The leader., 1902-06-04
A TRIBUTE TO CoPIAH.
Eloquent Address by Judge Robert
Powell, at the New Court House

| pllment That you nave paid me In In
wiling me to address you upon this
suspicious occasion. In accepting
your invitation was of course aware
of my deficiency as public speaker
and that should fail to greatly in
terest and instruct you; nevertheless
felt that these were my people, bone
of my bone and flesh of my flesh, and
that their kindly, warm hearted friend
ship would overlook ali my shortcom-
ings in this direction.
1t is great compliment to any man
to be invited to address the people of
Copiah county, the greatest white
county of the State. A county whose
children have written some of the
brightest pages of Mississippi's his
tory; a county whose sons have re-
Elected honor upon the State in the
national halls of legislation, in the
gubernatorial chair, and in the judicial
ermine, in fact have furnished shining
lights in all the walks and avocations
of life in the past, and whose present
citizenship affords the guarantee that
should occasion require, she can du-
plicate her past achievements. And
last, but not least, a county one of
whose distinguished daughters con-
ceived and put into practical execution
the idea of State institution for the
higher education of the young woman
hood of the State. God bless our
women; they are the salt of the earth.
Some great poet has said that let him
who would write nations laws, pro-
vided only he might write her songs;
but 1 tell you that her laws would be
dead letter upon the statute books
and her songs would be song in vain,
did not an educated Christian woman
hood preside at the domestic f1resides
of her people.
Fellow citizens, we stand to-day at
the threshold of great industrial
events, and the next few years
will see our State making tremendous
strides along the lines of industrial
development. We have steam and
electric power; we have an abundance
of the raw material and our people are
the purest type of that race which has
led the advancing host of civilization
and planted the victorious banners
npon the ramparts of every obstacle
which has confronted us. Fellow
citizens, when this Government was
formed, the two sections of which it
was composed had within their diverse
interests and institutions the seeds of
discord and dissolution. The South
had broad, but sluggish streams, I'M
fitted to afford water power for man
ufacturing, and as this was then the
only known cheap power for that pur-
pose, she naturally turned to other in
dustries for which she was more
abundantly blessed by nature. With
a climate as genial as that of Italy,
with a soil which in many places
rivalled in fertility the far-famed val
ley of the Nile, with slave labor pc
culiarly adapted to that pursuit, she
naturally turned to agriculture as the
source of her wealth. While the
North, and particularly the Northeast,
then the only settled part of that Sec
ton, with free labor, with more in
hospitabie climate and sterile soil, but
with water power which leaped in
sparkling cascades from her thousand
hills and mountains, naturally turned
to the utilization of that power in
manufacturing and kindred pursuits.
Each prospered along its own chosen
lines. The South, rich in wealth and
beauty, became, as it were, crowned
queen among the nations of the earth
and lavished her wealth in the sight OF
her less fortunate neighbor. Her
sons, freed from the necessities OF
daily manual toll by slave labor, de,
voted themselves to intellectual pur.
suits SO that the great minds of the
So nth dominated the national halls Of
legislation for more than sixty years
of the national history.
The North with free labor, more
frugal in expenditure, gradually de-
veloped their manufacturing indus.
tries, forced by necessity to a more
intensive and diversified system OF
agriculture, as the years went by also
became great and powerful. Then
there was jealousy and pickering:
there was friction of slave and free
labor. There was increasing demand
for protection by the North for
favored industries. There were diverse
views on great constitutional ques-
tions, until finally the inevitable issue
was made between the contending
sections and submitted to the final
arbitrament of battle. 1t was titanic
contest and shocked the world by the
lavish expenditure of blood and treas
ure, but in the end the South, borne
down by superior numbers, lay help
less at the feet of the victorious North
When the South surrendered her
armies at the end of the civil war, il
meant more to both sections than the
mere mastering out of armed men
from service. It meant more than
the mere freedom of the slaves or the
settlement of a great constitutional
question by the arbitrament of the
sword.
Previous to the war the South, rich
in the cultivation of her one imperial
staple cotton, neglected all other in
dustries in her efforts to increase its
production, so that as necessary con-
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