Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/125

Rh more unscrupulous practice to wring from the hands of a subjugated people the fruits of their labor. Is it not so?

That was not the fault of the climate.

If the Senator from Missouri will allow me, before he gets away from this point, I should like to ask him a question in perfect good faith and for information.

Very well.

I understand the Senator to say that the material prosperity of the West Indies has been in a large degree destroyed by the abolition of slavery. I understand him to maintain, and we all know that he does maintain very firmly, that slavery was a wrong. Now, I should like to ask him this &mdash; and I wish his explanation &mdash; how it occurs in the economy of a wise Providence that the abolition of a wrong works to the injury of the people?

I suppose the Senator from Alabama, who is a pious man, does certainly not expect me to go behind those mysterious reasons upon which the decrees of Providence rest. I do not take upon myself that office. I was merely stating facts, and I desire the Senator from Alabama to tell me whether he denies those facts. I attempted their explanation. I said that, as a matter of experience, whenever the attempt was made at organizing labor under a tropical climate for the purpose of realizing large gains the tendency was to do it in a manner inconsistent with the freedom of labor, while, on the other hand, there was a tendency to shiftlessness, when labor was left entirely to itself. Does the Senator deny it?

The Senator does not answer my question, but asks me one. Still I will answer it. I think what he calls the destruction of the material prosperity of the West India islands has been but a temporary suspension. We had a fair illustration of it in the South,