Page:The North Carolina Historical Review - Volume 1, Number 1.pdf/13

Rh if we face them with resolute purpose to know them at their worst. We thought for a long time that we were farming prosperously; and then we discovered that we were ruining our soils and driving our most enterprising sons away, to be the leaders in making the newer States of Tennessee, Missouri, or Texas, and to take part in the upbuilding of many others north and south of the Ohio River and west of the Mississippi. We prided ourselves upon our practice of democracy, while in point of fact we were undervaluing the common man, allowing him to lapse into poverty and ignorance, and unduly promoting the tendency to exalt a few at the cost of the many.

I do not believe that these tendencies would in any case have carried us to the point of hopeless disaster. It was inevitable that the vigorous young men of the East, after the Revolutionary War, should have rushed speculatively to seize the opportunities afforded by the boundless West. It was inevitable that our eastern soils should have suffered greatly in view of the conditions of agriculture and commerce that existed not only here but everywhere else. Tobacco and cotton were in worldwide demand, and could be produced advantageously only in somewhat restricted areas. The system of slave labor had been imposed, rather than invited. One condition or another was, I think, quite sure to arise in due time to supply the necessary correctives.

ThoughoutThroughout [sic] all these experiences, the material resources of North Carolina were not seriously impaired, if one takes the long rather than the short view. Meanwhile, the great asset of North Carolina, dimly recognized but for a long time taken for granted and never fairly evaluated, as thee native population, These plain folk with their varied blend of European stocks, held within their bosoms a higher measure of intrinsic human value than anybody had ever realized, until somewhere near the end of the nineteenth century. Nowadays, it is the grateful realization of the sterling worth of common people of North Carolina that has inspired the fresh movements of progress that are compelling the attention of social and political leaders throughout the entire country.

North Carolina is not singular in having had its progress retarded by the immensity of the development of the West.