“On the other hand, it would give you an opportunity for a wider acquaintance and perhaps elect you to the first office to which you may yet aspire. Come! I will take no excuse,” persisted Holmes, while his companions seconded his insistence.
After considerable pressing, Elliott was escorted to the platform, from which the musicians had moved. Without delay Holmes stepped to the front and in a loud, clear voice which hushed the crowd, said:
“Ladies and gentlemen, I have the honor of introducing Mr. Elliott Harding, who will speak in place of Mr. Feland, that gentleman, for some reason or other, having failed to put in an appearance.”
Amid a storm of cheers, Elliott arose, straightening his eloquent shoulders as he came forward. His blonde face was full of eager life when he began.
“Ladies and gentlemen: The unexpected compliment paid me by your committee has given me the pleasure of addressing you to-day. I accept the invitation the more gladly inasmuch as it gives me the opportunity of telling you that my heart, linked to the South by birth, has retained its old love in spite of absence and distance, and brings me back to my own place with a fonder and, if possible, a greater and nobler pride in this Southland of yours and mine. And, it is a land to be proud of. More magnificent a country God has never made. It has seen the fierce harrowing of war. Gazing through the past years my fancy sees the ruin that has confronted the home-coming soldier—ashes instead of homes, burnt stubble instead of fences, the slaves on whose labor he had long depended for the cultivation of his fertile fields, with their bonds cast off, meeting him as freemen. Without money, provisions or even the ordinary implements of husbandry, he at once began the toilsome task of repairing his fallen fortunes. Having converted his sword into a plowshare, his spear into a pruning hook, he lost no time, but manfully set to work to restore his lost estate, and bring a measure of comfort to the dear ones deprived of their former luxuries.
“So it is to the soldier of the ‘Lost Cause’ that all honor and praise must be given for the present prosperity of the land. And it becomes us as heirs of his sacrifice and of the fruits of his toil, to lend our every effort to the full garnering of the harvest.
“As the giant West has sprung up from the sap of the East, so must the South rise up by strength drawn from the soil of the North. What the South needs to-day more than any other one thing is an influx of intelligent laborers from the North. It needs its sturdy folk of industrious habit, economy and indomitable energy; it needs a more profitable system of agriculture. Accustomed as that people is to economy, to frugality and to forcing existence out of an unwilling soil, if only they could be induced to come here in sufficient numbers, the country would soon blossom into mellow prosperity. And, my friends, I want to see them coming—coming with their capital to aid us in developing the inexhaustible mineral resources of our mines, the timber of our forests, to build our mills and rear our infant manufactures to the full stature of lusty manhood. Our future with all its limitless possibilities—this future which is to warm the great breast of the business world toward us, this future which shall shower upon us the fullness of earth—is all with you.
“Therefore, with such a vista of promise opening before our gaze, ill would it become us to fail in our duty toward ourselves, toward our country and toward Him who giveth all. Thus it befits us to lend every effort to the furtherance of this, our future salvation. To those upon whose coming so much depends, every inducement must be offered. And be it remembered that capital seeks its home in sections wherein life and prosperity enjoy the greatest security under the law. This is a conclusion founded on the great law of caution, upon which intelligent capital is planted and reared. It becomes necessary, then, to ask ourselves seriously, ‘Are we making every effort to solidify peace and order by the protection of life and the supreme establishment of law?’
“I need not answer this question. Circumstances have done so for me. The electric wire is still hot from flashing to the furtherest corner of our Nation, in all its revolting details, news of the recent awful crime in our sister state.
“I am well aware that in touching upon this point I am wounding the sensibilities of a people who have been shadowed by personal injury and embittered by a natural race prejudice; but I feel that I can speak the more boldly because I touch the matter not as an alien whose sympathies are foreign and whose theories are theoretical chimeras, but as a southerner—one whose interest is the stronger because he is a southerner. My audience may refuse to grant the justice of my argument, but it must admit the truth of the situation I outline. Whichever way we turn the tremendous problem of the lynching evil stares us in the face. It baits us, it defies us, it shames us.