,
but enough is given to disappoint those who
have hoped, and cheer those who have feared
that in the rough competition which meets him.
placed as he is among the sturdy Anglo
Americans, and treated as pariah and outcast
the poor negro would sooa go to the wall