Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1871-02-01
The southern Labor Oucstion.

On the 14th instant, the Farmers Club" of
Davidson county, Tennessee, held a meeting at
Nashville, and listened TO an address delivered
by Gen. W. G. Harding. This address, which
we find reported in one of the Nashville papers,
tells us more of what is thought, felt, and in.
tended by the 'landed aristocracy" of the south,
than is usually communicated so freely to the
public. Gen. Harding belongs to that class.
He spoke for it, at Nashville; and as his princi-
pal topic was the labor question, it will be use
full to take some notice of what he said. The
men be represents are influential, not ny force
of numbers, but through their wealth, social
position, and the old habit of submitting to their
domination and treating them as social rulers
and oracles.
Some of the points made in Gen. Harding's
address, invite special attention. /. He would
have the land divided into few great planta-
tons owned by wealthy men whom the great
mass of the people should serve as hired labor
ers. To cut up the great plantations into small
farms, would cause a social revolution of which
he could not bear TO think. 1t would transform
the people Of the state into "a penurious, mig
gardly, skin-finted class of Yankees" 2. He
prefers negro laborers, for various reasons He
said, 'it is less trouble to board the negro than
the white laborer;" for he could limit the
negro's board to a truck patch" with "four
pounds of bacon week, and peck of meal
he could not feed the white man on that" The
white men, even when quite as ignorant as any
of the negroes, twill be more independent in
regard to their votes;" and this is a great evil.
Il ie had fOr l,h
Just in proportion as he is educated, he will be
miserable while employed as a laborer;" that is
tosay, education will make him object to being
treated as miserable serf. 4. Gen. Harding
regrets very much that the negro women can
not now be made to work in the fields, at
ploughing and other kinds of farm work "Be-
foe the war" he says, the negro women worked
in the fields; but now, "the negroes think their
women too good 10 work in this way; it is a
false notion of the negro that he should support
himself and his entire family" What astonish-
ing creatures these negroes are, to be sure!
They treat their women tenderly, and think the
men should support their families Astonish-
ingi Slavery would suppress all this.
He made some other points; but these show
his meaning. He urged very earnestly, that the
negroes should be hired laborers, and nothing
more; and that they should be promptly paid
for their work. He opposes immigration strong.
ly. Ofcourse he does this, for immigrants might
introduce the small farm business; and as he
states, the attempt to treat white laborersHas
serfs, has not been successful. He says nothing
OF Cinnamon, but argues that the best thing the
planters can do is to keep the negro and make
the most of him; for, if they ever do ''throw the
negro overheard, they will regret it in the fu-
ture." Moreover, if immigration should be en-
couraged, "the scum and lowest class of Europe
would populate the country" people "who leave
Europe for Europe's benefit" What he said on
this point, moved the foreign-born citizens of
Nashville to hold an Indignation meeting and
denounce his utterances in terms more vigorous
than complimentary. But this will not disturb
him. He would rejoice to see them leave the
state, for their influence works against the in
dustrial and social policy which he would
make perpetual Moreover, under the influence
of such representative democrats" as he. they
are likely to "vote wrong" and become repub-
licans.
Inc plantation on which this Gen. Harding
employs laborers, and keeps them on four
pounds OF bacon and peck Of meal per week,
consists of 5000 acres of land. Any man at the
north, who thinks of settling in Tennessee,
should endeavor to comprehend what kind of
life he would have, if he should own and occupy
small farm" of some 200 acres in the same
neighborhood. He might or might not be visited
by the kuklux; he might or might not be as
sassinated for assuming right to speak and act
freely on all questions; but he certainly would
be made to feel himself an outlaw socially, a
low, mean, niggardly, "skin-finted" creature.
quite unfit for association with planters" and
scarcely above the ordinary negroes and "white
trash 1t is similar experience of society in
Virginia that has led many northern men who
went there TO sell their farms and return. The
worst enemies of the south, those who do most
to obstruct its prosperity, are the southern men
for whom Gen. Harding spoke at Nashville.
Slavery created the class to which they belong.
1t may trouble the present generation; but il
viii be swept away by the new influences which
will, at length, make that part of the country
what it ought to be.