c schools, and that the only way to increase his
wage was to increase his intelligence. Each new knowledge, therefore,
brought a new economic hunger, and made the free labourer a good buyer
in the market, thus supporting factories and shops. Contrariwise the
slave was a poor buyer. The negro picking cotton out of the pod had few
wants,--one garment about his loins, a pone of corn bread, a husk
mattress,--no more. For that reason the slave starved the factory and
shop. Invention in the South perished. Every attempt to found a factory
was attended with failure. Of necessity, the North grew steadily richer
straight through the war, while the South grew steadily poorer. The war
closed with Northern factories and shops and trade at the high tide of
prosperity. The free working man asked many forms of clothing for the
body, books and magazines for the mind, pictures for the walls,
sewing-machine, the reed organ, every conceivable comfort and
convenience for his family, and these many forms of hunger nourished
invention, made the towns centres of manufacturing life, and built a
rich nation. The Northern working man put his head into his task, the
slave, his heel. When the war was over, the South was like a crushed
egg, impoverished by slavery. The peculiar institution had served well
eight thousand slave planters, each of whom owned more than fifty
slaves. But slavery had starved the remaining millions.

Now that the new era has come, no statesman, no scholar, no editor, has
ever indicted slavery as the costliest possible form of production, with
half the skill, eloquence and conviction of Southern writers. What
Northern men believe, the Southerner knows. Unconsciously the Southern
youth was handicapped in the commercial race. His Northern brother was
an athlete, stripped to the skin, while he dragged a fetter, invisible.
That he should have come so near to winning the race is a tribute to his
courage, endurance, and a mental resource that can never be praised too
highly. If the rest of the world could only fight for good causes, with
half the ability, chivalry and bravery that the South fought for a bad
economic system, the world would soon enter upon the millennium.

II

WEBSTER AND CALHOUN: THE BATTLE LINE IN ARRAY

The year was 1830; the scene, the Senate Chamber in Washington; the
combatants, Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun. Two hundred and ten
years had now passed since the ship of liberty had come to New E