13 



ment of the cotton manufacture, in the art of raising cotton and 

 preparing cotton for the spinner from 1840 to 1860? I don't wish to 

 impute ignorance or incapacity to you ; I know as well as you do 

 that some of your planters had as much skill and intelligence as any 

 men engaged in working land in the world ; I know how you in- 

 creased 3'our crops : but I ask you, What reduction in the cost of rais- 

 ing cotton did you as a people make in that period ? 



How much did 3*011 change and improve your ploughs, your hoes, 

 and 3*our cultivators ? 



What did 3 T ou learn about fertilizers ? 



What did 3*011 know about phosphates ? 



Was each cotton gin better than the last? 



Did each little improvement emanate from one of your own skilled 

 mechanics who worked the cotton gin, and could not help trying to 

 improve it? 



Was each new gin-house safer and better than the last? 



Did you apply your power with more economy? 



Was each press more powerful ? 



Was each year's crop better ginned and handled, better packed 

 and sent to market, subject to le^s waste than the one previous ? 



You may say "yes," and attempt to prove your case by special 

 examples. I admit them : they only strengthen the rule ; they only 

 proved how certainly improvements could be made, and by their very 

 contrast made the general inefficiency of your former methods more 

 marked. 



There can be no general progress where the laborer is not worthy 

 of his hire ; and that land will always be accursed where the man 

 who earns his daily bread by the work of his own hands is not honored. 



When slaver3 T ended, not only were blacks made free from the 

 bondage imposed by others, but whites as well were redeemed from 

 the bondage they had imposed upon themselves. 



In that dark and distant past, did your cotton land improve in 

 product every year? or, to quote the words of Henry A. Wise of 

 Virginia, " Did not your niggers skin the land, and your white men 

 skin the nigger's ? ' ' 



To quote again from Dr. Cloud of Alabama: " Didn't 3*011 gully 

 your hillsides, and blast your prairies? " 



Why do I ask you these questions, and, as it were, rub you on the 

 raw? 



Not only because it is the right of every man in the country to use 

 free speech, but in this case it is necessary. 



We are considering a problem in the science of political economy ; 

 we are contrasting two systems of labor ; we need to base our future 

 practice on past experience. There is no more room for passion or 

 feeling in the case than there would be in considering which kind of 

 land would produce the most cotton. 



When you study the past system of slave-labor with the present 

 system of free labor, irrespective of all personal considerations, you 

 will be mad down to the soles of your boots to think that you ever 



