8 



the South interested like themselves in promoting better ginning, 

 baling, and handling cotton as it comes from the field. 



In another generation or two the time may have come for numerous 

 and large textile factories in the Piedmont district ; but for the pres- 

 ent no increase of cotton spindles in the cotton States is likety to 

 keep pace with the increasing demand for cotton fabrics of the same 

 section. 



Let the citizens of the Southern States visit the North, and exam- 

 ine its methods of industry, and it will soon become apparent to 

 them in which direction their attention should be turned, and that, 

 although no one can undervalue the importance of the cotton manu- 

 facture as it is now established in the North, it is yet a relatively un- 

 important factor in the vast field of her manufactures ; the value 

 of its product even in Massachusetts, where forty-five per cent of all 

 the cotton spindles of the country are to be found, being less than 

 one-sixth the value of the manufactures of that State, and giving 

 employment to a less proportion of its population of working age. 



The greatest need of the present time is, that the citizens of the 

 two sections that have been so widely parted until recent times, 

 should visit each other, learn the respective methods and opportuni- 

 ties of each State, and become convinced that in their mutual or 

 inter-dependence is the foundation of their true union. 



It is in order to promote such intercourse that the undersigned feels 

 most solicitous that the cotton exhibition shall be held. 



The Southern farmers are as little informed about the cotton manu- 

 facture of the North as the operatives, and even some of the em- 

 ployers of the North, are in regard to the production of the cotton 

 fibre. 



Let each class learn where it can most profitably excel. The rail- 

 road has almost eliminated distance ; and each section that serves 

 the other best, serves itself also. In teaching this lesson, the cotton 

 exhibition will be a great schoolhouse full of instruction. 



Slaveiy repelled where liberty unites. In the time that now seems 

 so distant, no Southern man could learn the open secret of the North, 

 or, if he learned it, he could not appty it in a section where skill and 

 education were forbidden, and where it was a felony to teach the 

 laborer to read ; no Northern man could cariy his rights as a citizen 

 of the country into any slave State, or attempt to assert them there 

 without danger to his life, nor could he study the sj'stem of labor as 

 a mere question of econom3 T without the risk of being hanged as a spy. 



All these malignant conditions have passed away. The active Miul 

 vigorous men born of the new South refuse to be controlled am 

 longer by the Bourbons of that section ; and the " stalwarts " of the 

 North, who dare not trust the principle of liberty to work its just 

 results, are being themselves classed as Bourbons incapable of guid- 

 ing or directing the true union that now exists in this Nation. 



EDWARD ATKINSON. 



BBOOKLINE, MASS., Jan. 13, 1881. 



