Department of Commerce [pp. 571-575]

572 COMMERCE.
unless the demand for cotton fabrics should show a marked improvement,
which is not probable.
The New Orleans Price Current, of a late date, has an editorial under the
heading," The Cotton Tax and the West," which we give below, and which
we commend to the attentive perusal of our readers North and West.
Wre are glad to see indications of a more healthful tone of public opinion
in the Western States with regard to the excise on Cotton and Sugar. We
have always maintained that there was a community of interest between
the West and the Delta States. WAe received its corn, flour and provisions,
to say nothing of its various manufactures of iron, agricultural implements,
etc.; and it took in exchange our sugar, molasses, and imported groceries.
We found it more profitable to devote our entire labor force to the culture of
our principal staples, and buy our cereals and provisions from the West, than
to raise mixed crops. The actual operation of this course of production
benefited both parties. It was carrying out within its limits, the theory of
free trade,-buy where you can buy cheapest, and sell where you can sell
for the best prices. Had there been no emancipation, had the war closed
with a re-establishment of the Union under its former conditions, there
would have been no change, and the South —the planting interest-would
still have been the best customer of the West for its various products.
The opposite is now an established fact, and is accepted as such throughout
the South as completely as at the North or the West. But the predictions
of those opposed to any immediate change in our labor system have been
fulfilled. The negro race have been demoralised. They no longer labor as
the white men of the North and West labor. They take their own time,
and indulge their constitutional love of indolence at the sacrifice of production. Talk of the dolce far niente of the Italians! It is nothing to that of
the negro. The latter has little'thought of the future. He can hardly understand the motives which prompt the frugal habits of the German, who
persists in saving, year after year, until he has acquired a competence for
his old age. He has muscle, and he thinks that it will always command
wages enough to supply his wants for food and clothing, even though he
idles away one day out of every six working days, in enjoying the delicious
languor of basking in the sun. Nor can he be aroused to the inevitable loss
of that muscle as age creeps upon him. and he becomes physically unable to
do a field-hand's work. These matters are patent to the Southern people,
who see moreover, that it is owing to this deficiency of labor that the cost of
planting cotton has been increased, and that successful competitors have
been raised up in the East by the high prices in the cotton market. Under
such circumstances, even without an excise, it would have been difficult for
the planter to pay his hands the current rates for wages, and not lose money
on his crop. But, to add to the obstacles of production, an onerous excise
tax has been imposed upon the staple, and its culture has become well nigh
ruinous to all engaged in it.
The West is to d great extent responsible for this result. There has been
no time when its votes in Congress could not have prevented it. And what
are now the consequences? Finding the culture of cotton no longer profitable, the planters of the South have turned their attention to raising corn,
wheat and stock. Their capacity for producing crops of corn largely in
excess of their own wants, cannot be questioned. If driven to it they can
out-bid even the West for the supply of foreign markets. With regard to
wheat, the districts suitable for its culture are limited in extent, but still
they can make sufficient at least for Southern wants. Nor is there any insurmountable obstacle to the cotton States raising and packing hogs, and
supplying all their own requirements for pork and bacon. The chief difficulty in the way of the hog crop is the danger of the shoats, and hogs as
well, being picked up by the licensed plunderers who live on such spoils.
With an efficient police to protect stock —the stock of the industrious freed