Black and White eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 273 pages of information about Black and White.

Black and White eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 273 pages of information about Black and White.
overtures and by encouraging the capable, honest and ambitious few by placing them in position of honor and trust.  They should show to colored men that they accept the Constitution as amended, and are earnestly solicitous that they should prosper in the world, and become useful and respected citizens.  You can’t make a friend and partisan of a man by shooting him; you can’t make a sober, industrious, honest man by robbing and outraging him.  These tactics will not work to the uplifting of a people.  “A soft answer turns away wrath.”  Even a dog caresses the hand that pats him on the head.

The South must spend less money on penitentiaries and more money on schools; she must use less powder and buckshot and more law and equity; she must pay less attention to politics and more attention to the development of her magnificent resources; she must get off the “race line” hobby and pay more attention to the common man; she must wake up to the fact that—­

    Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow,

and that it is to her best interest to place all men upon the same footing before the law; mete out the same punishment to the white scamp that is inexorably meted out to the black scamp, for a scamp is a scamp any way you twist it; a social pest that should be put where he will be unable to harm any one.  In an honest acceptance of the new conditions and responsibilities God has placed upon them, and in mutual forebearance, toleration and assistance, the South will find that panacea for which she has sought in vain down to this time.

CHAPTER XI

Land and Labor

There is more prose than poetry in the desperate conflict now waging in every part of the civilized world between labor and capital,—­between the dog and his tail, again, for, when the question is reduced to a comprehensive statement of fact, it will be readily seen that capital is the offspring of labor, not labor the offspring of capital.  Capital can produce nothing.  Left to itself, it is as valueless as the countless millions of gold, silver, copper, lead and iron that lie buried in the unexplored womb of Nature.  This storied wealth counts for nothing in its crude, undeveloped state.  As it is to-day, so it was a thousand years ago.  Years may add to the bulk, and, therefore, the richness of its value; but until man, by his labor of muscle and brain, has brought it forth, it has no value whatever.  To have value, it must become an object of barter, of circulation, in short, of exchange.  As its value depends upon its utility, so when it can no longer be used it again becomes a useless mass of perishable wealth.  It is the product of labor, pure and simple.  Speaking on “Management of the Banks” (footnote p. 223), in his work on Labor and Capital, Edward Kellogg says:—­

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Black and White from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.