New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1876-01-08
THE NEGRO LABoRER UNNECESSARY.


The Bourbon organ states this PROPOSE
ton:
Az for the senseless and false inference
that the negro is the "wOrker," and the
white man not, in the Southern States, 1t Is
as thoroughly hollow and baseless as most
other Radical propositions.
And then employs the following stump
speech to prove that'the white man is not
BY their energy, intelligence aad labor,
Southern men, notwithstanding their
changed social habits and relations ana
loss of property, calculated to drive them
to laziness and despair, have made since
the war, bv actual statistics, g., COZ, OOO, 900
in pure gold, in the staple of cotton alone,
which, if it had not been stolen from them
bv the most atrOciOus combinations of Con-
pressional laws and alien State govern
ments, would have served to have shlnsled
over our overtaxed and bankrupt commu
mites with this precious metal.
We rather like these specimens OF
rhetoric. They remind us of the same
style which was tried on our people many
months since. It was discontinued by
act of the sheriff, because such long SEN
fences confused the mind and affected
the lungs of our people. People must
draw breath in our climate every five or
six minutes, and these long and exciting
sentences were deemed dangerous to per-
sons of pulmonic weakness. When one
begins to read such harangue as we
have last quoted, the most Indifferent can
not pause, since it may at any moment
recommend a war, a riot, or the end Of
all political things. 1t was thus that this
grasshopper logic was deemed unsafe, and
the aid of the sheriff was invoked as
stated.
l. That the white man is "a worker
We know very we'll. He is a worker all
over the North and West. In the hill
country of Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia
and Louisiana, and small parts of the
South where the white people could not
buy labor, there was proportion Of the
cotton crop, estimated by Hon. A. b.
Stephens at one-sixth, produced by white
labor.
In the angry paragraph we have quoted
the inference is affirmed that the ''South-
ern men" have made two billion dollars.
As the question is whether the Southern
white men are workers, it would not be
logical to assume that these values are the
product of white labor alone. Assume
that the weight of cotton produced for
ten years before the war was no greater
than that produced since the war. The
slaves are admitted to have produced five
sixths Of that crop. To assume that the
whole weight of cotton produced since
the war is the result Of white workers
alone would be to suppose that the
negro had ceased work entirely. The cul-
ture Of sugar was effected almost ex-
clusively, before the war, by negro labor.
It has been reduced to about one-third Of
it's former weight, and if the white work
ers are entitled to the exclusive merit of
its production, it appears strange that the
crop is still made by negro labor. Under
the theory that the white worker creates
all these billions, we do not see why the
white worker does not fetch in and bring
sugar back to its former figures, as it is
claimed be has done with regard to other
Southern products.
We know the white man at the South
has done great deal since the war. He
has worked as the Saxon always has done
in the whale fishery, in the mines of
California. in the cotton fields of the
South. He has employed other agencies
10 aid him. Steam fertilizers, improved
implements and process have done much
10 aid in the production Of cotton.
sugar and rice. Wewill startle ye bilious
Bourbon. The non-slaveholders before
The war could not hire sufficient labor.
The slaves were held by purchase. The
former non-slaveholder can now 60 into
The labor market and hire as much labor
As he needs. Whatever other interest may
have been injured by emancipation, the
interest of the enterprising non-slave-
holder has been promoted. Slave labor
was q monopoly. Free labor is open
to the employment Of all. Many
q one-armed Confederate who could
never have bought the labor Of
one man can now hire the labor OF fifty
men. It is this combination of enterprise
and labor that has produced the billions.
To assume this product, even by inference,
IS the exclusive crop Of the white workers,
would be to contradict fact and controvert
logic. We do not say that ''Southern
men" have not made all these billions
s.by auctual statistics" but there is no evil
aence that they have made them by actual
hard labor.
2. The proposition that all these billions
have been sstolen" from the Southern men
..by the most atrocious combination OF
laws and alien State govern
is not exactly relevant to the
thesis of an exclusive crop production by
white workers. All these billions stolen ?
How, then, has the South paid for all
those other billions Of merchandise i'm
ported from Europe and the East? In
what manner have the white workers
become possessed of all those mules,
wagons, plows, steam engines, sugar
mills and trains? Did those who stole all
these statistical billions send all the flour,
corn, bacon and whisky as donation
and gratuity to the plundered white