, the manual
labor has been done mainly by the blacks. They have made the New South
possible. Take the single item of the cotton they have raised: The
twenty-one cotton crops from 1841 to 1861, raised by slave labor,
amounted to 58,500,000 bales; the twenty-one cotton crops from 1865 to
1885, raised by free labor, amounted to 93,500,000 bales. There was a
gain, with free labor, of nearly 35,000,000 bales, worth $2,000,000,000,
or about the full estimated value of all the slaves set free by the war.
These facts show the value of the Negro to the South simply as a common
laborer.

But his importance as a factor in securing a National prosperity is much
enhanced when we note his remarkable capacity for improvement. Grant
that the great bulk of these eight millions are still in a pitiable
condition, poor, ignorant, sometimes vicious, the victims often of
barbaric superstitions, living often in hovels rather than houses,
without thrift or cleanliness, in crying need of kindly hands to help
uplift them to a better life. Yet, granting all this physical and moral
destitution among them, it must be said that history gives no record of
a race, stripped and stranded so completely as these freedmen were in
1865, that has shown such marvelous progress in a quarter of a century.
They have responded wonderfully to every effort made to elevate them,
and have shown in themselves such versatility and vigor of intellect as
give high promise for their future.

Their own advancement in material prosperity is an indication of this.
Never was there a people left in worse plight than they were at the
close of the war. In a country ravaged and denuded by a long and
destructive conflict, themselves penniless, with none of the knowledge
and training that would fit them for competition with shrewder and abler
classes, there seemed small hope of their getting more than a bare
livelihood. But ambition, mother wit, and a rare aptitude for learning
have helped them on till the gains they have made for themselves are
quite astonishing. Not long ago the New York _Independent_ made
extensive inquiries through the Southern States with regard to this
matter, and the replies showed that the disposition to accumulate
property was very strong among the colored people, and that industry and
economy and forecast for this purpose were virtues rapidly developing
among them. A large proportion of them are owners of their own homes,
the proportions differing wide