Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1874-07-09

physical forces of nature is net under
stood.
We see hardly one-sixth part of our
soil producing anything of what we call
crops; and out of female population
of 454,71S ten years old and over, only
one-ninth part, or 81, 402, are employed.
OF course many of these thousands of
girls and women are in school or ought
to be, and many females have full and
useful employment in housekeeping,
milking, making butter and clothing
for children, and others in washing,
mending, working in the gardens, and
sometimes in the field. 1t would be a
great error to assume that, because the
census assigns no trade nor regular
employment to the wives and daughters
of our numerous rural population, they
are mere drones in the hive. The
mistake in our industry is not that our
people have nothing to do, and really
do nothing, but that they labor to a
very great disadvantage, and generally
for a discouraging compensation. This
operates as bounty on idleness, grow
ing at length into dissipation, and the
loss of character as well as of time and
money. The extinction of slave labor
in the South is slowly working out a
profound social and industrial revolu-
ton, in which everything has to be
learnt anew. Formerly colOrei people
produced much more than they con-
sumed, making a good field hand worth
above one thousand dollars. Now the
same race consume as much as they
produce, and often more.
In cities and villages and on some
plantations, colored servants are sup
ported as Injuries the same as horses
and carriages, and for the pleasure of
paying fifteen cents for being shaved.
Poverty comes rather more from mis-
use of money than from working at
low wages. There is much of art and
wisdom in keeping property, and using
it to the best advantage. A great deal
of labor is not effective because so
many live from hand to mouth and
never lay up capital to purchase and
use labor-saving machinery, either on
the farm, the factory or the work
shop.
Our curse of curses is the acquired
and apparently incurable habit of ex-
travagance. Where consumption ex-
ceeds production, an increase of poverty
is the unavoidable result. A
knowing few may get rich by the spend
thrift conduct of many, but the people |
as a whole cannot. In States where a
large majority are poor, unhappy and
disconnected, wealth is held by weak. |
and uncertain tenure, and may be easily |
eaten into, and consumed by endless |
taxation. The deep love of living |
easily and working little in return is a
very natural, and therefore a growing |
vice, without regard to sex or color.
A warm climate operates in this direc-
ton. diminishing industrial ambition,
rendering labor less studied as an art
and science, less constant in purpose,
and less efficient as civilizing power.
One looks in vain in the planting |
States for a well-developed public
opinion in favor of effective labor,
either in tillage and hushandry, or in
any branch of mining or manufactures.
a few earnest workers and takers like
Hon. Asa Faulkner and Gen. Wilder
are exceptions. MIR. Faulkner's part
ners, who would not put their children
with his to work in a cotton mill, but
died insolvent, exhibited the legitimate
fruit of such ideas. In Europe,
hand work is the rule and
not the exception; in the Sun
ny South, too many esteem it
as a relic of slavery. Labor
thus degraded in the popular mind,
never was, and never can he, effective
except to produce vice and crime. So
cial parasites so abound that one hardly
dares hint at their existence and origin.
They have spread everywhere, and
exist in the very blood, brainand muscle
Of civilization. Labor is striking, re-
sisting and rebelling against them, but
with what final outcome time alone
will reveal.