Archibald Henry Grimké

“ What is that tremendous system of production, organization and struggle known as modern industrialism going to do with the Negroes of the United States? Passing into its huge hopper and between its upper and nether millstones, are they to come out grist for the nation, or mere chaff, doomed like the Indian to ultimate extinction in the raging fires of racial and industrial rivalry and progress? ”

“ It was clearly recognized at the close of that war that the foundations of the restored Union should be made to rest directly on the enduring bedrock of a uniform system of free labor for both sections, not as formerly on the shifting sands of two conflicting social orders. For as long as our ancient duality of labor system shall continue to exist there will necessarily continue to exist also duality of ideas, interests and institutions. ”

“ All attempts to push and tie him down to the dead level of an inferior caste, to restrict his activities arbitrarily and permanently to hewing wood and drawing water for the white race, without regard to his possibilities for higher things, is in this age of strenuous industrial competition and struggle an economic blunder, pure and simple, to say nothing of the immorality of such action. Like water, let the Negro find his natural level, if the South would get the best and the most out of him. If nature has designed him to serve the white race forever, never fear. ”

“ Worsted within the Union, it was natural that the South should refuse to yield at this point of the conflict, and that it should make an attempt, as a dernier resort, to secede from it with its peculiar institution for the purpose of continuing the battle for its existence outside of a political system in which it had been overborne and hemmed in upon itself by modern industrialism and so doomed by that inexorable force to slow but absolutely certain extinction. ”

“ I do not mean mere variety in these regards which operates beneficiently, but profound and abiding social and political differences, engendering profound and abiding social and political antagonisms, naturally and inevitably affecting sometimes more, sometimes less, national stability and security, and leaving everywhere in the subconscious life of the republic a sense of vague uneasiness, rising periodically to the keenest anxiety, like the ever-present dread felt by a city subject to seismic disturbances. For what has once happened, the cause continuing, may happen again. ”

“ The forces set free then in the old slave States have been gradually unfolding themselves amid giant difficulties ever since. They are, I believe, in the South to stay, and are destined ultimately to conquer every square inch of its mind and matter, and so to produce the perfect unification of the republic, by producing the perfect unification of its immense, heterogeneous population, regardless of race, color or previous condition of servitude, on the broad basis of industrial and political equality and fair play. ”

“ And so the struggle for existence between the two industrial forces went on beneath the surface of things. Meanwhile modern industrialism was gaining steadily over its slave competitor in social strength and political importance and power.
This conflict for industrial domination developed logically in an industrial republic into one for political domination. It was unavoidable, under the circumstances, that the strife between our two opposing systems of labor should gather about the federal government and rage fiercest for its possession as a supreme coign of vantage. ”

“ Their powerful ally, popular education, is creating everywhere moral unrest and discontent with present injustices and a growing desire on the part of the Negro to have what is denied him, but which others enjoy, viz., free and equal opportunities in the rivalry of life. This battle of ideas in the South is, in reality, a battle for the enduring unification of the sections, the permanent pacification of the republic. The labors of the fathers for a more perfect union will have been in vain unless the Negro wins in this irrepressible conflict between the two industrial systems of the country. ”

“ The immediate work of reconstructing civil society in the old slave States to meet the new condition of freedom was now by an egregious executive blunder left wholly to the master class, with the startling result at its close that, whereas Negro slavery had been abolished, Negro serfdom reappeared in every instance as the industrial basis of the reconstructed States, and that a serf power was about to take the place of the slave power in the newly restored Union more dangerous than the old slave power to free industrialism than five is greater than three in federal numbers. ”

“ Indeed, it is now well understood that modern industrialism attains its highest efficiency as a system of production in that society where popular education is best provided for, and where participation of the masses in the business of government reaches its fullest and freest expression. ”

“ With the development of manufactures, which now followed, and the diversifying of American industries in the northern section of the Union, modern industrialism as a tremendously aggressive social factor and system of free labor was thereupon launched upon its long and stormy rivalry and struggle with slave institutions and slave labor for the possession of the republic, and, as a resultant of this conflict, it began to affect also the history and destiny of the Negroes of the United States. ”

“ The general welfare of the reunited nation demanded not only political unification of the States under one supreme government, but their social unification as well on a common industrial basis of free labor. The coexistence under the old Constitution of two contrary systems of labor had given rise to seventy years of strife and rivalry between the sections, and had plunged them finally into one of the fiercest and most destructive wars of modern times. ”

“ The South needed for its great staples of cotton, rice and tobacco the freest access to the markets of the world, and unrestricted competition of the world in its own market, and this the principle of protection denied to it. For the grand purpose of the new policy of protection was to occupy and retain as far and as fast as practicable, and in some cases a little farther and faster, a monopoly of the home market for the products of the new industrialism, and therefore to exclude foreign buyers and sellers therefrom on equal terms with their domestic rivals. ”

“ The freer and the more intelligent a people, all things else being equal, the more productive will be their labor over that of a rival’s who may be wanting in these regards. The early and unexpected revival and expansion of slavery in the South was thus followed and met by a rapid counterexpansion of free industrialism at the North on an extraordinary scale. ”

