250 TRANSACTIONS OP THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



at best ; and should the war end before the experiment be matured, 

 the most bountiful crops would not pay expenses. The cotton pro- 

 ducing latitudes of other parts of the world, will be stimulated to 

 their utmost capacity; the growth of wool, flax, hemp, and even 

 silk, will probably be greatly increased. I look upon it as a duty of 

 this Club, and all similar institutions having in view the guiding 

 of industry and enterprise, to advise caution against any great 

 change in this respect. 



The modern facilities for raising, equipping ai?d transporting 

 vast armies, are making wars much shorter than formerly, and 

 the present is not likely to be an exception. But what the result 

 of this war will be, no man can now tell. I see it stated in a 

 leading southern paper, that the speedy establishment of the 

 independence of the Confederacy is certain, and that the people 

 of the North will then be their obsequious serfs, differing but 

 little except in color, from their present slaves. In such a con- 

 tingency, our employments will not be at our own option. This 

 view of the case feels rather rough, although the same writer 

 assures us that we shall be treated with great kindness — their 

 type of manhood being of so high an order that they could not 

 do otherwise. Others say that the Government must be re-estab- 

 lished within its former limits "just as it was." Present signs 

 indicate that such is the only object of those in power. If that 

 is all, millions of men will be of the opinion, that the war will 

 not have been worth its cost. I, for one, believe that the pre- 

 disposing, exciting and proximate cause of this great rebellion, 

 is human slavery ; that the war is, in reality, a contest between 

 free and forced labor. We, as farmers, are interested in it as a 

 question affecting labor, in addition to the question of Govern- 

 ment. A surgeon knows but little of his profession that attempts 

 to heal a wound Avithout first removing the cause. If this war 

 can be made to blot human slavery with all its monstrous crimes, 

 utterly out of existence, then it may end ; but if it is to lead 

 only to some arrangement, merely to patch over this foul and 

 festering plague spot, then you will find this war will be " still 

 beginning, never ending, still destroying." 



I should say to all farmers at this time, make no radical change 

 in your business, except to improve your lands. At present, 

 there is an interregumen in the reign of king cotton, his power 

 for the time being is in the hands of a regency that has but little 

 faith in the divine right of kings. With the opening of the 



