The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1881-02-12
THE CAUSE OF SOUTHERN POVERTY.

Judge Alexander, a prominent citizen
of Mecklenberg county, Va, is furnish
ing the Democrat, published at Boydton,
in that county, with series of valuable
articles on the subject indicated in the
caption to this paragraph. We annex
the first as follows:
Fifteen years of distress should cause
an appeal to thought An industrious
and energetic people should know the
cause of their want, the secret of their
poverty, and seek remedies for their ills.
The victories of peace are more profit
able than the glories of war, yet we find
our people, who a few years ago were
willing to give their all in war, now
wanting in public spirit and seemingly
indifferent to their personal independ-
ence, and yet working hard and spend
ing all that they make. Such are the
general facts as we know them. The
legal breastworks, the homestead and
other exemptions of to-day, are as much
sought after and as popular as were the
sand bags of '6I, and yet it can be said,
with due regard to truth, that no thrift
less and despairing people ever worked
so well.
l do not wish TO be understood as
casting obloquy and ridicule upon those
wholesale Exemptions" and only re-
gret that the law has impaired them
with the "waiving privilege" " No man
works less because he has roof to shell
ter his children, and shade tree that
he can call his own; on the contrary,
it helps to lift despair and give energy
to hope. have only alluded to this to
show the straits of our own people in
what they suppose to be their involun-
tary condition, and why are we poor
Because we do not keep our money at
home and trade among ourselves, but
choose to waste it all on dry goods,
Western bacon and Philadelphia "no-
tions.
If we could get back the spinning
wheel and the loom, hocks of sheep,
pens of hogs and brood mares, we would
soon find ourselves an independent peo-
pie, but as long as we buy from abroad
the money that we receive for our pro-
duce will soon find its way back from
whence it came, and but little will be
left for trade amongst ourselves, and we
can never be prosperous until we learn
to supply our own wants, and practice
strict system of economy. 1t would
be better for us to raise our own pork
than to buy it at two and half cents
pound better for us to wear home spun
than to buy broadcloth at nine-pence
a yard. The man at the North with his
eyes open says: "This late war was
glorious thing, it made the negro free
to work for us, it destroyed the spin
ming wheel, the loom, the flock; we
will send our people in the South a
plenty of ox-yokes, hoe-helves and cod
fish manure; good tenants they are, we
only allow them a scanty living and they
give all that they make for it; the fight
was for this thing, and we are reaping
fattening harvest. "
But it is not only the colored man
that spends his all for dry goods, West
ern bacon and Philadelphia motions"
but people of every color and class. A
laboring man now frequently spends
more in self-indulgence than did the
slave-owner of 1861.
The mania for dress is such that no
money is laid aside to buy land and cat
tie, but the man who we might have
right to suppose would be worth SI25
annually to the community has on the
1st of January few clothes, no taxable
effects, is not able to pay his Poll-tax
when called on, and not at all unless
some one wants his vote This man,
sending money abroad by his purchases
can never be worth anything to the COM
munity; in fact we are worth nothing
to each other, and the theory that the
slave that was worth 81, 900 to his mas
ter in 1860 is still worth the same to the
community, is entirely defeated by the
distant expenditure of money.