Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1861-03-07
SOUTHERN ENTERPRISE.

q, says tne mercn8ntS OF MaucneSter, tnreateneu
with difficulty in the supply Of cotton from
America, are determined to take measures to OBJ
tain from the free labor of India what has hith
erto been drawn from the "involuntary servi
tude" of South Carolina and her sister secession
States. Thus vast field of enterprise opens
out for India, which has long been foreseen, as
the deusions on which "the domestic institu
tions' Of the United States were based were
certain one day to effect the double object Of
the redemption of India and the destruction Of
slavery"
The Savannah Republican says: "a meeting
Of capitalists has been called in New York to or
ganize Gn association for the cultivation of cot
ton by free labor. We wish them joy of their
free labor in the cotton field and all the cotton
they will make by it. By the way, where do
they propose TO establish plantations ?"
1.-THE Cotton Spinner's Convention, lately in
session at Atlanta, has adopted resolution re-
commencing general attendance of all inter
ested in fhe commercial, financial and manufac
turing future Of the South, ut an adjourned meet
ing Of the Convention, to be held at Atlanta, on
the 18th day of March. 1t was also resolved to
take steps to obtain accurate anil full informa
ton from abroad as to prices, styles, numbers
and kinds of cotton yarns saleable in foreign
markets. c. G. Baylor, ESQ.,, was appointed to
proceed to Montgomery, to place before the
Southern Congress, as Commissioner from the
Convention, the purposes Of the same, and to
obtain from the Congress that consideration and
recognition of the objects in view which their
vital Importance to the whole South merits"
We hail in these paragraphs the dawn
of two ideas that are destined ere long, we
think, to WELD great influence on the
production and manufacture of cotton
"Ideas rule the world" and the history of
the past is the history of countless expert.
ments sometimes failing, sometimes sue
cessful. Since the commencement of the
slavery agitation, the great manufacturing
communities of the North and Of Europe,
have desired to become less dependent on
the cotton of the Southern States. They
have felt more keenly than ever this de-
pendence and desire to escape from it, since
the dawn of the New Confederacy, atten-
ded as it has been with prospect of dis
turbing the cotton supply. We have seen
that four millions of British subjects, and
perhaps as great a number of Liucoln's SUBJ
jects, are dependent on our great staple for
the clothes they wear and the bread they
eat. With their radical notions of respon-
sibility, they feel that to use the products
of slave-labor, makes themselves guilty of
slavery. Hence, long after present dis
turbances are settled, whether with or with
out blood, petty warfare will be waged
against our industrial prosperity, with Quix-
otic valor, and the expiring assiduity of the
drowning man who catches at straw.
The experiment of raising cotton in H.
dia is to be continued, under the hope that
it will destroy slavery. China, from whom
the allied forces OF France and England
have lately exacted favorable treaty, is to
have her teeming cotton fields; and the
Celestial Empire is to rival the New Re-
public of the new world in supplying the
labor and the vestments of Christendom.
Northerners borrow many of their ideas
from Europe. The enterprising State of
Massachusetts is anxious to supplant the
use of Southern cotton within its borders,
by the culture and manufacture of flax
And, as we mentioned recently, the pub
lie mind north of Mason and Dixon's line,
is eagerly seizing upon the idea of cultiva-
ting cotton by means of free labor, in the
suitable territory now unoccupied on this
continent.
We repeat, the civilized world appears
to US to b. engaged in bloodless CONNER
cial and industrial warfare for the destruc.
ton of Southern business, and with this
the destruction of our peculiar institution.
Whether it is done for the promotion of
their own interests, or the injury of ours,
we care not, so that it is done at all. If
they desire no-trade and non-intercourse
with us, and this desire awakens in US a
spirit of manlier enterprise and self.reli
ance, the wrath of our enemies will be
made to rebound to their shame and to our
prosperity. At a time, too, when the South
is trying to unshackle the wheels of COM
merce by the reduction of tariff duties, if
not by the adoption Of universal free-trade,
the narrow policy and the contemptuous,
self.righteous attitude of the nations to-
wards her, are we'll calculated to rouse the
slumbering energies of her people.
We are glad in this connection to refer
to the cotton.spinning movement alluded to
in the third paragraph above. The South
has every facility for spinning her own cot
ton. The rivers that roll through the
mountain regions all around US, afford in
exhaustible water-power Southern labor
can be made, We verify believe, highly re.
munerative in this branch of manufactures.
If our capitalists, instead of investing so
much of their surplus capital in bank.stock,
would invest it in the whirring and ringing
activities of the. spindle and the loom,
many desert place of the South would
blossom as the rose.
The notion hitherto entertained by many,
that we are exclusively an agricultural peo.
pie, must be exploded, before the cotton
States can realize their highest degree of
prosperity. Every nation under the sun
has more than one source of wealth and
every resource of country must be devel-
oped in order to the attainment of the high
est possible power, position and influence.
We would be glad to see cotton.s spinning
mannfantnrr established ON some snitahle