_Boston, Sept. 24._ I don't agree with you about avoiding publicity
for our enterprise. I hold that the pecuniary success we are likely to
meet with is the very best reason why the whole thing should be made
public, for it is the only sort of success which can make our
enterprise a permanent thing and take it off the hands of
philanthropic benevolence, which, though well enough for a spurt, can
never be relied on to civilize the four millions of darkies likely to
be on our hands. If we succeed financially, it will prove that free
labor is self-sustaining, and that the blacks are capable of becoming
a useful laboring class immediately after leaving their masters'
hands, and this fact is of vast importance. If we attempt to keep
quiet, we shall incur with much more justice the accusation of being
mere speculators than if we make the most of our success by bringing
it before the public as a political experiment, of great influence
upon our future social system, thus giving the public the full benefit
of the experiment. The fact is just this. Negro labor has got to be
employed, if at all, because it is _profitable_, and it has got to
come into the market like everything else, subject to the supply and
demand which may arise from all kinds of enterprises in which it
chances to be employed. It is not likely that it can be protected on a
large scale by the amount of disinterested philanthropy which happens
to be present on the Sea Islands, but if it can be open to private
enterprise, by an occupation of lands free from unnecessary
restrictions and under a proper sense of the security of property, it
can afford to _lose_ some of the Methodism now bestowed upon it at
Beaufort. We want first to prove that it is profitable, and then it
will take care of itself.