COMPARATIVE WEALTH
Wealth the South possesses--large wealth, growing wealth, greater wealth
than that section has ever before approached. So agreeable is this state
of things that Southern writers are inclined not only to set forth their
prosperity but to claim that theirs is the most prosperous part of the
whole country and is soon to become the richest. As Edmonds puts it in his
"Facts about the South": "Against the poverty, the inexperience, the
discredit and doubt at home and abroad of ourselves and our section of
1880, the South, thrilled with energy and hope, stands to-day recognized
by the world as that section which of all others in this country or
elsewhere has the greatest potentialities for the creation of wealth and
the profitable employment of its people." The Southern statements of the
poverty of the South from 1865 to 1880 are more easily verified. The
tracks of armies outside Virginia and parts of Tennessee were narrow; but
at the end of the war the South had exhausted all its movable capital; the
banks were broken; the state and Confederate bonds worthless; the
railroads ruined; the cities disconsolate. And the labor system was, for a
time, much disturbed, though never disrupted. As Henry Watterson, of
Kentucky, puts it: "The South! The South! It is no problem at all. The
whole story of the South may be summed up in a sentence: She was rich,
she lost her riches; she was poor and in bondage; she was set free, and
she had to go to work; she went to work, and she is richer than ever
before. You see it was a ground-hog case. The soil was here, the climate
was here, but along with them was a curse, the curse of slavery."
The immense increase of wealth and productivity since 1880 is equally
unquestionable. When it comes to the claim that it is the most prosperous
part of the world, it cannot be accepted offhand. The fact that the South
is well off does not prove that it is better off than its neighbors; the
wealth and prosperity of the South are always limited by the character of
its labor. Calculation of profits, adding of bank balances, cutting of
coupons, have to some degree drawn men's minds away from the race
question; but on the other hand the demand for labor and the losses of
dividends or of opportunities to make money because the labor is
inefficient are ever renewed causes of exasperation. At all times the
South is subject to reverses like those of other regions. The crisis of
1907 hit that section hard by cutting down the demand for timber,
minerals, iron, and other staples, and was one of the factors in a decline
in cotton which touched the pocket nerve of the South; and the railroads
felt the loss of business. Still, most Southern enterprises weathered the
storm, and in 1909 the tide of prosperity is mounting again.
If it be true that the South is the most prosperous part of the world, a
disagreeable responsibility falls upon somebody for having less than the
best schools, libraries, buildings, roads, and other appliances of
civilization; if it be not true, there must be some defect in the social
or industrial system which out of such splendid materials produces less
than a fair proportion of the world's wealth. To be sure a section or a
state might lag behind in production and yet forge ahead in education, in
the harmony of social classes, in respect for law, in good order.
Switzerland is not a rich country, but it is an advanced country. The
claims of superior productiveness can with difficulty be tested. The
relative status of the two sections in intellectual and governmental ways
has been examined in earlier chapters and the South cannot claim supremacy
there. A similar comparison shall now be made as to the relative
production and accumulation of the two sections.
A criterion of wealth much relied upon by Southern writers is the movement
of commerce. We are told that two fifths of the inward and outward
movement of foreign trade passes through Southern ports. The truth is that
in 1907 that figure was $883,000,000 as against $2,432,000,000 in all
Northern Atlantic, Lake and Pacific ports. The bulk of this Southern
business, however, is in exports--$742,000,000--a third of the total. Not
a tenth of all the imports came into Southern ports, and three fourths of
that through the three ports of Baltimore, Galveston, and New Orleans,
from all which a part goes into non-Southern states. The explanation is
that through the Southern ports pour the staples, but that the return
cargoes, especially of manufactures, go to Northern ports, even though
part of it is later distributed to the South. A second correction is due
to the fact that about $536,000,000 of the exports goes through the five
ports of Baltimore, Newport News, Norfolk and Portsmouth, New Orleans, and
Galveston, all of which are entrepots for immense trade originating
beyond the limits of the South. For instance, New Orleans and Galveston
together shipped 24 million bushels of the 147 millions of wheat
exports--practically not a Southern crop. Even in such an unreckoned
increment of income as the federal pension lists, the South is less
forward than the North, which drew 113 millions a year against 25 millions
in the whole South and 11 millions in the seceded states--most of that to
colored soldiers.
