It is a golden opening—but the free laborers decline to step into it.
Whitelaw Reid: “It is a golden opening—but the free laborers decline to step into it.”
Editor's note · Context
Reid highlights the reluctance of free laborers to engage in lucrative rice farming opportunities after the Civil War.
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Ordinarily the simple performance of duty is so blessed of God, that men who live in the doing of it, are the best off, in all respects, even in this world.
It has proved, also, that universal suffrage is the surest guarantee and most powerful stimulus of individual, social and political progress.
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In this way they will surely overcome unjust hostility, and convince even the most prejudiced that the denial to them of any right which citizens may properly exercise is equally unwise and wrong.