Southern standard. (McMinnville, Tenn.) 1879-current, 1886-01-02
The Basis of Prosperity
Nashville American.

community there must be desire
for improvement and a determina-
ton formed commensurate with that
desire. What the South needs and
what it is gradually getting is null
duplication of willing hearts and ready
hands in the shop, the factory and the
field to weave garlands of honor from
the fruits and flowers of industry.
We need industrial thought and in
dustrial activity that can bride the
foaming rivulet and put it to work
that can govern the steam engine
and make it do the bidding of man,
that can build furnaces, open coal
mines, that can clean out and i'm
prove our rivers, spanning them with
structures in appearance like gossa-
mer but in strength like the ribs of
the mountains; that can build rail-
roads through winding valleys and
over mountain gorges, transforming
as if by magic the quiet and the
gloom of the forests into the glory of
the field and the hustle and activity
ofthe city; that can plan and rear on
high those splendid editiceS that be-
speak Il cultured mind and high
civilization. We need working in
tellect on our farms and in our shops.
Some of our young men have been
taught by the usages Of society that
it is morerespectable to lounge in ig-
noble ease in an Office than to make
themselves independent by manly
toll and patient industry. In this
way they contract habits that unfit
them for life's duties; they rust out
in idleness, for idleness cankers and
gangrenes the human intellect, dead
ems the sensibilities, destroys the en-
orgies and emasculates the man, max
ing him a thing without useand with
out value.
Wherever there is a want of indus
trial talent, whether in the aggregate
rs in nations, or in individuals, the
result is the same. Nogift of nature,
80 radiance of the sky, no fertility of
the soil, no mineral wealth, can COM
pensate for the absence Of individual
talent and work. The greatness of
nations depends less on natural adj
yantages than on the use which is
made of those advantages. England
Is a nation OF great natural resources,
but it is the Drawn and mind of its
people and their fertile brain which
has made it the workshop of the
world. 1t has been we'll said that
"she shakes every bearing tree and
catches in her lap the most precious
fruits of every cline" Spain is the
antithesis of England. Witha better
climate, with natural resources album
dant, with its beautiful rivers travers-
ing fertile valleys, with a soil capable
Of producing the most desirable pro-
ducts of the earth--yet it is stepped
in poverty, cursed by bad govern
ment, and lies lifeless wreck in the
industrial world.
The man or nation that is incapa-
ble of labor is incapable of greatness.
AS individuals or nations rise in the
scale of civilization labor increases.
The artificial wants that spring from
peoples progress create necessity
for more labor, and the quality and
quantity of work are the surest index
Of a nations civilization.
Before the civil war manual toll
was associated in the South with pow
erty, slavery and degradation. 1t
was then common to think that labor
was not respectable. The necessities
which arose after that dreadful strug-
gle, when the earnings of generations
we're swallowed up in the bloody
conflict, taught new doctrine to the
people of the South. They recognized
the fact that all wealth is pre-exerted
labor. Every person in the posses
sion of wealth either labored for il
himself, or his ancestors labored fol
him. If he gained it himself by la.
Dor he was estopped from admitting
that his work was disgrace; if his
ancestors labored for him, he could
not enjoy the fruits of their disgrace
without partaking of the disgrace
himself, for wealth is the representa-
tive of labor; and if it is disgracefu
to labor, it should be disgraceful t.
own wealth. This old idea that worl
is disgraceful has happily for tn,
South been exploded, and we fine
our young men with willing hand
entering into every avenue of indus
try, and not scorning to perform an,
honest work which tends to increas