St. Landry democrat. (Opelousas, La.) 1878-1894, 1884-12-06


seaux. May God rouse this nation from
its commercial idiOcy
On the south OF us are regions nearly
three times as large as the United
/ States which are without manufactures,
without wooden goods, without agricul-
tural implements, without telegraphs,
i without telephones, without shoes, with
out sewing machines, without ten thou
sand things that we have and they must
! have. Where shall they get them
They are getting them from 5000 miles
away, and we at the next door from
them are buried under a surplus of
these very things. They are able to
trade with us for their sugars and cOf
fees and spices and fruits and valuable
woods we need as much as they need
our products. But look, and then hang
your heads at the statement that While
our next door neighbOrs,
THE SOUTHERN REPUBLICS AND BRAZIL
and neighbOring colonies, import $685.
! 100000 worth of goods III Il year, only
| 1926, 100000 are from the United States.
/ ONLY One-tifth of the trade is ours, Eu
ropean nations taking the four fingers
and leaving us the poor thumb. The
sister republics on the American CONT
nent have foreign commerce amount
ing to S42S, 100000, OF which we have
the feeble and paltry sum OF S63,OOO,OO0s
/ There is nothing but comparative
/ ferry between this country and the
| West Indies, while there are raging seas
I OF long voyages between them and 9th
er continents. Yet they import $116,-
! 100000 worth Of goods a year, and only
| S31, 100000 come from US.
Now all this is going to be speedily
changed and the change is going to be
the solution OF the labor question and
| the bread question and the cOmmunlstlc
question and the production and
under consumption question and almost
every other question. It is going to set
all the mills on the Merrimac and the
Connecticut and the Susquehanna and
the ChattahoOchee, running day and
night with double set OF hands, and
calling for ten factories where we have
one factory, and putting all the men
who are now Out OF employment into
work at good wages, and change this
story of dull times into prosperity
which will roll on in full tide until the
Mississippi loses its way to the Gulf OF
| Mexico. [ am no more thankful for
tile past blessings OF this country than
am thankful for this opening opportunl-
ty, in it's height stupendous and IN its
width hemisphere.
How win it be done? Among other
things by such action as that which LED
our Congress to appropriate Sl,3O0,O0O
| to the Worlds Exposition, Mexico CIV
| ING 5000 900 and New Orleans $500,000.
| That Exposition, though preceded by
the Sydenham, Crystal Palace and the
French and the Vienna and the Phlla-
| delphia Expositions, will be in farreach-
ing significance
| WI TET ATT THEM
put together. They showed chiefly
what had been done. This Exposition
J of next month will build a platform on
/ which the nations of the American con-
| tinept shall come for introduction to a
new commercial epoch in the history OF
the ages. On that platform will come
| up Bolivia, Peru, Paraguay, Uruguay,
| Venezuela, Salvador, Nicaragua, Co
| lumbia, Costa RIGA, Ecuador, Brazil and
| the brunette West Indies to meet the
| blonde and smiling United States. Hail
marriage day OF North and South
| While the pessimists have been hunting
up the burial service to read at the
| death of American commerce, and the
| stops of the organ were being pulled out
for the dead march in Saul, |, an Opti-
mist by nature and by grace, take up,
in anticipation, the bright covered we'd
ding service and as the blonde North
takes the brunette South by the hand
saying, "With all my worldly goods !
| thee endOw,n | cry, "Whom God hath
Joined together let not foreign despot-
| ism or American demagOgery ever put
asunder" Then let all the organs and
choirs and orchestras make everything
from the Montreal ice palace to the halls
of the MonteZumas quake under the
rolling thunders of the grand march of
| North and South American progress.
/ This Southern door will be fastened
open the more firmly by the tides of
travel diverting from Europe to the land
of the Aztecs. Much of the $106,000 900
yearly expended by Americans in Eu-
rope will be expended
IN SOUTHERN INCORPORATION,
in looking at some Of the ruins of the
forty cities that Stevens, the trav-
eler, found little way apart and walk
1 ing through the corridors and under
the arches and in the great doorways
aud over the miracles of mosaic and
along by the monumental glories of an
other civilization, and ancient America
will with cold lips of stone kiss the
warm lips OF modern America, and to
have seen the Andes and the Popoeata-
petl will be deemed as important as to
have seen the Pyrenean and Balkan
ranges. So there will be fewer people
sp0ilt by foreign travel, and in our
midst less poor imitation OF the French
shrug and the Intentional hesitaney OF
/ the brainless swell. The fact is that
there are more people made fools Of by
European travel than any other way,
and though sensible wbenstliey embark,
they return with collar and crayat
and shoe and coat and pronuncia-
ton and contempt for American in
stitntions and a bend of the elbow that