By Austin P. Foster.
In the undeveloped resources of the South lie dormant the possibilities
of fortune that “far surpass the wealth of Ormus or of Ind.” For more
than two centuries the incomparable climate and soil of this section
have commanded the admiration of the world; and during this period
fortunes were amassed purely by agriculture, mainly in the last century
by cotton, and were handed down from father to son, until the corner
stone of the industrial system was wrenched loose by a fratricidal war,
and anarchy for a time supervened. As Henry Watterson pithily puts it:
“The whole story of the South may be summed up in a sentence: She was
rich, and 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.”
Yet what a change from the happy years of ante-bellum prosperity, when
the South was by far the wealthiest section of the country, to the
desolation, the poverty and the criminal oppression of reconstruction
times! After four years of the most sanguinary strife in the history of
the world the Southern soldier took up the battle of existence and of
maintenance and of rehabilitation. Let Henry W. Grady tell the
situation:
“What does he find when, having followed the battle-stained cross
against overwhelming odds, dreading death not half so much as surrender,
he reaches the home he left prosperous and beautiful? He finds his house
in ruins, his farm devastated, his slaves free, his stock killed, his
barn empty, his trade destroyed, his money worthless; his social system,
feudal in its magnificence, swept away; his people without law or legal
status; his comrades slain, and the burdens of others heavy on his
shoulders. Crushed by defeat, his very traditions gone; without money,
credit, employment, material training; and besides all this, confronted
with the gravest problem that ever met human intelligence—the
establishing of a status for the vast body of his liberated slaves.
“What does he do—this hero in gray with a heart of gold? Does he sit
down in sullenness and despair? Not for a day. Surely God, who had
stripped him of his prosperity, inspired him in his adversity. As ruin
was never before so overwhelming, never was restoration swifter. The
soldier stepped from the trenches into the furrow; horses that had
charged Federal guns marched before the plow, and fields that ran red
with human blood in April were green with the harvest in June; women
reared in luxury cut up their dresses and made breeches for their
husbands, and, with a patience and heroism that fit women always as a
garment, gave their hands to work.”
None but people whose civilization has never had its equal in chivalric
power and grace, whose ability of mind and strength of heart were
derived from the purest Anglo-Saxon blood, could have restored their
fortune and excelled the material welfare of its past as have the people
of the South within the short expanse of forty years.
In its struggles for advancement the South has known, and still knows,
two problems:
First, its duty to an inferior, dependent race; and second, its duty to
industrial development.
In its conscious and its unconscious evolution and in its conscious and
its unconscious solutions of these problems the South has been favored
by certain material and climatic advantages:
It possesses by nature the fairest and richest domain on the face of the
earth. Here we find a vast stock of the materials proper for the art and
ingenuity of man to work upon; treasures of immense worth, concealed
from the ignorant aboriginal red man, unknown or neglected by the
planter, and utilized only within the last thirty years. Now the rocks
are disclosing their hidden gems; huge mountains of iron and coal and
limestone, of lead and zinc and marble and phosphate, are pouring forth
vast stores; and more than one-half the timber wealth of the entire
country is found within the Southern states conserved in virgin forests
and reserved for the present and for the coming generations. The South
produces two-thirds of the cotton of the world. The water power is
enormous and perennial, and the commercial situation relative to the
world is unequalled. Of the four essentials to all industries,
therefore, iron, wood, cotton and motive power, the South is abundantly
blessed. Add to these a perfect climate and a fertile soil which yields
every product of the temperate zone, and who shall deny to the South the
primacy in the years to come?
The remarkable results effected in the South since the war between the
States have been attained principally in the last twenty-five years.
Statistics, which are often dry and uninteresting, in this case prove
the argument most conclusively.
The wages paid to factory hands in the South, which in 1880 were
$75,900,000, had risen to $249,413,150 in 1900, and are now $350,000,000
annually.
The capital invested in manufacturing in the South in 1880 was
$257,000,000; in 1900, $1,153,002,368, and now $1,500,000,000, annually,
and rapidly increasing.
The value of its manufactured products in 1880 was $457,400,000; in
1900, $1,463,643,177, and now $2,000,000,000.