The relative wealth of the two sections is best measured not by foreign
trade but by internal production and by public income and expenditure,
calculated on a per-capita basis. Of course conditions vary greatly from
state to state; in Alabama there is steady farm work most of the year,
while in North Dakota the winter is a time of comparative leisure;
California uses agricultural machinery, South Carolina depends chiefly on
hand tools; Wyoming is so young that it has had little time to accumulate
capital, Tennessee has large accumulations. It would be unfair to compare
Arkansas with Connecticut, or Illinois with Florida, on a strictly
per-capita basis. The only way to equalize conditions for a fair
comparison is to take groups of states and set them against other groups
of equivalent population and of similar interests, so that local errors
may neutralize each other.
As a basis for such a comparison of resources, three sets of tables have
been made up. The first sets apart the group of eleven seceding states
with 17,000,000 people (West Virginia not included) as being typically
Southern; and places against them a group of agricultural states extending
from Indiana to Oklahoma, also containing 17,000,000 people. The second
tables include the whole South--viz., the fifteen former slaveholding
states (excluding West Virginia), together with the District of Columbia,
including a population of about 28,000,000 people; to which is opposed the
Middle West and Pacific states from Indiana to the Coast, together with
Vermont and New Hampshire, which are added to make up a full 28,000,000.
To such comparisons the objection has been made that it averages the
confessedly inferior rural negro population with the picked immigrants
from the East and abroad in the Northwest. The objection is a concession
of the lower average productive capacity of the South; but in order to
compare the white elements of the two sections by themselves, a third set
of tables compares the whole South containing 17,900,000 whites and
8,000,000 blacks against a group of Northern agricultural states with a
population of 18,000,000 whites and 234,000 blacks.
The materials for such comparisons are various. Every traveler has his
impressions of the relative prosperity of South and North based on what he
sees of stations, public and private buildings, cities and stocks of
goods, and on the appearance of farms and work-people throughout the
country. For precise indications, the population of the states is
estimated year by year in the _Bulletins_ of the Census Bureau; estimates
of accumulated wealth are made every few years by the Department of
Commerce; returns of annual crops by the Department of Agriculture;
banking statistics by the Treasury Department. The annual _Statistical
Abstract_ prints summaries of manufactures and other industry, and on
these topics the Census Bureau issues valuable bulletins. For tax
valuations there is no general official publication, but the _World
Almanac_ collects every year from state auditors a statement of
assessments. Most of these sources must be accepted as simply a series of
liberal estimates, but the factors of error are likely to be much the same
in the Northern and the Southern communities, and at least they furnish
the basis for a comparison in round numbers. The tax assessments are
significant, because they are revised from year to year, and the methods
of assessment are not very different in the various parts of the country
and are likely to err by giving too low a value or omitting property, so
that comparisons from tax returns are relatively more favorable to the
poorer than to the richer communities.
_I. The Eleven Seceding States._
Tabulation based upon the principles stated above will be found in the
Appendix to this volume; and a study of those tables reveals some
interesting comparisons between the eleven communities which formed the
Southern Confederacy and nineteen Western communities, the two groups each
having in 1900 about nineteen million inhabitants. The assessed taxable
valuation of the Southern group in 1904 was 4,200 millions; in the
Northern group it was 9,700 millions, or more than double. Four years
later the valuations were 5,200 millions as against 13,800 millions. Since
tax assessments are subject to many variations, perhaps a fairer measure
of sectional wealth is banking transactions. The bank deposits of the
National groups of the Southern group were, in 1906, 700 millions, in the
Northern group, 2,400 millions. Bank clearings in the same year were
respectively 4 billions and 8-1/2 billions.
All the eleven seceding states together in 1906 valued their real estate
at 2,900 millions, their personal at 1,800 millions, total 4,700 millions.
A corresponding Northern group (in which the richest state is Indiana),
counts its real estate worth 7,700 millions, its personalty, 2,700
millions, a total of 10,400 millions. That is, the Northern land and
buildings are counted nearly thrice as valuable, and personalty about a
half more valuable, though everybody knows that there is a vast deal of
untaxed personalty in the North.
