BRIGHTLY. Why not? If two hundred millions’ worth of cotton never crossed the sea, how long would you have to hunt for a gold coin on the Atlantic seaboard? MYERS. What of your gold mines? BRIGHTLY. A drop, only. Shut off the cotton production and how would we carry on a foreign trade? MYERS. Exchange your cereals. Again,—if you had nothing to buy with, you wouldn’t buy. No matter how much you produce here, you are forced to part with it to feed your always famished vanity. Before California, your cotton, cereals and meat went. Now it is California as well! Mark this: If thrown on your own resources, without a particle of foreign importation, you would be infinitely better off, because it would give an impetus to the development of your natural resources, so unparalleled. BRIGHTLY. Come to natural resources, how came New York and New England with their wealth, and how would your pauper labor obtain their cheap clothing? MYERS. Egypt can raise cotton enough for the world. Thrift, hard labor and plenty of brains will make anybody what he needs. BRIGHTLY. Of course, even if the business was basswood, hams and Peter Funk jewelry. MYERS. It is not to your credit that they find a susceptible market here. BRIGHTLY. Why, Myers, we run the rest of this country as middlemen. We have tolerated the leeches a hundred years. Now we propose to shut down. MYERS. When you will spoil the whole. (_Enter Hood R._) It takes brains to run a country like this, and the south haven’t got the material. HOOD. Indeed! MYERS. Yes, sir; indeed. It is one thing to raise cotton and another thing to make it valuable. You never had sense enough in the south to utilize it. If you have, where are your mills? The south is loaded with water-power. The brains of the country are in New England and the middle states. Kick those friends in the face and where are you? England, you say? They would hold the same relation to you at once. What do you gain? An enemy on the border. I owe allegiance to the British crown, but I like your country. It will be my future home. BRIGHTLY. I was going to say—that I was afraid this country couldn’t do without ye. MYERS. Sum the south and its institutions, and what is it? Planters who know nothing but to buy and work a nigger. A large element whose highest ambition is hog, hominy, a horse race and whiskey enough for the present. Politicians, who discover nothing but that the north is leeching its living from the south and stealing its niggers. BRIGHTLY. How much would it cost to get two or three Johnny Bulls like you to come over and run this machine? MYERS. Sarcasm don’t answer argument. It takes a variety of people and interests to make a country like this. I have travelled it all over. It’s a big thing. Believe me, gentlemen, when I say that you require New England for its manufacturing push, the west for its bread and meat, the south for its cotton and sugar. Kick out one and you spoil the whole.