s heralded far and wide, Earl
said:

"To those of you who in the sweat of your brow earn your bread,
I bring the message that your earning of a livelihood, a very
grave matter with you, is affected by the Southern situation.

"It has been said that the South is freer from labor strikes
than any other equal area of territory within the borders of
civilization. The weakness of the Negro in the body politic,
his lack of means to insure his protection, gives timidity to
Negro labor and causes it to be little inclined to organize.

"The enforced cheapness of Negro labor brings down the price of
all labor, just as a house sinks with its foundation. Lo, the
word has already gone forth that the South is the place for
capital, that labor is cheap, that there is an absence of
social unrest found elsewhere.

"Read your commercial journals and note how many of the
institutions upon which you have depended for a livelihood have
been transferred to this land of cheapness and peace, ominous
peace. Note how your captains of industry are asseverating that
factories in the North must cut wages in order to compete with
those that have gone South.

"Your economists saw in the days preceding civil strife that
the workingman of the North could ill afford to compete with
slave labor at the South. Permit me to say to you that the
half-slave, the political slave, made timid by an environment
that tends to crush his spirit and dwarf his energies, is a
menace to you, holding the white labor of the South down and
affecting you of the North.

"Again, adverse conditions at the South will drive the Negro to
your very door. Some day when you desire to remain away from
work to allow your employers leisure to ponder a condition
which you desire improved, you will find the Negro there to
take your place.

"Men of the North, mark well my words: You must lend your aid
to an adjustment of relations in the South upon an equitable
basis or be confronted with the question of the disorganization
and readjustment of your own affairs. Stand out against the
repressionists of the South, make the whole nation a field of
fair play and then we will not have this one disturbing center
distributing trouble to all other parts of the nation."

Addressing the business interes