The miles of railroad in the Southern group were 55,000; in the Western,
94,000; the total value of agricultural products in the South was
estimated at 1,060 millions, in the North at 1,945 millions. Even the
cotton crop of the eleven states, worth 550 millions, was overbalanced by
the Northern corn crop which brought 595 millions. The manufactures in the
South for 1905 were 1,267 millions; in the Northwest 2,932 millions. The
Southern group expended for schools 26 millions, the corresponding
Northern states expended 91 millions. The value of Southern school
property was 43 millions, of the Northern group it was 216 millions; the
average annual expenditure per pupil in daily attendance in the South was
$9.75; in the North about $28.45. For public benevolent institutions the
South expended in 1903 net $3,000,000, the North $7,000,000; the Southern
group had 1,070,000 illiterate Whites, of whom 76,000 were foreign born;
the Northern group had 207,000 besides 389,000 illiterate foreigners. In
the indices of accumulated property the comparison is about the same; the
Southern deposits in all banks were, in 1906, 701 million dollars, the
Northern 2,439 millions. In manufactures the Northern group, with a
capital of 2,240 million dollars and 903,000 hands, produced 2,932
millions; against Southern capital of 1,140 millions, employing 659,000
persons and producing 1,267 millions.
The comparison of valuations brings out one unexpected result, namely,
that several of the Southern states have actually less taxable property
now than they had fifty years ago. This does not mean that they are poorer
because they have lost their slaves. Leaving slaves out of account, in
1860 South Carolina had a valuation of $326,000,000; in 1906 of
$250,000,000; in Mississippi the valuation of real estate in 1860 was
$158,000,000; in 1906, with a population more than twice as great, it was
$131,000,000; in the rich state of Georgia the valuation in 1860,
deducting slaves, was $432,000,000 against $578,000,000 in 1906. The
Southern people feel justly proud of the fact that the valuations of the
eleven former members of the Confederacy between 1902 and 1906 increased
by 962 millions, from a total of 3,799 millions to 4,761 millions, that
their annual manufactures increased by 450 millions; from 819 millions in
1900 to 1,267 millions in 1905.
This increase in industry is so striking that the Southern states suppose
they are unique in that respect; but the corresponding Northern group of
equal population in the same periods gained 4,000 millions in valuations
and 705 millions in annual manufactures. These figures may be checked off
in various ways. Take, for instance, the annual value of crops; the South
is very certain that with its cotton, its corn and other crops together it
is far in advance of the North. In the Southern states which were in
secession (excepting Texas) the value of farms and stock in 1900 was 2,100
millions, the value in an equivalent Northwestern group was 7,800
millions. The total farm product in the Lower South was 1,360 millions, in
the Northern group of equal population 2,390 millions. If Texas be
compared with a group of Pacific states, of equivalent population, the
Texan farms are worth 960 millions, the Far Western 1,400 millions.
The Lower South has been saving money of late years and is proud of its
growing bank deposits, from 168 millions in 1896 to 701 millions in 1906,
an increase of 450 per cent; but the equivalent Northern population has
increased from 716 millions to 2,439 millions. The Lower South in 1905
had 917 national banks with deposits of 308 millions and assets of 568
millions; the similar Northern states had deposits of 834 millions and
assets of 1,418 millions. Let us see whether the South makes up this
disparity by its state banks. In 1906 the Lower South, including Texas,
had deposits of 700 millions in all banks; and total bank clearings of
about 3,920 millions; the equivalent Northern group had deposits of over
2,400 millions, with total clearings of about 8,500 millions. Measured,
therefore, by accumulated savings, by bank capital, by clearings, the
South is poorer than the least wealthy section of the North. If we were to
take the rich Eastern and Northwestern states, with their immense
population, enormous manufactures (New York City contains over twenty
thousand factories), and vast transportation lines, the fact that the
South is far behind the North in things both material and intellectual
would stand out even more clearly.
_II. The Whole South_
It might fairly be said that it is unreasonable to compare the former
seceding states which have gone through the disruption of their labor by
Civil War with new Western communities in which there has been no
destruction of capital. Accordingly the second set of tables compares the
whole South--fifteen states and the District of Columbia--with a
Northwestern and Pacific Coast group of equivalent population. Since a
part of the contention of Southern writers is that the South was richer
than the North before the Civil War and is only returning to her rightful
place of supremacy, it is worth while to examine the supposed wealth of
the South in 1860. The assessed valuation of the Lower South was then
4,330 millions, which a Southern statistician attempts to show was 750
millions more than the combined wealth of New England and the Middle
states; out of this sum, 3,100 millions was for personal property,
including about 1,200 millions for slaves; but either the slaves should be
left out or a capitalized value of Northern laborers should be added on a
slavemarket basis.
