Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/126

106 where the abolition of slavery did for a time suspend material development, but we have seen in the past year made by free labor, despite of all the difficulties in our way, and the fact of the withdrawal of perhaps one-third of the actual laboring population, a cotton product equal to the average product before the war; and that I think will eventually be the result in the West Indies.

I am sure the Senator from Alabama does not impute to me the opinion that in our Southern States successful labor is inseparably united with slavery in the first place.

Certainly not.

In the second place, I am sure the Senator will not assert that the Southern States of this Union are in the tropical latitude, and that people there labor under the same circumstances and natural influences under which they labor in San Domingo, Cuba and Jamaica. Does he?

No.

Very well, then; that case is disposed of. But I come back to the assertion made by the Senator from Indiana. He asks, has the Anglo-Saxon race degenerated in India? I say it has; and it is a notorious fact that it is continually doing so. We learn that the soldiers who are sent to India are relieved now every six or eight years because the former theory that they could be kept in the best state of health by acclimatization has been abandoned, and it is now found that it is best to withdraw them from time to time and send fresh men there, because in their full vigor the latter can endure the influences of the climate much better than if they live there longer. It is also a notorious fact that the descendants of English people born in India and remaining there are degenerating about as much as they are on the West India islands.