im a very shrewd "Man
Friday," and this Man Friday got it into his head that he would like
to be Mayor of Jacksonville, and he sought and obtained the support of
his very powerful patron. It leaked out that Mr. Astor favored his Man
Friday for Mayor. The "business interests" of the city took the matter
"under advisement." After much "consultation" and preliminary
skirmishing, it was decided that it would be unwise to antagonize Mr.
Astor's Man Friday; and so he was placed in nomination as the
"Citizens' Candidate." He was elected by a handsome majority. I
believe it is a disputed question to-day, whether Mr. Astor's Man
Friday was, or was not, a citizen of the place at the time he was
elected Mayor. Be that as it may, it showed beyond question that the
people knew how to go down upon their knees to the golden calf.

A condition of slavery or of serfdom produces two grievous evils,
around which cluster many others of less importance, viz: the creation
of vast landed estates, and the pauperization and debasement of labor.
Pliny declared that to the creation of vast _latifundia_ (aggregated
estates) Italy owed its downfall. The same is true of the downfall of
the South and its pet institution, since they produced a powerful and
arrogant class which was not content to lord it on their vast demesnes
and over their pauper labor, but must needs carry their high-flown
notions into the councils of the nation, flaunting their gentle birth
and undulating acres in the faces of horny-handed statesmen like
Abraham Lincoln, Henry Wilson, and others.

The operations of the vast landed estates of the South produced all
the industrial disjointments which have afflicted the South since the
war. The white man was taught to look upon labor as the natural
portion of the black slave; and nothing could induce a white man to
put his hand to the plow, but the gaunt visage of starvation at his
door. He even preferred ignominious starvation to honest work; and, in
his desperate struggle to avoid the horror of the one and the disgrace
of the other, he would sink himself lower in the scale of moral infamy
than the black slave he despised. He would make of himself a monster
of cruelty or of abject servility to avoid starvation or honest work.
It was from this class of vermin that the planters secured their
"Nigger drivers" or overseers, and a more pliable, servile, cruel,
heartless set of men never existed. They were commonly known as "_poor
white