The clinging of the South, under the circumstances, to its old social and political ideas and system, or to such fragments of them as now remain, and its persistent attempts to put these broken parts together, and to preserve thereby what so disastrously distinguishes it from the rest of the country, is an economic error of the first magnitude--an error which injuriously affects its own industrial prosperity and greatness by retarding its material development and by infecting at the same time with increasing unrest and discontent its faithful and peaceful black labor. The fight which the South is making along this line is a fight not half so much against the Negro as against its own highest good, and that of the country's, for it has in this matter opposed itself ignorantly and madly to the great laws which control the economic world, to the great laws which are the soul of modern industrialism, laws which govern production and exchange, consumption and competition, supply and demand, which determine everywhere, between rival parts of the same country and between rival nations as well, that commercial struggles, industrial rivalries, shall always terminate in the survival of the fittest. If in such a battle the South sow seeds of economic weakness, when it ought to sow seeds of economic strength, it will go down before its rivals, whether those rivals be in this country or in any other country or part of the world. In such a struggle if it would win it will need to avail itself of all the means which God and nature have placed at its disposition. One of the most important of these means, perhaps the most important single factor in the development and prosperity of the South, is its Negro labor. It is more to it, if viewed aright, than all of its gold, iron and coal mines put together. If properly treated and trained it will mean fabulous wealth and greatness to that section. Lest you say that I exaggerate, I will quote the estimate put upon this labor by the Washington _Post_, which will hardly be accused of enthusiasm touching any matter relating to the Negro, I think. Here it is: "We hold as between the ignorant of the two races, the Negro is preferable. They are conservative; they are good citizens; they take no stock in social schisms and vagaries; they do not consort with anarchists; they cannot be made the tools and agents of incendiaries; they constitute the solid, worthy, estimable yeomanry of the South. Their influence in government would be infinitely more wholesome than the influence of the white sansculottes, the riff-raff, the idlers, the rowdies and the outlaws. As between the Negro, no matter how illiterate he may be, and the poor white the property owners of the South prefer the former."