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Rh established on the principle of absolutely unrestricted commercial intercourse, you here in South Carolina, and more especially in Columbia, are to-day making it, so to speak, uncomfortable for the cotton manufacturer in New England; and I am glad of it! A sharp competition is a healthy incentive to effort and ingenuity, and the brutal injunction, "Root hog or die!" is one from which I in no way ask to have New England exempt. When Massachusetts is no longer able to hold its own industrially in a free field, the time will, in my judgment, have come for Massachusetts to go down. With communities as with children, paternalism reads arrested development. One of the great products of Massachusetts has been what is generically known as "footwear." Yet I am told that under the operation of absolute Free Trade, St. Louis possesses the largest boot and shoe factory in its output in the entire world. That is, the law of industrial development, as natural conditions warrant and demand, has worked out its results; and those results are satisfactory. I am aware that the farmer of Massachusetts has become practically extinct; he cannot face the competition of the great West: but the Massachusetts consumer is greatly advantaged thereby. So far as agricultural products are concerned, Massachusetts is to-day reduced to what is known as dairy products and garden truck; and it is well! Summer vegetables manufactured under glass in winter prove profitable. So, turning his industrial