In order to understand and appreciate the progress made by the South
during the last ten years it is necessary to know something of its
condition prior to the war and immediately after that disastrous
struggle. “The New South,” a term which is so popular everywhere
except in the South, is supposed to represent a country of different
ideas and different business methods from those which prevailed in
the old ante-bellum days. The origin of the term has been a subject
of much discussion, but the writer has rarely seen it ascribed to
what he believes to have been the first use of it. During the war the
harbor and town of Port Royal, S. C., were in the possession of the
Northern forces, and while they were stationed there a paper called
“The New South” was established by Mr. Adam Badeau, who was afterwards
General Grant’s secretary. This was probably the first time that the
term was applied to the Southern States. Its use now, as intended to
convey the meaning that the progress of the South of late years is
something entirely new and foreign to this section, something which
has been brought about by an infusion of outside energy and money
is wholly unjust to the South of the past and present. It needs but
little investigation to show that prior to the war the South was
fully abreast of the times in all business interests, and that the
wonderful industrial growth which it has made since 1880 has been
mainly due to Southern men and Southern money. The South heartily
welcomes the investment of outside capital and the immigration of
all good people, regardless of their political predilections, but it
insists that it shall receive from the world the measure of credit
to which it is entitled for the accomplishments of its own people.
In the rehabilitation of the South after the war Southern men led
the way. Out of the darkness that enveloped this section until 1876
they blazed the path to prosperity. They built cotton mills and iron
furnaces and demonstrated the profitableness of these enterprises.
Southern men founded and built up Birmingham, which first opened the
eyes of the world to the marvellous mineral resources of that section,
and to Southern men is due the wonderful progress of Atlanta, one of
the busiest and most thriving cities in the United States. When the
people of the South had done this then Northern capitalists, seeing the
opportunities for money-making, turned their attention to that favored
land.
The Southern people do not lack in energy or enterprise, nor did
they prior to 1860. Since the formation of this government they
have demonstrated in every line of action, in political life, on
the battlefield, in literature, in science and in great business
undertakings, that in any sphere of life they are the peers of the
most progressive men in the world. From the settlement of the colonies
until 1860 the business record proves this. After 1865 the conditions
had been so completely changed that the masses lacked opportunity, and
to that alone was due their seeming want of energy. The population was
largely in excess of the number required to do all of the work that
was to be done. At least one-half of the whole population was without
employment, for the war had destroyed nearly all the manufacturing
interests that had been in existence; agriculture was almost the only
source of work for the masses. With no consumers for diversified farm
products it would have been folly to raise them. Cotton and cotton
alone was the only crop for which a ready market could be found, and it
was also the only crop which could be mortgaged in advance of raising
for the money needed for its cultivation.
The Northern farmer is enterprising. He raises fruits and vegetables
and engages in dairying and kindred enterprises because he has a home
market for these things. The Southern farmer had none and could not
create one. He might deplore his enforced idleness when he saw his
family in want, but that would not bring him buyers for his eggs or
chickens or fruit when there was no one in his section to consume
them. The almost unlimited amount of work for the mechanics and day
laborers generally at the North enabled every man to find something to
do. In the South there was almost an entire absence of work of this
character. Men hung around the village stores because there was no work
to be had which would yield them any returns. With the development of
manufactures there came a great change. The opportunity for work had
come, and the way in which the people who had hitherto been idlers
rushed to the factories, the furnaces, and wherever employment could be
secured demonstrated that they only needed the chance to prove their
energy.
The greatest blessing that industrial activity has brought to the South
is that it is daily creating new work for thousands of hitherto idle
hands, and creating a home market wherever a furnace or a factory is
started for the diversified products of the farm. The latent energy of
the people has been stimulated into activity, and the whole South is at
work.
But to fully understand the South in its relation to business matters,
it is necessary to study its business history before the war had
brought about a degree of poverty which has no equal in modern history.
In the early part of this century, and even before then, the South led
the country in industrial progress. Iron making became an important
industry in Virginia, in the Carolinas and in Georgia, and Richmond,
Lynchburg and other cities were noted for the extent and variety of
their manufactures. Washington’s father was extensively interested
in iron making, and Thomas Jefferson employed a number of his slaves
in the manufacture of nails. South Carolina was so imbued with the
industrial spirit that, about the beginning of the Revolution, the
State government offered liberal premiums to all who would establish
iron works. By the census of 1810 the manufactured products of the
Carolinas and Georgia exceeded in value and variety those of all
New England combined. The South Carolina Railway, from Charleston
to Hamburg, built by the people of South Carolina, was the leading
engineering accomplishment of its day, not only in this country, but of
the world. Greater than this, however, was the road projected by Robert
Y. Hayne, of Charleston, to connect Charleston and Cincinnati, and thus
make the former city the exporting and importing port for the great
West. Unfortunately for the South Hayne was sent to the United States
Senate, and the growing sectional bitterness, because of slavery, so
completely absorbed his attention that his great railroad undertaking
had to be abandoned.
