598 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



conditions, in which the majority of white men were not South- 

 ern born and Southern bred in each so-called " carpet-bag Legisla- 

 ture." If, then, the ignorant blacks were led to pervert the trust 

 that was imposed upon them, they were not led thereto by the 

 Northern " carpet-baggers." 



The very necessities of society made it necessary that this per- 

 version of the powers of government should be stopped. It was 

 done ; and the old colored man at the Capitol in South Carolina 

 explained the case in a single phrase when I asked him why the 

 Republican Governor had been thrown out and Wade Hampton 

 elected the year before ; his answer was, " Yer can't put igmance 

 top o' 'telligence and make it stay dar." It might be wise for 

 those who are pressing the " Force bill " in the present Congress 

 to take counsel from this old colored man. No force bill can 

 " put ig'nance on top o' 'telligence and make it stay dar," but the 

 enactment of such a measure will make it very plain that intel- 

 ligence must displace ignorance of the present conditions of the 

 South in many of the seats in the present House and Senate. 



Under these adverse conditions — with that element of property 

 which had been the main-stay of its citizens totally destroyed, its 

 railway system torn up, its fields devastated, its fences burned, and 

 many of its most important mills and works utterly destroyed ; 

 without capital, without inherited skill or aptitude — the South en- 

 tered upon new fields of industry, exposed to the absolutely free 

 and unrestricted competition of the Northern farmers, the North- 

 ern miners, the Northern manufacturers and the Northern ar- 

 tisans and mechanics in every branch of work. 



No one can yet measure the progress which has been made in 

 all the arts and industries which are necessary to civilized life in 

 that great Southland. I have lately been on a hasty trip as far as 

 New Orleans ; I have witnessed the progress of white and black 

 alike ; progress upon the farm, in the field, in the great factory, 

 in the workshop ; progress in better conditions of life, in higher 

 wages and in lower cost, in every town and city and wherever the 

 railway has penetrated. It is a complete proof that diversity of 

 employment establishes itself in spite of legislation and in spite 

 of every bad form of taxation. 



If you will glance over the analysis of the occupations of the 

 people of the several States in the census of 1880, limiting your 

 observation to those which had not been subject to the indignity 

 of slavery, you will find that in a very short time after a State or 

 Territory is open to settlement a certain balance of occupations 

 establishes itself. Where the land is poor, as in New England, 

 the larger number will be occupied in the manufacturing and 

 mechanic arts ; where the land is good, and the connection with 

 the markets established, there may be for a time an excess in 



