Knoxville weekly chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1875, 1872-11-27
A HEArHEN1sH AND SUICIDAL POLICY.

i.
The author of the articles in late issues
OF the Memphis appeal, in which the
Southern people are seriously advised not
to give employment or aid to the colored
race, is beyond doubt of unsound mind.
We do not see how n writer in full possess
sion of ordinary mental powers could seri-
ously urge such destructive and foolish
policy upon the South. The great trouble
with us now is, there are not half enough
working people in our borders. Not one
third of the tillable land of the Southern
States is cultivated. The secret of her
slow recuperation is, that there is not
enough laborers at work in her cotton, to-
bacco and corn fields. If her waste fields
were given away to labcrers who
would cultivate them, or if her
half-worked farms were divided and sold
at half-price TO industrious men who
would raise good crops from them, in five
years every landholder would be richer
with one-half of his original estate left
him. Why, then, seriously propose plan
which must surely and speedily still fur
Their depopulate our section and decrease
our productions We are not opposing in
this article a policy hastily suggested, but
one earnestly advocated day after day in
one of the most widely circulated daily
newspapers of this State.
1t is all folly to discuss such a suicidal
proposition. The colored people are in the
South, a part of the South, and all theo-
ries of colonization are impractical and all
policies of determination are brutal and
cowardly.
If the Southern people talke, less and
thought less of politics and worked more
we would be better of. The public senti-
ment that makes an honest difference in
politics cause for hatreds, dstrust, relig-
1ous or industrial ostracism, is foolish and
destructive. 1t will ruin any people.
When the Memphis appeal openly threat
ems TO spot" every man for voting the
Republican ticket; openly advising its read
ers to carry politics into their business re-
lations; and seriously proposes to employ
only those who think politically as it does,
1t inaugurates policy that is subversive
of all freedom of conscience, that strikes
at the very root of free institutions and
that must bring ruin upon the Southern
people. The dangers it seeks to avoid
would only multiply if we should fall into
the anarchy and helpless conditions its
proposed policy would surely entail. The
best protection against its threatened war
Of races and other imaginary dangers, is to
have general prosperity, general education
and liberal national public sentiment.
We will not secure these until we bury for
ever beyond resurrection the sectional,
proscriptive Chinese sentiments encourage
ed by the appeal and its followers. They
think less of public schools, good roads,
more population and industrial enterprises
than they do of their little miserable ward
and city political caucusses and rings. If
they will bury all their contemplate pre-
JUDGES for one year,,and go to work to build
up progressive, liberal, public sentiment
and encourage the reforms we have referred
to- we believe when the time for the next
election comes, they will find little encour-
agement to ''spot" men for their political
belief or in advocating policy to remedy
imaginary dangers that sensible men know
can never arise. More work and less at
tention to politics, more interest in public
schools and less in political wire working,
higher respect for honest labor and greater
contempt for idle young men who part
their hair in the middle and live off of hard
working fathers, more. busy hanas and
fewer politicians, and all the intolerance,
bitterness and vindictiveness now mani |
tested by the appeal and its followers to-
wards Radicals" and the colored people
will speedily disappear.