The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1873-07-10
Plain Words of Truth and Soberness.

sighted Mayor of the city of Macon, Ga, has
recently issued an address to the people of that
State, urging the claims of the State Agricul-
tural Society and the coming Fair, which is an
admirable document and one calculated to
arouse greater interest in the objects set forth.
Incidentally, the following sensible remarks
are introduced, which apply with equal force
to the entire South, and deserves perusal by
every man, woman and child in Dixie. Hence,
we make no apology for giving the extract be-
low, although the language is exceedingly
plain and occasionally hide-penetrating:
The truth is, the whole country has become
one common cornting-room and huge gam
bling shop. Whist we once did with the axe
and the hoe, the plowshare and the reaping-
hook, we now seek to accomplish by strategy
and chance, credit and speculation. And we
must. sooner or later, come back to first prin-
ciples. or we must perish. We have too many
able-bodied young men in shady places too
much tape cutting and pin selling and too
little cotton chopping and hay curing; too
many yard sticks thrown around loose on
smooth top counters and not enough hoe ham
dies and plow stocks; too many law books and
lager beer barrels in proportion to the rail
splitting and ditch digging; too much foolish
fashion and foppery, and not enough sledge
hammers and saw horses-in word, too much
WHOLESALE IDLENEss: Georgia has to-day,
buried in the rich bosom of her varied soil and
precious mineral beds, greater wealth and
grander results than can ever be worked out
BY canal projects or Congressional enterprises.
And hew is it to be done? Not by dreamy
theories and mythical plans, but in talking
corn instead of canal-in diversifying and
developing our own vast resources-in writing
more about home EFFORT and less about for
eign immigration- planting less cotton and
manufacturing more yarns In this, and this
only. lies the great secret of Georgia's sue
ces. agricultural as we'll as financial and COM
mercial. We are immensely rich in resources,
but miserably poor in the handling of them.
What we want is woRK-honest, hard listed,
intelligent, we'll directed toll, labor and appli-
cation in developing and utilizing what we
have here at home rather than so many spas
modic efforts to bring from abroad that which
we SHOULD NOT BUY. Our poverty, like our
pride, is the result of misapprehension and
mistaken ideas of ourselves, of our country
and of each other. The abolition of slavery
in the South has developed vast world of
sickly, sentimental, lazy, indolent, stupe6ed,
inert and unapt population-a population of
young and middle-aged men, some of whom
have known better days. These men put on
old store clothes, hang around dirty grogshops
and dingy hotels, smoke cheap segars and
drink mean wbiskey, affect old habits and
ante war style, hlk politics little, and curse
destiny, and free negroes more, fret and fume
over the result of the late war, write and sign
up mortgage liens on their cotton crops before
they are planted, pay two per cent. interest on
money for nine months in the year, and then
promise to pay ANNUALLY in the Fall more
money per acre for commercial manures to
scatter over their lands than some of them
originally cost.
And, finally, when inattcntion to business
and general bad policy and mismanagement
have brought them and their State to the cx-
tremity of Disqualification ruin and bank
ruptcy stare us all in the face-we issue proc
lamations, call public meetings, invite dis
tnguished gentlemen from abroad to come
here and sympathize with u.s. We meet in
banquet halls, drink much champagne and
discharge more gas over the great and absorb
ing questions of canal schemes, Congressional
aid and cheap transportation, than was ever
expended by our forefathers in discussing the
Declaration of American Independence. And
what does it avail? Will these idle and ex-
trayagant demonstrations ever work cut the
great problem of Georgia independence No.
Never until labor becomes popular will money
get easy. Never, until we feed fancy less, and
learn to fatten chickens and hogs more, will
want disappear and plenty step in. When
these plain SECRETS of life shall have been
learned, when the wild mania for speculation
shall have departed from our farm house and
plantations, when our planters shall learn from
experience to abandon Wall street brokers and
"cotton futures" and come to deal more di-
rectly in the productions of square little "spots"
of potatoes and corn, when agriculture shall
become the ruling feature and controlling in
terest in our State-then, and not until then,
will we become an Independent, prosperous
and happy people. And we have here in Geor-
gia all the elements necessary to this great end.
Here God has blessed us with everything es-
sential to the prosperity and growth of man or
beast, if only worked out. Everything, from
a chicken and churn to a cotton field and
coal bed, from ground pea patch on the sand
hills to gold mine in the mountains. These
are among the rich, rare and multiplied re-
sources of Georgia; these constitute our
strength. our refuge and our power.
Think of it, farmers and planters of Middle
Georgia. Here we are, in the heart Of the
empire State, the boasted owners of lands
without stint blessed with climate and soil
where two crops Of grain or two of potatoes, or
one each of pea vines and hay CON be success
fully grown on the same land the same year,
and vet we 90 to Baltimore to buy guano to
make little cotton to sell in New York to get
money to buy hay, oats and corn away out in
the rich States of Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois
and Missouri. And just so long as we are the
voluntary patrons of produce dealers, heartless
rings and pampered monopolies, such as now
own and control, operate and direct our only
lines of trade and transportation north, south
and west, justeso long will we be fit subjects
for lien-drafts and homestead laws, mortgages
and repudiation: The South must work out
her own independence. The remedy is ours,
if we will only .apply it. Too often have we
been beguiled by plausible schemes for great
internal Improvements and financial relief
Let us no longer be lulled into false security
by any promises which can be made outside