The Washington times., 1894-06-02
SOUTHERN IMMIGRATION.

lne SOutn neeus Immigrants, put IL wallis
the best class of immigrants" says the Fred
ericksburg Free Lance.
The Washington Post indorses this, and
says: 1.-THE southern states will profit nothing
by filling themselves up with the riff-raff Of
Europe"
1.-The object of the present convention" !"
continues the Post, referring to the body now
In session at Augusta, Ca, sis to secure an
influx Of people who will come to the country
not for the purpose Of hiring themselves out
as laborers. but for the purpose Of becoming
landed proprietors on their own account"
This is such bosh that it is difficult to con-
ceiye what our neighbor means by 1t unless it
is mere trucking to southern prejudices.
1t is just this delusion about a better class
of immigrants that has retarded southern
progress and kept it so much behind the pros
porous and populous North.
II the southern states have undeveloped
resources, they need labor to develop them
and turn them into wealth. II they have
fertile waste places, they need labor to culti-
vate them and turn their barrenness into rich
harvests. II they have coal and iron and
lead, precious metals, and useful minerals
hidden in their hills, they want labor to dig
them out and make roads for their transpor-
tation to market. II they have superior
natural advantages-the richest soils, the
most abundant water-powers. the most ex-
haustless forests, with the most genial eli
mate in the worId-they want the help of labor
to secure them in the possession of these
treasures forever. They do not want to sell
them, as Esau did his birthriSht. for mess
OF pottage.
But how can the southern states procure
labor without capital?
II they have undeveoped resources, they
have the equivalent Of capital. They have
collateral securities upon which to base safe,
elastic. and abundant currency, which labor,
the producer of capital, will be satisfied with,
because it will enable it to win a fair days
wages with fair day work.
With such currency they would be re-
lieved of the perpetual drain of interest to
foreign usurers, which makes their revenues
precarious, enfeebles their energies and
sucks the marrow out of their enterprises.
Labor under the proper financial system
would become remuneratiye, and the south
ern states need not .'fill themselves up with
the riff-raff of Europe" The surplus Drawn
and muscle of sterile New England would
flock to lands teeming with abundance and
health. Their own hardy sons, driven to en-
igration by the hard times which preceded
and followed the civil war. would return
fro ,tta Ia1 nd
to the old homes and the new comforts of the
new South.
The class Of people who have the means of
becoming "landed proprietors oa their own
account" are not generally OF the emigrating
kind, unless under powerful Inducements.
If it is ''sassiety" the southern states are
after. it comes high. and they must pay for it.
North Carolina has captured a George Van
derbilt. but whether as a citizen he has
proven as useful as ornamental we are not
advised, or whether the tar heels might not
have been as well off if they had continued
to hoe their own row. However this may be.
there are not enough Vanderbilts to go round
among the southern states.
There may be u mouse in the meal-tub of
this southern convention. There are dele
gates 10 it from New York and Pennsylvania.
great deal of southern waste land is owned
by northern syndcates; a great many south
ern improvements are mortgaged by northern
capitalists. Maybe this cry for a better class
of immigrants is merely to get up a boom for
the land spectators who are plunging the
country into ruin and anarchy.
If there is any common sense or patriotism
in this southern convention it will abandon
the futile cry for the best class of immigra-
ton, which has been rs incessant as vain for
the last thirty years.