Savannah morning news. [volume] (Savannah) 1868-1887, 1884-05-18
BILL ARP ON p. V.N.
Expresses His Opinion of Nasty, His
Paper, and Other Things OF Interest


A friend sends me the Toledo Blade and
marks Nasby's last deliverance on the
South. Ny friend is very mad about it
and uses language. Well, it is asgravat-
ing to have one Of them fellers to come
down here and be tOaded and toasted by
our people, and then go back home and
write passed. Of lies Just to please his
newspaper and the folks who read it. But
l dont't think we ought to take on about
such things, They do US no harm. Let
'em have ali the emigrants if they want
them. Nasty says that Ftthe South don't
get emigrants because land owners don't
work as 8 matter of course. The small
farmer won't work because manual labor
from time immemOrial has been done by
negroes only, and has been considered dis
reputable in white man. These emil
grants will not 60 te any country where
labor is considered a degradation. They
will rot go to a country where he who
plcws, sOws or reaps is counted as moth
ing better than id niger All this
has to be changed before Northern men
or foreigners win 90 southwark
/ don't know Nasty. l don't know
whether he is a knave or a fool, and l
don't care. According to my peculiar
views on emigration he hasn't done the
South nor me any harm, but nevertheless
the lie is all the same, and if emigrants
and Northern men have been kept away
from us because they believed that our
farmers didn't work, and that labor was
disreputahie at the South, they must have
been told SO by just such plausible scrib-
blers as Nasty. i walked ten miles last
Thursday in plOwed ground, dropping
corn, with a lame back and the jerking
rheumatism in my shoulder, and when /
got done | was in a sweat of persplratiOI1
auu my neck hone was in a twist from
looking one way so long; but l never felt
more respectable in my life than when l
sat down to my turnip greens and fried
eggs for dinner. / have no idea that
Nasty ever experienced or en- joyed such
responsibility in his life, and he oughtent to
pretend to be familiar with such q subject.
can say emphatically that labor is of all
things the most respectable thing among
| Ger people. We have several able-bodied
Individuals down here who don't like to
work, but it is rot because they don't re-
spect it. 1t is because they are too lazy.
They lack the inclination. | reckon there
| are some of the same sort everywhere, and
they Will resort to most any respectable
dodge to keep from it. Even to writing
lies for newspapers. The farmers of the
South are her laborers. Nine-tenths of
them work with their hands and work
every day, and work hard. They are the
bone and sinew Of the land. Three-fourths
of the men who fought our battles in the
Q
sons are working now, and there is not
| cOnsiderate father in the South who would
not rather his daughter would marry one
of them than to wed the average young
lawyer or doctor, or clerk of our towns
| and cities. ] confess that my curiosity is
excited to know whether Nasty inherited
that idea honestly from his family alma
nae, or whether he made it up with malice
aforethought, or whether he got it from
some other fool and like fool believed it,
Nasty has revarnished the old pOssilli-
forous idea that the North had of us before
the war, that we all owned niggers and
made them work and didn't do any work
ourselves. But the truth was, not one
man in twenty-five owned a niger, and
the masses of our population had to work
or starye. There was small slaYe-hOld-
ing aristOcracy and they didn't work with
their hands no more than the money
| aristOcracy of the North worked. Rich
| forks don't do manual labor anywhere,
but the war broke up this aristocracy and
leveled them down and the hard working
men came to the front and took the lead
in everything. The rich folks couldn't
stand adversely like the poor. They re-
tired from the turf and common stock
took the track and have kept it. This Is
the logic of events, the swing Of the
pendulum.