In the last twenty-five years the increases of other important products
were:
Pig iron from 397,000 tons to 3,000,000 tons.
Coal from 6,000,000 tons to 45,000,000 tons.
Phosphate (since 1890), from 750,000 tons to 3,000,000 tons.
Railroad mileage, from 20,600 miles to 55,000 miles.
Cotton, from 5,757,397 bales to 12,162,000 bales.
The grain crop (corn, wheat, oats and rye), from 431,000,000 bushels to
791,000,000 bushels.
These facts are impressive, convincing and full of hope for the future.
The value of the staple crops—corn, wheat, oats, Irish potatoes, rye and
hay—in 1904 was $542,121,000; the value of the other farm crops was
$550,000,000; and the value of the cotton not less than $515,000,000,
besides the cotton seed, amounting to $50,000,000 more. All this amounts
to an aggregate sum of $3,657,121,000, earned annually by the South from
the sources indicated, not including the lumber and other raw material,
which, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, leave the South
annually for all the parts of the habitable globe.
No wonder the South is prosperous! And an indubitable proof of its
prosperity lies in its increase in the assessed valuation of its
property. This increase since 1900 amounts to $1,000,000,000 for the
fourteen states of the South. This is partly due to raised assessments,
partly to increased prices for its products, but mainly to an increase
of customary products and to new products. The increase in the wealth of
the South, however, has been steady for the last twenty years, and in
that time has aggregated more than $2,300,000,000.
What now is the magic spell which has wrought this abundant prosperity,
the sesame by the pronouncing of which is opened the secret hiding place
of Southern wealth? _Diversification_ is the word—diversification of
crops and diversification of manufacturing and diversification of all
industries. Cotton, though a puissant monarch, seated upon a throne,
from which for reasons of perfect adaptability of soil and climate he
can never be deposed, is not the only king who conducts a beneficent
sway for the complex needs of an enterprising people.
The forest king rears his august head and stretches out his hands
cornucopia-like from the Potomac to the Rio Grande and from the Gulf to
the Ohio, inviting capital and effort to his virgin domains, which, if
properly protected, will in the future be a source of perpetual and
inestimable wealth; and which even now furnish to the South
approximately $400,000,000 per annum.
Phosphate is another king whose sway within his narrow domain is as
absolute as is that of cotton. The United States furnishes more than
half the phosphate rock of the world, and of this the South supplies all
but an inconsiderable quantity. This product, of vast consequences to
the agriculture of this section, is a comparatively recent discovery.
The active development of phosphate mining commenced in South Carolina
in 1868; it was greatly stimulated by the discovery of large deposits in
Florida in 1888, and has been attaining greater and ever greater
proportions since the exploitation of the immense bodies of rich rock in
Middle Tennessee.
And of like importance to cotton and phosphate is that modern industrial
triumvirate, coal, iron ore and limestone. These essential elements in
the production of pig iron are found in close juxtaposition in thousands
of localities from Birmingham, Ala., to West Virginia. In the latter
named state are twenty thousand square miles of coal; in Tennessee five
thousand; in Alabama still more, besides the smaller fields of Virginia,
North Carolina, Georgia and Texas.
A few years ago Henry Watterson was criticised as visionary for his
assertion that pig iron, which was then selling at Pittsburg at $20 to
$25 per ton, could be profitably produced in the South at $10 per ton.
Yet it has been sold on the market at Birmingham and other points at $7
per ton. This is rendered possible by the fact that two tons of iron
ore, two tons of coal and one ton of limestone can be bought in the
ground for an average of twenty cents a ton, or $1.00 for the whole. And
the consequence is that Southern iron is offered in the English markets
and on the Continent of Europe in competition with the whole world.
Besides the elements of wealth of prime importance, which have
heretofore been mentioned, there are many others, the aggregate of which
contributes materially to the riches of the South, such as cotton-seed,
tobacco, rice, leather, fruits, vegetables, cattle, wool, fine horses
and other live stock. But when all is said it is manufacturing which
produces most wealth; it is manufacturing which the South most needs,
and it is manufacturing which offers in the South a most attractive
avenue for investment. Textiles should accompany and follow the
production of cotton and wool. Steel should be made from pig iron and
machinery from both. Fertilizers should be manufactured in close
proximity to the phosphate rock; and furniture and fine finishing in
contiguity to the forests.
