Contributions to industrial greatness.
I have reserved for conclusion a restricted glance at the industrial history of the
South, and its present brightening promise of future additions to all those things which will increase our Country's greatness.
True as this section has been to the original ideas of the forefathers, its record does not consist alone of mere chivalric sentiment.
Its footprints are well marked in the pathway of the world's progress, and it as willingly unfolds its old career as its present resourceful prospects to the scrutiny of the age. In the infancy of the
Union, after a hundred years of competition, it stood foremost in industrial and commercial power, and then saw without envy the
[
19]
material wealth of the wide and rich territory it had donated to the general estate turning away from its own ports, and
Norfolk, the natural entrepot of commerce, surpassed by New York.
The Northern section grew rapidly because the
Northeast became the Merchant, the Banker, the Transportation agent, and at lengh the Manufacturer of the Country, by which adjustment of business relations it turned its money over every day and profited by every turn of the incoming and outging trade, while the
South made one annual deal.
Immigration forced through its ports poured by special inducements upon the territory of the
West, and the immigrants became customers of the
East.
The sale of its slaves brought no small amount of ready money to those who bargained them to the
South, and early emancipation of its Negroes freed from the
North from bonds which the
South was obliged longer to wear.
Great governmental aids followed each other thick and fast in the form of bounties, tariffs, contracts and the like, in the disbursement of which the large percentage went away from the
South.
Grants to build railroads with public lands which Southern cessions and policy had secured to the
National wealth exceeded the area of
European empires, and of which the
South received not one-fifth of its share.
The Southern people make no unfair complaint at the energy with which these and other unnamed advantages were seized, but they do rebuke all unjust sneers which stigmatize them as an unprogressive race, and the whole
South makes a powerful protest against this injustice by the evidence of its old thrift in maintaining a prosperous existence in the
Union for nearly a century by the use of only one-tenth of its resources, and the still more significant display of its rapid rise in recent years from utter prostration through the masterful spirit of its own people.
The transformation of the
Southern wilds into fruitful fields, from which have gone Northward in sixty-five years two hundred and fifty millions cotton bales, worth forty dollars per bale, beside cereals and fruits, tobacco, lumber and other products of fourfold greater value, should be accredited to the enterprise of the diligent
Southerner.
It is strange that a people who hibernate nearly half the year in enforced idleness, while the workingman of the genial
South is out with the morning lark and pursues his calling through the months of winter as well as summer, can think of such a worker as indolent.
When we survey the deep repose of many Eastern towns which slumber in unprogressive if not ‘innocuous desuetude,’ we rationally inquire why Southern cities are so specially characterized as ‘sleepy boroughs’?
We will not forget that the
[
20]
first railroad was built in
Carolina, the first steamship that crossed the ocean weighed anchor from a Southern port, and the cotton gin originated in the cotton belt.
The Old South was in truth a vast hive of small industries.
It was dotted with domestic factories, tanned its own leather, made its shoes in every county and its hats in every section; wove its cloth in domestic looms, wrought its iron in its own shops, milled its corn and wheat, and lived at home in peace, plenty and hospitality.
I will take the ten years between 1850 and 1860 in illustration of the energies of the Old South to show its enterprise, and to remove the errror that it had the cotton monomania, and was not keeping pace with the nascent industrial spirit of the times.
With only one-third the population of the
Union during that decade, the
South raised one-third the corn of the country, one-fourth the wheat, three-fourths of the tobacco, nearly all the rice and sugar, one-third of the live stock, made large sales of lumber and naval stores, besides producing in unascertained quantities that remarkable variety of cereals, fruits and vegetables for which it was now more than ever famous.
Nor was it then a laggard in manufacturing and other individual enterprise, as will appear by its gain during that one decade of one hundred per cent. in grain mills, exceeding the percentage of the entire country; its increase by two hundred per cent. in machinery and engine construction; its great growth in cotton mills and in hundreds of minor industries which occupied its people.
In those ten years it doubled its lumber trade, doubled the output from iron foundaries and nearly quadrupled its railroad mileage.
The South increased its railroad miles in that decade above the percentage increase of all other sections of the
United States combined.
It had in 1860 a mile of rail to every seven hundred of its white population, while the other States all united had one mile to every one thousand people.
An exposition of the industrial status in 1860 would have shown the world that the
Dixie of that day was not merely ‘the land of cotton, cinnamon seed and sandy bottom,’ but in the range and value of its products from the soil, and in the diversity and elevation of its industries of every kind, it was measuring up to the stature of the most progressive nations.
The recovery of the
South from its stunned condition in 1865, after the war which exhausted its resources, challenges the generous admiration of mankind.
The returning soldiers of the Confederate army made heroic efforts to recuperate their country, and although
[
21]
these brave endeavors were repressed awhile by the errors of reconstruction and hindered by panics which they did not cause, yet through the wisdom, the courage, and the enterprise of these soldiers and their sons, their wives and their daughters, this irrepressible land is now waking up the world to gaze upon the sunrise of the
Southern day, and calling it to participate in that coming splendor which another census will reveal.
The wayfaring man must be more than a fool who will not see the signs at the cross roads of prosperity pointing Southward.
The bounty of Almighty God has endowed this land of the
South with all the resources which a great people require.
Arable soil, stately forests, water powers, climate salubrious and soft; marble, stone, coal and mineral ores; great rivers, ample harbors, ocean shores and gulf coasts; mountain ranges, hills and valleys.
It lies in broad beauty upon that middle belt of the
Northern Hemisphere, along which the brightest star of human achievement has moved since the earliest historic age, and its richness exactly meets the demand for those elements by which man may attain to his highest estate of liberty, enlightenment and religion.
It is not a New South that has thus burst into sight like some freshly found planet, which has been formed with regravitated fragments which lately wandered in the skies.
Not a New South—but it is truly the
Greater South flowering forth under new conditions from the stem of the old plant and out of the rich original soil.
The Greater South!
May it be matched by a Greater East, a Greater West, a Greater North, and all these in the
Union of their graces display to the world the greater glory of our matchless Country— the
United States of America!