Passing by the figures of 1870, which are discredited by all
statisticians, in 1880 the total property valued for taxes in the Lower
South was 1,880 millions, in the whole South was 3,420 millions; while in
similar blocks of Northwestern population they were respectively 2,712
millions and 4,640 millions. This is a splendid record for a people who
had given their all in a civil war and who had to build up nearly every
dollar of their personal property from the bottom. The land, of course,
was always there, but was worth much less per acre in 1880 than similar
good land in 1860.
How far has this rate of progress been continued since 1880 as shown by
the inexorable method of comparing groups of Southern states with groups
of Northwestern states of equal population? The tax valuation shows about
the same proportion, so far as can be ascertained, to real values in one
section as in the other. The local differences of mode of assessment when
averaged would probably not disturb the result by more then ten per cent.
The whole South (16 communities) as compared with a Northern group of the
same number of people in 1907 showed 8.5 billions of assessed property
against 13.7 billions in the North. It may therefore be set down as proven
that the taxable wealth of the lower agricultural South is less than half
that of similar agricultural communities in the North; so that while
mining and manufacturing states like Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri have
about the same wealth as similar Northern communities, the South as a
whole has not one half the wealth. Take the former slaveholding states all
together, including such a rich commonwealth as Missouri, and the farm
value in the whole region in 1900, with 28 millions of people, was under
5,000 millions; while 28 million people in the West and Northwest owned
farms to the amount of about 11,000 millions, or more than double. The
total Southern crops in 1899, the last year in which the totals are
obtainable, were worth 1,360 millions, the Northern crops counted up to
2,390 millions. The value of the Southern corn crop in 1905 was 416
million dollars; the equivalent population in the Northwest raised 601
million dollars' worth of corn. The whole South raises about 32 million
dollars' worth of oats; the North raises 201 millions. The Southern potato
crop is worth 19 millions; the Northern, 76 millions. Southern hay counts
up to 66 millions and Northern to 258 millions. Even in tobacco, the North
furnishes 7 million dollars' worth against 35 million dollars in the
South. Cotton is the one crop that is exclusively Southern, and the crop
of 1905, the year that we are considering, including the seed, was worth
632 million dollars. The Southern group had 127,000 teachers, school
property of 84 millions, and total school revenue of 45 millions, against
competing Northern figures of 199,000, of 293 millions, and of 120
millions. It is difficult in these figures to find justification for the
notion that the South as an agricultural region is richer than the North,
or is likely ever to rival it.
The actual figures for the present conditions of the South are
sufficiently attractive. During the four years 1904-1907 the big crops
and high price of cotton gave to the South such prosperity as it had never
known before, the total output being nearly fifty million bales, which
sold, in cash, for about 2,700 million dollars. This happy result was
reflected in every city and every county of the rural South, for old debts
were paid, new houses built, land doubled or even trebled in value, and a
spirit of hopefulness pervaded the whole population. A buoyancy is
reflected in the press, and particularly in the _Manufacturers' Record_ of
Baltimore, the leading Southern trade paper. "The South," says the
_Record_, "is now throughout the world recognized as the predestined
center of the earth, based on greater natural advantages that can be found
anywhere else on the globe." Or as another Southern paper put it some
years ago: "In 1860 the Richest Part of the Country--In 1870 the
Poorest--In 1880 Signs of Improvement--In 1889 regaining the position of
1860."
Nobody can be more pleased with Southern prosperity than New Englanders,
who have long since found out that the richer other sections of the
country become, the more business Northerners have with those sections; if
there are directions in which the South is making more rapid progress than
the North, it should be candidly acknowledged. Nobody can visit thriving
cities like Richmond, Atlanta, Birmingham, Memphis, New Orleans, and the
galaxy of future centers of population in Texas, without hearty pleasure
in the increasing evidences of civilization, but it is very unevenly
distributed. Off the main lines of transportation the towns are still
ill-built and unprogressive, and the greater part of the area of the South
is no farther along than states like Illinois and Minnesota were in the
late sixties.
It is, however, a ticklish thing to make these comparisons, because many
Southerners, and particularly Southern newspapers, consider it an attack
upon the South to intimate that it is still much improvable. As the _Macon
Telegraph_ said a few months ago: "After all what does it matter that a
Harvard professor should consider us lazy and not even excuse us on the
ground that we are victims of the hookworm? We still have the right to go
on expanding the figures relating to our remarkable industrial upbuilding,
until we have driven New England out of the business of cotton
manufacturing."
