Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/404

370 may be asked, what would become of the industry of the South for many years, if the bulk of its laboring population were taken away? The South stands in need of an increase and not of a diminution of its laboring force to repair the losses and disasters of the last four years. Much is said of importing European laborers and Northern men; this is the favorite idea of many planters who want such immigrants to work on their plantations. But they forget that European and Northern men will not come to the South to serve as hired hands on the plantations, but to acquire property for themselves, and that even if the whole European immigration at the rate of 200,000 a year were turned into the South, leaving not a single man for the North and West, it would require between fifteen and twenty years to fill the vacuum caused by the deportation of the freedmen. Aside from this, the influx of Northern men or Europeans will not diminish the demand for hired negro labor; it will, on the contrary, increase it. As Europeans and Northern people come in, not only vast quantities of land will pass from the hands of their former owners into those of the immigrants, but a large area of new land will be brought under cultivation, and as the area of cultivation expands, hired labor, such as furnished by the colored people, will be demanded in large quantities. The deportation of the labor so demanded would, therefore, be a very serious injury to the economical interests of the South, and if an attempt were made, this effect would soon be felt.

It is, however, a question worthy of consideration whether it would not be wise to offer attractive inducements and facilities for the voluntary migration of freedmen to some suitable district on the line of the Pacific railroad. It would answer a double object: (1) It would aid in the construction of that road, and (2) if this migration be effected on a large scale it would cause a