The stimulation given to the cultivation of cotton by the introduction
of the gin and the extension of slavery, with the liberal profits in
cotton cultivation, as prices ruled high for most of the time from 1800
on to 1840, caused a concentration of capital and energy in planting.
But between 1840 and 1850 there were several years of low prices, and
attention was once more directed to industrial pursuits. The decade
ending with 1860 witnessed a very marked growth in Southern railroad
and manufacturing interests, but there was no decline in the steady
advance that was making the South one of the richest agricultural
sections of the world. During this time railroad building was very
actively pushed, and the South constructed 7562 miles of new road,
against 4712 by the New England and Middle States combined. In 1850
the South had 2335 miles of railroad, and the New England and Middle
States 4798 miles; by 1860 the South had increased its mileage to 9897
miles, a quadrupling of that of 1850, while the New England and Middle
States had increased to 9510 miles, or a gain of only about 100 per
cent. In 1850 the mileage of the two Northern sections exceeded that
of the South by 2463 miles. The conditions were reversed by 1860,
and the South then led by 387 miles. In the decade under review the
South expended, according to official figures, over $220,000,000 in
the extension of its railroads, the great bulk of this having been
local capital. This activity was not confined to any one State, but
covered the whole South, and every State made a rapid increase in its
mileage. In Virginia there was an increase from 515 to 1771 miles; the
two Carolinas gained from 537 to 1876 miles; Georgia from 643 to 1404;
Florida from 21 to 401; Alabama from 132 to 743; Mississippi from 75
to 872; Louisiana from 79 to 334, and Kentucky from 78 to 569. Neither
Texas, Arkansas nor Tennessee had a single mile of railroad in 1850,
but in 1860 Tennessee had 1197 miles, showing remarkable activity in
construction during the decade, while Texas had 306 miles, and Arkansas
38.
The percentage of increase in population in the South from 1850 to
1860, even including the slaves, was 24 per cent., while in the rest
of the country, the gain due largely to immigration, of which the
South received none, was 42 per cent. Yet from 1850 to 1860 the South
increased its railroad mileage 319 per cent., while in the rest of the
country the gain was only 234 per cent. The South had one mile of road
in 1860 to every 700 white inhabitants; the other sections all combined
had one mile to every 1000 inhabitants. Thus counting the whites only,
the South led the country in its railroad mileage per capita, and if
the slaves be included, the South still stood on a par with the country
at large in per capita railroad mileage.
While devoting great attention to the building of railroads, the
South also made rapid progress during the decade ending with 1860 in
the development of its diversified manufactures. The census of 1860
shows that in 1850 the flour and meal made by Southern mills was worth
$24,773,000, and that by 1860 this had increased to $45,006,000, a
gain of $20,000,000, or nearly one-fourth of the gain in the entire
country, and a much greater percentage of gain than in the country
at large, notwithstanding the enormous immigration into the Western
grain-producing States during that period. The South’s sawed and planed
lumber product of 1860 was $20,890,000 against $10,900,000 in 1850,
this gain of $10,000,000 being largely more than one-third as much as
the gain in all other sections combined, although even counting in the
slaves the South had less than one-third of the country’s population.
The advance in iron founding was from $2,300,000 in 1850, to $4,100,000
in 1860, a gain of $1,800,000, a very much larger percentage of
increase than in the whole country. In the manufacture of steam engines
and machinery the gain in all of the country except the South was
$15,000,000, while the gain in the South was $4,200,000, the increase
in one case being less than 40 per cent, and in the other over 200
per cent. Cotton manufacturing had commenced to attract increased
attention, and nearly $12,000,000 were invested in Southern cotton
mills. In Georgia especially this industry was thriving, and between
1850 and 1860 the capital so invested in that State nearly doubled.
It is true that most of the Southern manufacturing enterprises were
comparatively small, but so were those of New England in their
early stages. The South’s were blotted out of existence by the war;
New England’s were made enormously prosperous, justifying a steady
expansion in size, by the same war. In the aggregate, however, the
number of Southern factories swelled to very respectable proportions,
the total number in 1860 having been 24,590, with an aggregate capital
invested of $175,100,000.
A study of the facts which have been presented should convince anyone
that the South in its early days gave close attention to manufacturing
development, and that while later on the great profits in cotton
cultivation caused a concentration of the capital and energy of that
section in farming operations, yet, after 1850, there came renewed
interest in industrial matters, resulting in an astonishing advance in
railroad construction and in manufactures. But this is only a small
part of the evidence available to conclusively prove the great energy
and enterprise of the six and a half million white people who inhabited
the South.
(_To be Continued._)
[Illustration]