twelve o'clock
Norfolk , Richmond and Charleston should have been the great cities of the Eastern Seaboard . They are as yet unimportant towns in the world commerce . Boston , Philadelphia and New York have become the centers of our business life , of our trade , our culture , our national power . While slavery is scratching the surface of our soil with old-fashioned plows , while we quit work at twelve o'clock every Saturday , spend our Sundays at church , and set two negroes to help one do nothing Monday morning , the North is sweeping onward in the science of agriculture . While they invent machines which double their crops , cut their labor down a hundred per cent , we are fighting for new lands in the West to exhaust by our primitive methods . The treasures of the earth yet lie in our mines untouched by pick or spade . Our forests stand unbroken -- vast reaches of wilderness .