CHAPTER XIV 



FOR more than a century, colored slaves did all man- 

 ual labor on the farms in the South, and it seems diffi- 

 cult, if not impossible, for the Southern statesmen to 

 differentiate between that race whose origin was 

 the jungle and whose education was under the mas- 

 ter's lash and the American farmer, whose origin 

 was among the most God-fearing, liberty-loving 

 classes in the civilized world, and whose education has 

 been broader and deeper than that of the masses of 

 any other nation or class of laborers in the world's 

 history. They continue to look upon , the American 

 farmers as, if not in part and parcel, at least analogous 

 to the ex-slave his psychology materially different 

 from that of other men an element to be used, but 

 always restrained kept down. This attitude to- 

 wards manual laborers and especially field labor- 

 ers this fading stain of slavery on Southern men- 

 tality, may be observed in nearly every legislative ac- 

 tion looking to the " Betterment of Agriculture." 

 For example: On the vote to make the so-called 

 minimum price of wheat in fact, the maximum 

 price in effect $2.50 per bushel, of the members 

 from nine leading Southern States, are reported as six 

 voting for and sixty-two against giving the farmer a 

 possibility of profit on his crop. The measure was 

 defeated by a majority of only twenty-seven. 



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