norant of the
industrial conditions of the South, and the marvelous adaptability to
the new conditions shown by colored men. I grant that these small
white farmers, who were almost too inconsiderable in numbers to be
taken into account before the war, have added largely to the
development of the country and the production of wealth; but that the
tremendous gains of free labor as against slave labor are to be placed
principally to their intelligence and industry is too absurd to be
seriously debated. The Charleston (S.C.) _News and Courier_, a
pronounced anti-negro newspaper, recently made such a charge in all
seriousness. The struggle for supremacy will largely come between the
small white and black farmer; because each recurring year will augment
the number of each class of small holders. A condition of freedom and
open competition makes the fight equal, in many respects. Which will
prove the more successful small holder, the black or the white?

The fourth class is composed of the _hereditary land-lords_ of the
South; the gentlemen with flowing locks, gentle blood and irascible
tempers, who appeal to the code of honor (in times past) to settle
small differences with their equals and shoot down their inferiors
without premeditation or compunction, and who drown their sorrows, as
well as their joviality in rye or Bourbon whiskey; the gentlemen who
claim consanguinity with Europe's titled sharks, and vaunt their
chivalry in contrast to the peasant or yeoman blood of all other
Americans; the gentlemen who got their broad acres (however they came
by their peculiar blood) by robbing black men, women and children of
the produce of their toil under the system of slavery, and who
maintain themselves in their reduced condition by driving hard
bargains with white and black labor either as planters or
shop-keepers, often as both, the dual occupations more effectually
enabling them to make unreasonable contracts and exactions of those
they live to victimize. They are the gentlemen who constantly declare
that "this is a white man's government," and that "the Negro must be
made to keep his place." They are the gentlemen who have their grip
upon the throat of Southern labor; who hold vast areas of land, the
product of robbery, for a rise in values; who run the stores and
torture the small farmer to death by usurious charges for necessaries;
these are the gentlemen who are opposed to the new conditions
resultant from the war which th