Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/395

Rh That the success achieved by the Freedmen's Bureau is as yet very incomplete cannot be disputed. A more perfect organization and a more carefully selected personnel may be desirable; but it is doubtful whether a more suitable machinery can be devised to secure to free labor in the South that protection against disturbing influences which the nature of the situation still imperatively demands.

A temporary continuation of National control in the Southern States would also have a most beneficial effect as regards the immigration of Northern people and Europeans into that country; and such immigration would, in its turn, contribute much to the solution of the labor problem. Nothing is more desirable for the South than the importation of new men and new ideas. One of the greatest drawbacks under which the Southern people are laboring is, that for fifty years they have been in no sympathetic communion with the progressive ideas of the times. While professing to be in favor of free trade, they adopted and enforced a system of prohibition, as far as those ideas were concerned, which was in conflict with their cherished institution of slavery; and, as almost all the progressive ideas of our days were in conflict with slavery, the prohibition was sweeping. It had one peculiar effect, which we also notice with some Asiatic nations which follow a similar course. The Southern people honestly maintained and believed, not only that as a people they were highly civilized, but that their civilization was the highest that could be attained, and ought to serve as a model to other nations the world over. The more enlightened individuals among them felt sometimes a vague impression of the barrenness of their mental life,