In all these directions the South has done and is doing much.
Twenty-five years ago Judge Kelley of Pennsylvania, “Pig Iron” Kelley,
predicted the coming power of the South in industrial pursuits, and
said, “The development of the South means the enrichment of the nation.”
What though a cotton mill remove from New England to that region of the
South which produces the staple; what though a furniture factory from
Michigan seek the incomparable forests of the South, or a boot and shoe
factory from any other section depart to the localities abounding in
hides and tanning bark; their places will be taken by other industries,
conducted by other men with new capital.
And the South has another source of wealth which has hitherto been
unsuspected, one which means additional annual income by the hundreds of
millions of dollars; one which represents a new industry in the economy
of the world, and a new source of supply for an ever-increasing demand.
It is the _production of sugar from the stalk of the common maize or
Indian corn_. The inherent interest in such a surprising announcement
and the far-reaching effects of the industry primarily upon the fortunes
and the commerce of the South and secondarily upon those of the world,
warrant, if they do not demand, a brief account of a discovery which
means a new departure in several different directions:
Several years ago Prof. F. L. Stewart, the eminent scientist of
Murrysville, Pa., discovered that, if the immature ears of corn be
removed at nearly the roasting ear period, a physiological change then
takes place in the plant. Its life is greatly prolonged and the vigor
which was previously expended toward the maturing of the grain is
thereafter directed toward the production of sugar, as certainly, as
uniformly, and to as great an extent as is the case of the ripening
sugar cane. As a consequence from twelve to fifteen per cent of sugar is
then contained in the stalk, instead of the five or six per cent which
it ordinarily possesses; and the yield is from 140 to 200 pounds of
sugar to the ton, while each acre will produce from twelve to seventeen
tons of trimmed stalks. And the cost of the production of sugar by the
Stewart processes is only one and a half cents per pound, as against two
and one-fourth cents from sugar cane and three cents from sugar beets.
And this is not all; the by-products are as valuable as the sugar. These
are paper pulp, cellulose, fine charcoal, stock feed and preparations of
value in the arts and sciences.
Here is food for thought indeed! How its application to the South
enlarges, for it is the South which is destined to be the main
beneficiary of this astounding discovery. Sugar cane cannot be grown
successfully farther north than thirty degrees of latitude; the sugar
beet cannot be grown successfully farther south than forty degrees of
latitude. This leaves a broad strip of ten degrees of latitude, mainly
in the South, in which sugar from cornstalks can be and will be produced
in enormous quantities. The North cannot share in the profits of this
industry, because its season is too short for the maturing of the sugar
in the juice.
The effect of this industry will be a revolution in the raising of corn
in the Southern states.
And what of the future of the South in its dealings with the countries
of Central America and of South America? But a few miles of railroad are
now needed to unite the two American continents, and but a few miles of
canal will cleave them in twain—union and disunion in commercial
harmony. Then will the South come into its own in the advantages of
foreign commerce which will not be restricted to its trade with the
western hemisphere. The Eastern and the Southern nations need everything
that we produce. We need nearly everything that they produce, and in the
ensuing reciprocity of the new order of things many indirections of the
present laws of commerce shall be straightened.
And yet—shall it be said?—there are those who fear that, in the hurrying
strife for wealth, the sterling qualities which characterized the old
regime may become atrophied, if not entirely lost. Such fears are futile
and unfounded. The present generation is not so immersed in its progress
that it is unmindful of the patriotism and example of its forbears; it
knows that the hope of the nation in former times rested in the South;
that its leaders were the bearers of the ark of the covenant and the
puissant directors of the policies of an entire country; to them and to
their history, biography and traditions do the present leaders turn for
inspiration toward the best achievement. And while industrial conditions
have changed, the South needs her sons to-day as much as when she
summoned them to the forum to maintain her political supremacy and when
she called them to the field to maintain her honor. And they will never
fail her.
SOCIETY OF THE FOREST.
(A STORY FOR CHILDREN.)
By M. W. Connolly.