New-York tribune., 1867-08-01
THE RECONSTRUCTION or SOUTHERN
INHIrNTnI

TIE RECONSTRUCTION OF SOUTHERN
INDUSTRY.
The State of North Carolina has 100000 acres
of Swamp Lands that remain public property,
simply because, under the old regime, no one
supposed them worth owning. These are Of
course by far the richest lands in the State,
and most of them are covered by timber, now
inaccessible, which would of itself repay the
cost of drainage These lands she has now de
voted to the cause of Education; and companies
are being formed to purchase, drain, survey,
plot, and sell them in small tracts to settlers
and cultivatOrs. In many cases, these swamps
have been receiving and retaining the wash of
the higher lands around them until they are
erich as mud 10 a depth of ten and even
twenty feet and would grow heavy crops for
successive years of the most exhausting plants
Hemp Tobacco Indian Corn-without secm-
ing at all impoverished
Such swamps are common throughout the
South, and have been very rarely and slightly
improved. There is large one in Mississippi
which, it is said, no man has ever crossed or
even considerably penetrated so sOddcn and
miry is its surface and so dense its covering
of trees, bushes, and matted vines. 1t is the
haunt of the venomous reptile; and yet few
thousand dollars may suffice to drain it, so that
its timber may pay the cost of rendering it
habitable and productive. Thus the great
Dismal Swamp of lower Virginia and eastern
North Carolina is already being mined for Peat,
and will yet be a most productive and densely
peopled region. All over the South, new pros
poets are opened, new sources of wealth are
| revealed, i'll the benefcent light of Free Labor.
A Mississippian advertises that he is the
agent OF company just formed in the South
which proposes to purchase large Southern
estates, survey them ont into small tracts,
and sell them to actual settlers. We know
nothing of him or his company, and nOwise
indorse either. He may be incompetent or
knavish, his company may be a myth and his
scheme swindle; but the idea is a good
one, and perfectly practicable. If company
with barely 100000 cash capital, under com
petent management, were to do thoroughly
what this man proposes it might pay its stock
holders twenty-five per cent. per annum and do
immense good to all concerned, transform
ing many thousands of shiftless and needy, home
less, hopeless persons into thrifty, comfortable,
independent freeholders. And there is room for
forty such companies to do their utmost, with
out at all interfering with each other
The common assertion that there is "n0
"money" at the South imparts only a lack Of
confidence. When the Incumbered Estates act
took effect in Ireland and great properties
were sold under the hammer, it had been pre-
dicted that the purchasers must be found IN
England OF Scotland, as no one in Ireland
could pay for them; yet most Of them were
bought and paid for by lrishmen, as all would
have been had they been sold cheap enough
Money will come forth from ten thousand hiding
places when those who hold it feel sure that
they can proGtably dispose of it. The test
fhohy Is general that most of the negroes-all
of them who are, good for anything-are anxious
to become owners of land, though it be but an
acre each; and every one who owns an acre
and cabin will be a better citizen thence
forth. lie will have employment for his
spare hours and Indictment to save and i'm
prove. The South would profit immensely by