The best measure of comparative wealth would be a statistical statement of
accumulations. On this subject there are many wild guesses. The
_Manufacturers' Record_ in January, 1907, makes claims for the South which
deserve especial examination: "England's wealth, according to the London
_Express_, is increasing at the rate of $7,000,000 a week. That is less
than one seventh of the rate of the increase of wealth in the South. The
increase in the true value of Southern wealth in the past twelve months
was $2,690,000,000, or about $7,300,000 for every day in the year,
including Sundays and holidays. Not only is the speed of increase in the
South so much greater than that in England, but the South possesses
resources, agricultural and mineral, that make certain in the future even
a much greater rate of increase than England."
Except poor old poverty-stricken New England, all the world will welcome
this prodigious accretion of wealth. Think how many opera tickets you
might buy for two and a half billions of dollars! The only attempt at
exact figures of our national wealth is the estimate of the _Statistical
Abstract_, published about every four years, and not based on any exact
figures. Such as it is, it is relied upon by the Southern writers; and it
sets forth that in the four years from 1900 to 1904 the total national
wealth increased by less than 20 billions, an average of 5 billions a
year; it is hardly likely that a third of the population, which in other
respects is below the Northwest, was contributing more than half this
annual gain. The only ground for the assertion seems to be an alleged
increase in the Southern tax valuation from 7 billions in 1906 to 8
billions in 1907; assuming that the average proportion of valuation to
actual value is forty per cent, you have your two billions and a half.
The first comment on this statement, which is selected as typical of the
broad claims which float through the Southern press, is that the figures
furnished the _World Almanac_ for 1908 by the state authorities show that
the Southern valuations in 1906 were 7,813 millions, and in 1907, 8,474
millions; so that the increase of assessments is 650 millions instead of
1,000 millions. In the second place, the estimated true value by the
_Statistical Abstract_ in 1904 was about 20 billions for the whole South;
and on a basis of comparison of the valuations of 1904 and 1907, the
increase in the whole three years would be at best only two and a half
billions. In the next place, two and a half billions a year means that
every man, woman, and child, black and white, is on the average laying up
a hundred dollars, which is an amazing rate of saving.
Having thus proven that the material progress of the South is exaggerated,
the next logical step is to show that perhaps it has foundation, inasmuch
as the equivalent 28,000,000 people in the Northwest in 1905 are gaining
wealth still more rapidly, having increased their estimated "true value"
from 44 billions in 1904 to at least 50 billions in 1907. The South, which
supposes itself to be getting rich faster than any other part of the
globe, has in the last few years actually added less to its wealth than a
similar Northwest agricultural region. In the year 1906-7, while the South
added 650 millions to its tax duplicate, the North added 850 millions. If,
as may be the case, the 650 millions of valuation meant 1,700 millions of
new wealth, the Northwest was adding at least 2,300 millions.
In all this array of figures there is no criticism of the South, no denial
that it is more prosperous than it has ever been before; no desire to
minimize its splendid achievements which are helping on the solution of
the race problem; but it is essential that the Southern people should
measure themselves squarely with their neighbors. The single state of New
York, with less than a fifth the population of the South, has as much
property as the whole South (leaving out Missouri), and adds every year to
its wealth as much as is added by the whole South (leaving out Texas). The
South is really at about the same place where the Northwest was thirty
years ago; it is developing its latent resources; building its cities;
perfecting its communications; starting new industries; and in much less
than thirty years it will come to the point that the Northwest has now
reached; but that section is still driving ahead more rapidly, and thirty
years hence may be proportionately richer than it is to-day. If the South
is saving four millions a day, the Northwest is saving five millions; and
the Middle and New England states, the other third of the country, are
saving eight or ten millions a day. If the South is to range up alongside
the Northwest, to say nothing of the Northeast, it must increase its
production still faster, and the only way to accomplish that purpose is by
improving the average industry, thrift, and output of its people.
