By Richard H. Edmonds.

I.

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.)