New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1872-05-26
A COMMON ERRoR TREATED.

and produces too little at home. There
a very grave error in this. IF we cultiyat
sugar with all our available force, and In
diana cultivates corn with all her capacity
the result viii be that Louisiana viii ez
change her sugar for the corn Of Indiana
and both will profit by raising what wa
best suited to their respective lands. Upol
the same principle two neighbors divid
their energies, the one in raising bread
stuffs and the other in fabricating wearing
material, which they exchange. The far
mer has all he can do to attend upon hi
farm and the spinner has all he can do Il
attend to his looms Neither could bt
efficient at both occupations, and so they
mutually agree to divide their time in the
manner which we have indicated. If 8
planter can do better at raising cotton il
Louisiana than he can at cultivating corn,
why the best thing for him to do is tc
raise cotton and buy his corn from the In
diana farmer who makes more money by
planting corn than he does by raising cot
ton. We are all dependent, in some de-
gree, upon our neighbors, and when we
can not procure pearls out Of our own
waters we must even consent to raise
sugar in order to exchange its price for the
| precious stones that are taken from the
waters of Ceylon.
The reason of our poverty is to be found,
not in the thing that we produce, but in
our failure to produce suficiency of it
to make us richer. There is too much
idleness among the people, in the first
place; there are too few people, in the
second place; and there is too much ig-
norance in the South, in the third place
Girls and boys in the North are productive
agencies; first, because they are taught to
work, and, secondly, they are taught to
work intelligently. One intelligent and
enterprising man in a community often
changes the whole state of the society in
which he lives. He spreads wide-awake
notions all around him by his practical
teachings. The South has but few such
men to give her people the impulse and
opportunity to work. Any country village
in Louisiana will suffice for an example.
One-haf Of the population is ignorant and
poor, and therefore incompetent to under
stand or appreciate the advantages of
labOr-saving machinery. The colored
people constitute this halt, and though
they might be improved by proper sys-
TEN Of education and encouragement, the
other half, which is constituted of the
white people, seldom make any attempt to
advance the general interest by train
ing and educating the negroes to
be better and wealthier than they
are. Then the white people do not
work as they should Large numbers of
them say that they can not put themselves
upon an equality with the negroes by
working along side of them in the same
field, and as for the women folks they
take it to be a supreme degradation to be
asked to work in factory as the Northern
girls do. An instance occurs to us Just
here, that gentleman who established a
cotton mill in Alabama could not obtain
any assistance from the idle white girls in
the vicinity of his factory because they
said it was not proper for them to do such
work. He had to bring out Yankee
women to attend his mill, and even then
he had to wait four or five years before
the neighboring farmers would consent
that their idle daughters should make
good wages in his employment. To-day,
however, the enterprise is a success, and
not only the girls, but the young men in
that vicinity, know how to work, and are
being brought up with a knowledge so
much superior to that Of the same classes
in the towns of Louisiana as we are to
that of the Dolly Vardens of the Picaylne.
This fact illustrates what one man can do,
and it also points the moral of our first
position, that there are too many idle
hands in the State for the good of the
community.
Our misfortunes, then, result, not from
what we do, but from what we leave I'M
done. There must be a wider spread of
information and a greater diffusion OF la
Dor. Every man, woman and child in the
State must learn knowledge and industry.
We must know how to keep our own skirts
clean, and then other people will keep
theirs in a like condition, just for the sake
of appearances. Every ray of knowl-
edge that can be added to the people,
whether white or black, is wealth, and
with plenty Of it scattered broadcast, the
darkness will wear away.