_III. Comparative Efficiency of White Populations North and South_
Some Southern statisticians, while admitting these indubitable figures,
contend that the South is improving at a much more rapid rate, and hence
must in no long time overtake the North; but it must be remembered that in
most of these fields of comparison the North not only shows from two to
two and a half times the output, but that its annual or decennial increase
is absolutely larger than in the South; that is, that the annual amount
which the South must add to its present output, in order to catch up with
the North, is larger than it was a year ago, or at any previous time. A
conventional explanation of this state of things is that the Negroes
constitute a large part of the Southern working force, and are much below
the average of Americans in their productive output; but when comparisons
are made between similar aggregations of white population, results are not
very different. If the whole South (including the District of Columbia) be
compared, not with a block of about 28,000,000 Northern people, but with a
block of about 18,000,000 white people corresponding to the 17,900,000
Whites in the South (both figures for 1900), the results are still
startling; although the South has all the advantage of the labor and
production of 8,000,000 Negroes besides the Whites. The debts of the
Southern communities in 1902 were 374 million dollars; of the Northern,
301 millions. The total taxes raised in 1902 were: South, 116 millions;
North, 202 millions. The estimated Southern wealth in 1900 was 16.7
billions; in 1904, 19.8 billions, an increase of 3.1 billions; in the
North the corresponding figures are 25.8 billions and 31.4 billions, an
increase of 5.6 billions. The Southern assessed valuation of 1907 was 8.5
billions, of the Northern group 10.7 billions.
What makes these differences? It certainly is not because the South is
deficient in natural resources, in fertility, in climate, in access to the
world's markets, in the enterprise of its business men. What is the reason
for this discrepancy between the resources and the output of the South?
Some of the Southern observers insist that the North is made rich through
its manufactures. In order to eliminate that condition the comparisons in
this chapter are all with Western and Northwestern states (Vermont being
included simply to equalize the numbers); some of these states, as the
Dakotas and Oregon, are very similar in their conditions to the purely
agricultural and timber states of the South; in other states, such as
Indiana and Wisconsin, there are large manufactures, which, however, are
no more significant in proportion than those of Maryland and Missouri. The
Northwestern states have more manufactures than the Southern, but they
have more of everything, which indicates industry and prosperity. The
obvious reason is that laborers in the South, both white and colored, are
inferior in average productive power to Northern laborers; and the obvious
remedy is to use every effort to bring up the intelligence, and the value
to the community of every element of the population.
While the proof sheets of the foregoing chapter are passing through their
revision there appears in _Collier's Weekly_ for January 22, 1910, an
article by Clark Howell of the _Atlanta Constitution_ who makes, in
italics, the statement that "_the trend of Southern development is
incomparably in advance of that of any other section of the continent_."
The opportunity to apply the cold bath of statistics to such torrid
statements can still be taken, by adding to the tables in the Appendix
some figures for 1907 and 1908, and even 1909, together with some
generalizations based on figures not included in the tables. For example,
the figures for public school education in 1907 show for the ten seceding
states 78,000 teachers against 153,000 in the corresponding Northern
group; school property to the value of 19 millions as against 41 millions;
annual revenue of 24 millions as against 90 millions. The rich state of
Texas, with 18,000 teachers, is balanced by the Pacific group with 28,000;
its school property of 15 millions by 64 millions; its annual expenditure
of 7 millions by 25 millions. Even the richer border state group of five
communities, and an average daily attendance of a million school children,
has school property of 48 millions against 86 millions in the
corresponding Northwestern states; and the school revenue of 21 millions
must be placed against the revenue in the corresponding group of 38
millions.
The assessed valuations of the states, as reported to the _World Almanac_
for 1910, are as follows: the whole South in 1909 was assessed on 10,051
millions--a gain of 2,200 millions in three years; in the equal
Northwestern group it was 19,884 millions--a gain in three years of 7,000
millions (out of which perhaps 2,500 millions should be deducted, on
account of a bookkeeping increase in the assessments in Kansas and
Colorado). The cotton crop of 1908 sold for 675 millions and the corn crop
of the North for 886 millions. The railroads in the South in 1908 totaled
71,790 miles and in the Northwestern group 123,332 miles. The South "has
just harvested a billion-dollar cotton crop" says Clark Howell, and he
predicts twenty-cent cotton. The actual crop for 1909 was probably less
than 11 million bales, and at the average price for the season of about 14
cents, it sold for something like 770 million dollars. The corn and wheat
crops of the whole North (not the equivalent group) sold in the same year
for 2,091 million dollars.
No good can result to anybody either from belittling or exaggerating the
productivity of the South. That section is progressing, and the more it
progresses the less become its difficulties of race and labor problems,
the greater its connection with neighboring states, the larger the
advantage to the whole nation. Still, on any basis of comparison with the
least wealthy states and sections of the North--whether it be made between
the total population of equivalent groups or between the white populations
only, leaving out of account the productivity of the Negroes, the South is
below the national standard of wealth and progress; it grows constantly in
accumulations and in productivity, but its yearly additions are less than
those of the Northwestern states, and much less than those of the
Northeastern states.