sachusetts and your iron-makers in
Pennsylvania. We have learned that the $400,000,000 annually received
from our cotton crop will make us rich, when the supplies that make it
are homeraised. We have reduced the commercial rate of interest from
twenty-four to six per cent., and are floating four per cent. bonds. We
have learned that one Northern immigrant is worth fifty foreigners, and
have smoothed the path to southward, wiped out the place where Mason and
Dixon's line used to be, and hung our latch-string out, to you and
yours. We have reached the point that marks perfect harmony in every
household, when the husband confesses that the pies which his wife cooks
are as good as those his mother used to bake; and we admit that the sun
shines as brightly and the moon as softly as it did "before the war." We
have established thrift in city and country. We have fallen in love with
work. We have restored comfort to homes from which culture and elegance
never departed. We have let economy take root and spread among us as
rank as the crabgrass which sprung from Sherman's cavalry camps, until
we are ready to lay odds on the Georgia Yankee, as he manufactures
relics of the battlefield in a one-story shanty and squeezes pure olive
oil out of his cotton seed, against any down-easter that ever swapped
wooden nutmegs for flannel sausages in the valleys of Vermont. Above
all, we know that we have achieved in these "piping times of peace" a
fuller independence for the South than that which our fathers sought to
win in the forum by their eloquence or compel on the field by their
swords.

It is a rare privilege, sir, to have had part, however humble, in this
work. Never was nobler duty confided to human hands than the uplifting
and upbuilding of the prostrate and bleeding South, misguided, perhaps,
but beautiful in her suffering, and honest, brave and generous always.
In the record of her social, industrial, and political institutions we
await with confidence the verdict of the world.

But what of the negro? Have we solved the problem he presents or
progressed in honor and equity towards the solution? Let the record
speak to the point. No section shows a more prosperous laboring
population than the negroes of the South; none in fuller sympathy with
the employing and landowning class. He shares our school fund, has the
fullest protection of our laws and the friendship of our people.
Self-interest, as well as honor, demand that he should