Speech #490157085

Foreseeing the inevitable. Northern capital and investments are seeking the South where. with labor of all kinds. agricultural. mechanical. and operative skilled and unskilled. upon an average not more than onehalf or twothirds as high when paid in actual money or in commodities at cash prices as in the North. the profits of their new location will replace the depreciation and losses which are impending to their investments at home. It is safe to predict that within ten years. unless new and important factors are combined with existing conditions. the productions of the South after fully supplying their own will compete in Northern markets with most of the commodities which now are the chief production of the old free States at prices so low as to make it a matter of indifference to Northern labor whether the protective tariff against the products of "foreign pauper labor" be removed or continued. or even whether Chinese or foreign contract labor be longer excluded from our shores. The farm laborers and operatives of both races in the South are rapidly acquiring the skill required to equal that of corresponding classes at the North. While the fact that women and children are more generally employed. and that all work more hours than at the North enables a given population if of equal intelligence and skill to produce more for a time at least than the same number could under the more liberal treatment of manual workers in the old freelabor States. The South contains very nearly. perhaps fully. onehalf the natural resources of the whole country. and is certainly capable of greater rapidity of development during the next quarter of a century than tho North and further West. Already she has more than onethird the entire population of the Union. Her rate of natural increase is equal to that of the North with our advantage by reason of emigration. while this advantage:even is passing away as the capabilities of the South are becoming better known. The two principal facts to be noted are these: That the average cash compensation for labor at the South is not more than onehalf or twothirds the amount paid for the same at the North. and that capital. cognizant of this fact. and of the superior resources. facilities. and capabilities of the South. is already rushing there from all directions as the most promising field for permanent investment in active production. On the 10th day of the month of November. 1886.