“ Those who see in this problem only a conflict of races in the South see but a little way into its depths, for underlying this conflict of races is a conflict of opposing ideas and interests which have for a century vexed the peace of the nation. The existence of a system of labor in the South distinct from that of the North separated the two halves of the Union industrially, as far as the East is from the West, made of them in truth two hostile nations, although united under one general government. ”

“ The national situation was full of gloom and menace to the industrial rivals. For the passions of the slave power were taking on an ominously violent and reckless energy of expression, which, unless all signs fail, would take on presently a no less violent and reckless energy of action. ”

“ Nor can the republic be indifferent on this head. No country in this age of strenuous commercial competition can forget with impunity its duty in this regard. Neglect here brings swift retribution to any nation which carries a vast horde of crude and relatively inefficient labor into an industrial struggle with the rest of the world, for the world’s labor will henceforth assume more and more the character of vast standing armies engaged in world-wide industrial warfare. ”

“ But if the Negro fail by reason of inherent fitness to survive in such a struggle, his failure will be followed by decline in numbers and ultimate extinction, which will involve no violent dislocation of the labor of the republic, but a displacement so gradual that while one race is vanishing another will be silently crowding into the space thus vacated. ”

“ Colossal forces are behind and under the movement which is making for the final emancipation of the Negro, and for his eventual admission on terms of complete equality of rights and opportunities into the arena of that never-ending rivalry and struggle which is the law of progress. ”

“ It is greatly to be lamented that a question of color and difference of race has so completely disabled the nation and the South from seeing things relating to this momentous subject clear, and seeing them straight. ”

“ The Negro has proved himself one of the best soldiers in the world; he will prove himself in this country, provided fair play be accorded him, one of the most productive laborers in the world also. He has the capacity for becoming one of the best all-round laborers and artisans in our industrial army of conquest and one of the best all-round citizens of the republic likewise. ”

“ Together these inventions operated naturally to enhance the value of slave labor and slave land, and therein conduced powerfully to the slave revival in the United States, which followed their introduction into the economic world. The slave industrial system, no longer then a declining factor in the life of the young nation, assumed, instead, unexpected importance in it, and started promptly upon a course of extraordinary expansion and prosperity. ”

“ Lest you say that I exaggerate, I will quote the estimate put upon this labor by the Washington Post, which will hardly be accused of enthusiasm touching any matter relating to the Negro, I think. Here it is:
“We hold as between the ignorant of the two races, the Negro is preferable. They are conservative; they are good citizens; they take no stock in social schisms and vagaries; they do not consort with anarchists; they cannot be made the tools and agents of incendiaries; they constitute the solid, worthy, estimable yeomanry of the South. ”

“ He will not be able to elude nature; he will not escape his destiny. But he must be allowed to act freely; nature does not need our aid here. Depend upon it, she will make no mistake. Her inexorable laws provide for the survival of the fittest only. ”

“ And, third, the blacks themselves had by two centuries of unpaid toil bought the right to remain in a country which had enslaved them, yet for whose defense and preservation against foreign and domestic foes and through three wars they had bared their brave arms and generous breasts and poured out royally and without measure their devotion, their blood and their life. ”

“ Congress might at this juncture have led the country by another way out of the perils which threatened afresh its peace and security, by a way dreadful and inhuman, it is true, but which offered nevertheless a radical and permanent cure for the evils which flow naturally from the union under one general government of two mutually invasive and destructive industrial systems, viz., by the forcible deportation of the entire black population of the South, and the introduction into their stead of an equal number of white immigrants. ”

“ Second, the nation itself could ill sustain the shock incident to such a huge amputation from the body of its productive labor, and which must have, for long and bitter years, affected disastrously its solvency, greatness and progress. Besides, the presence in the lately rebellious States of a mass of loyal people, like the blacks, constituted an immensely important element of strength and security to the newly restored Union. ”

“ But as our expanding slave system was essentially agricultural, it required large and expanding areas within which to operate efficiently. Wherefore there arose early in the slave-holding section an industrial demand for more slave soil. ”

“ And this will be attempted in the future by each of these world rivals on a grandeur of scale and with a scientific thoroughness and energy in the use of educational means not yet realized by the most progressive of them. For those nations who succeed best [Pg 18] in this respect will prevail over those others which fail to raise their labor to an equally high grade of efficiency. ”

“ So will the whole country reap the resultant benefits in the diffused well-being and productivity of its laboring classes, and at the same time in the final removal of the ancient cause of difference and discord between its parts. ”

“ Together they proved eventually of immense utility to free industrialism in its strife with the slave industrial system, the first operating in its favor negatively, and the second positively in the five populous and prosperous commonwealths which were subsequently organized out of this domain, and in which free labor grew and multiplied apace. ”

“ The principle of protection was made as elastic in its practical application to tariff legislation as Northern industrial interests would, from time to time, and in their stages of rapid progress, seem to require. ”