Freed persons; Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877); Southern States -- Politics and government -- 1865-1950
Immigration wants encouragement. As far as this encouragement consists in
the promise of material advantage, it is already given. There are large
districts in the south in which an industrious and enterprising man, with
some capital, and acting upon correct principles, cannot fail to
accumulate large gains in a comparatively short time, as long as the
prices of the staples do not fall below what they may reasonably be
expected to be for some time to come. A northern man has, besides, the
advantage of being served by the laboring population of that region with
greater willingness.
But among the principal requisites for the success of the immigrant are
personal security and a settled condition of things. Personal security is
honestly promised by the thinking men of the south; but another question
is, whether the promise and good intentions of the thinking men will be
sufficient to restrain and control the populace, whose animosity against
"Yankee interlopers" is only second to their hostile feeling against the
negro. If the military forces of the government should be soon and
completely withdrawn, I see reasons to fear that in many localities
immigrants would enjoy the necessary security only when settling down
together in numbers strong enough to provide for their own protection. On
the whole, no better encouragement can be given to immigration, as far as
individual security is concerned, than the assurance that the national
government will be near to protect them until such protection is no longer
needed.
The south needs capital. But capital is notoriously timid and averse to
risk itself, not only where there actually is trouble, but where there is
serious and continual danger of trouble. Capitalists will be apt to
consider--and they are by no means wrong in doing so--that no safe
investments can be made in the south as long as southern society is liable
to be convulsed by anarchical disorders. No greater encouragement can,
therefore, be given to capital to transfer itself to the south than the
assurance that the government will continue to control the development of
the new social system in the late rebel States until such dangers are
averted by a final settlement of things upon a thorough free-labor basis.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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