The weekly register. [volume] (Point Pleasant, Va. [W. Va.]) 1862-1909, 1876-09-28
TbeLost Market.

The Baltimore Gdzette says: Onder
proper government the rayages Of
war are soon repaired, In a few
years the boys become the young men,
the wastes Of food and war material
are replenished, and fair harvests
deliberate the ruts of cannon wheels
and the burrows of the shot. The
country that does not recover in five
years from the effects Of an ordinary
war must be grievously misgoverned.
Political economists consider that
three years is sufficient under ordi-
nary circumstances. The French re-
public, which has been well admin
istered since the Franco German war,
has not merely recovered, but has
now a prosperity far greater than
ever before in its history; and though
despoilcd of two of its richest proyin-
ccs, and depleted by the payment OF
an enormous war indemnity, it is
thriving as never before in all its in
dustries.
The South was before the war the
great market of the productive in
dustries of the North. The whole
energies of the South were devoted
to agriculture. Cotton, sugar, rice
and tobacco were raised, and the mo,
ney that they sold for was spent
chiefly at the North. The North cv,
en- worked up the cotton and refined
the sugar that were consumed in the
South. The utter prostration of the
South now has deprived the North Of
its greatest market. The South is
impoverished by misrule, and the
business depression of the whole
country is in large part due to that
fact. If the South were now rich as
in former years, and able to buy the
tccming products of the northern
workshops, the stagnant industries
would revive almost at once.
What is the cause of the extreme
poverty of the South? 1t is the in
security of property there. Those
who had property in many cases
came away. Those who remained
were robbed, swindled and taxed up
to the verge of confscation, until ev-
cry incentive to exertion is removed.
Labor and thrift, economy and self,
denial are discouraged, because the
fruits of industry are consumed by
the carpet-baggers and federal Office
holders and the vile set that they as,
semble around them. The federal
courts have been made the instru-
mcnts of extortion and judges have
been rapacious robbers. Legislators,
governors, state officials of all kinds,
backed by federal bayoncts, have
brought the business energies of por,
tions of the South to the lowest ebb
The arbitrary cxactions of the car
pet-boggers, backed by troops; the
ceaselcss swindles, the crushing tax
alton, the putting of rascality into
Legislature, executive and judiciary
the fraudulent issues Of state bonds
the contracts, jobs and election fraud:
have made the people hopeless o.
anything better and utterly paraly.
zed all the sincws of effort. Thus The
South is wrctchedly poor
1t may perhaps please the moro
vindictivo republicans of the North
that this so. There are, we fear
many who take revengeful pleasure
in the thought of all the miscricS that
the South has suffered. But they
should bcthink them that the i'm
poycrishment of the South is one oil
the chief causes of the silent mills
and rusting machincries ofthe North
The people of the South are poor, yet
they are not starving. But the man,
ufacturing districts of the North suf
fer actural hunger and privation.-
This will never be cured by sending
troops to the South. Four years
more of Reconstruction" in the South
will vastly increase the misery and
suffering of the poorer classes of the
North.
Let the soldiers of the county
hundreds of whom know the facts