The Texas Almanac for 1870, and Emigrant's Guide to Texas Page: 96
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96 THE TEXAS ALtAACo
pursued toward the South the past four years, in the base, but fortunately
futile attempt to make the freedmen a party machine they could run for their
own special political ends. The material interests of the country demand
immediate relief in regard to labor, as the class we now depend upon, though
they work under certain conditions, and in their own way, are visibly attach-
ing great importance to our helplessness and inability to dispense with them.
This consideration, superadded to the already small mountain of annoyances
that every man who has them daily under his eye has to endure, renders
relief of paramount importance. The routine of plantation work, as at present
carried on, compared to former times, savors very little of business; and how
can it, when the enforcement of anything like a disciplinary code would result
in a flat refusal to obey. Sensible, pains-taking, thorough-going men in this
pursuit, would not stand it a day if grim necessity did not compel them. Re-
liable labor, and plenty of it, is now the great want of the South, and particu-
larly Texas. Our alluvial lands are like gold mines unworked, abounding in
wealth, but likely to become valueless for want of muscle to bring the rich
product to the surface. The demoralizing effect of suddenly acquired free-
doin upon the negro is simply what every reflecting man foresaw, and we
have little censure to pass on him, in view of the circumstances associated
with his sudden transition from the only relation to the white man in which
his usefulness as a laborer could be made fully available. His immediate
emancipation was not of his own seeking, and the act itself was disconnected
with any consideration whatever of its fitness or propriety. Neither the welfare
of master or slave entered into the question, and to aggravate the seriousness
of the measure, the unscrupulous policy, as alluded to, pursued by those in
power, in using him to prolong their political reign, has inflicted on the
South social ills that time alone can cure. Tampered with, as the freedmen
have been, for party purposes, by unprincipled caterers to their basest
passions, the wonder is, that under the atrocious circumstances, no more evils
have resulted than partial ruin to our planting interests, and forcing upon us
a clas, endowed with the rights of citizenship, possessing all the vices of the
slave unredeemed by any of the virtues of the freeman.
Released, as the negro now is, from the coercive guidance and control of
the white man, his rapid deterioration is inevitable. To slavery he is indebted
for his advancement, originally, from a state of humanity the lowest and most
degraded known to mankind, to one comparatively civilized. The salutary
inflences which restrained him and held his vices in check are now with-
drawn, and the work of a century in trying to disafricanise and train him
to usefulness is now likely to be lost in a single generation. No intelligent
people, in either hemisphere, would ever have undertaken to curb and
repress the original savageism of this race, or attempted to break them into
habits of industry and regularity, if unlimited control over them had not
been admissible.
But, fortunately, almost concurrently with the\abolition of slavery in the
South, one of the greatest enterprises of the age was being consummated.
The completion of the great railroad to the Pacific ocean, among other
grand results, has brought the Asiatic continent within a few days' travel of
our western shores. The finger of Providence seems to point the South in
that direction to obtain recruits to fill up her broken labor ranks. Already
the movement has bben inaugurated. To China the South is now looking
with deep interest for a solution of the labor question, and there is reason to
believe it will be solved favorably. The Mongolian race is the antipodes of
the African. China antedates in her history every nation of modern times.
Her swarming millions are models of industry, tractability, patient endu
rance and frugality. Work, daily labor, is a law of their being; they are
providenit and accumulating in their nature, simple in their habits, and they
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The Texas Almanac for 1870, and Emigrant's Guide to Texas, book, January 1870; Galveston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth123775/m1/98/: accessed May 7, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.