The gold leaf. [volume] (Henderson, N.C.) 1881-1911, 1889-10-24

nerative and production may not be
overdone by the pursuit of narrow lines
of enterprise. 1t is within your power
to do much towards securing more
equitable relations between employers
and employed Thus far you have
been particularly fortunate in avoiding
disastrous labor agitations. Your
workingmen have been reasonably con
tent. But this has been largely due
to the quality of your labor and the
nature of your industries. When there
shall be collected in your manufactur-
ing cities large bodies of workingmen,
when rivalry for employment and good
wages shall have become keener, you
will have to meet serious questions,
and if you would take warning from
the North's experience, you will pre-
pare to meet them now. Your en-
ployers must realize what ours have
been slow to realize, that one mans
rights are the rights of another, and
that that policy is best in business en-
terprise, as elsewhere, which is founded
upon that fundamental principal Of
human conduct-to do unto others as
you would have them do unto you
Let theaBenefts of your prosperity be
enjoyed not by the few who would use
them for their own selfish ends, but
encourage that broad hnman charity
which looks to the greatest good of the
greatest number, remembering that
that state of society is highest in which
intelligence and wealth are most
equally distributed.
You have within your borders vast
numbers of an unfortunate and long
oppressed race-left suddenly by the
result of war to their own resources,
untutored, superstitious and helpless,
but patient, docile and ambitious; it is
your interest, as it is your duty, to lift
them out of the estate in which fate
has placed them, and help them to as
sumo the responsibilities of citizenship.
/! You have an enormous labor class
black and white-the mass of them
not yet sufficiently stirred by the spirit
of progress to be conscious OF their
own interests and their own power !;
they will not always remain SO. You
can do great deal to avert clashing
of interests by wise legislation, by
proper regard for sanitary laws in your
cities. by the establishment of institu-
tions to encourage savings, by the
erection of comfortable homes, by
economy in public expenditure and in
private life. The experience of the
last twenty years has proved to you the
advantage of free labor. Most of you
we'll remember the predictions of your
statesmen before the war that without
slaves the South could not prohtably
produce cotton; yet with free labor you
have raised more cotton in the last ten
years than you raised in the twenty
years before Sumter was fired on, not
w!thstanding that only part of your
population 3has been engaged in this
industry, and that, in the meantime,
your manufacturing centres have be-
come formidable rivals of the North.
believe that the South is to play a
great part in working out the des-
tiny of our reunited nation. In her
courage, in her hopefulness; in her in
tegrity, in her loyalty, in her en-
thusiam, in the public spirit of her
statesmen, in their faithful adherence
to political conviction and in their
deep sense of duty to public trusts,
behold qualities which will preserve
intact the theory of our governmental
system, strengthen our institutions, and
rebound to the glory and prosperity OF
our country. 1t is sometimes said in
the North that the South is solid. So
it is-solidlor good government, solid
for the welfare of its people, solid for in
tegrity IN private and official life, solid
in its opposition to paternal admins
tration of public affairs, solid against
Congressional extravaganza, solid in
its remuneration of the errors of the
past, solid for American ideas, solid in
its devotion to the new nation, solid in
its aspirations for higher civilization
and solid for all that would make us q
prosperous and powerful republic. O
such solidity am not afraid. | see nc
dangers in such unity as springs from
: the noblest motives and subserves the
most exalted patriotism.