CHAPTER XL 



THE NEEDS OF THE SOUTH. 



BY HON. L. F. LIVINGSTON, MEMBER OF CONGRESS FROM GEORGIA, AND PRESI- 

 DENT OF THE GEORGIA STATE ALLIANCE. 



THE needs of the South are peculiar, rendered so by a combination 

 of circumstances that the outside world is slow to understand. No other 

 civilized and Christianized people have been so misunderstood and mis- 

 judged. Since the war between the States, the magazine correspondents, 

 newspaper scribblers, and politicians, combined with those who knew 

 the former power and greatness of the South socially, politically, and 

 financially, and actuated purely by prejudice and jealousy, were deter- 

 mined that her reconstruction should never lead to her former prestige. 

 These have all placed the South and her environments before an inquir- 

 ing world in a false light. Nothing has been given so freely, " without 

 money and without price," to the struggling South as advice. This, as 

 usual, comes from people either ignorant of our needs or wilfully opposed 

 to the betterment of our condition, and has proven as worthless as 

 gratuitous. 



It would prove an interesting chapter in the history of the South if 

 this intermeddling in detail, and the real condition of the people, could 

 be spread out before the civilized world. To do so in this article would 

 neither be appropriate nor consistent with the object for which it is 

 written. 



We often come to correct conclusions more readily by looking at the 

 negative side of a proposition. There are many things the South does 

 not and never will need, and there are other things that she may, in her 

 future development, require that are inopportune now. There are two 

 great questions that effect her interest : What are her present and pos- 

 sible needs ? and how are they to be obtained ? To present this more 

 clearly, we reassert, first, the things she does not need should be shown. 



The South does not need a moneyless immigration. This has been a 

 wild and visionary demand, both from home and abroad. The day may 

 come when such immigration would be profitable. At this time it is a 

 struggle on our part to decently support and educate the present popu- 

 lation. Immigration, to be profitable to a country or section, must find 

 an open road to labor, and cheap and ready means of supplying their 

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