The Wheeling daily register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1864-1878, 1868-02-20
Capital Needed in the sonth

Capital is much needed at the South.
Everything wants rebuilding or repair
ing in that section. Cotton and sugar
mills have been destroyed, stOre-houscs
made untenantable, railroads rendered
almost worthless, rolling stock worn
out, steamboats, placed on the retired
list, agricultural implements are no
longer possessed by the people in suffi-
cient quantities to supply their pressing
needs, and the whole region of country
embraced within the unrepresented
States is suffering for the want of CAPT
tai necessary to put the machinery of
business in running order. In late
number of the Missouri Republican there
appeared an article headed LACK of
Money in the South,' from which we
make the following extract as illustrat-
iRg one view of this subject:
Nothing more cOnclusively illustrates
the scarcity of money among the own
ers OF property in the South than the
mulritudinous advertisements of the
city and town lots and lands to be sold
for taxes. Two or three times we have
referred to papers in Georgia and Ala
bama issued sometimes with one entire
page covered by such advertisements s.
The sums due for taxes on many of
these pieces of property would not in
ordinary times be regarded as burden
some. But there is an utter absence Of
money in all the Southern States, or
there is not more than enough to buy
necessary food and meet inevitable ex-
penses. There are no surplus funds.
We notice in the Jackson (Mississippi)
Clarion an entire page of advertisements
by the auditors of several counties of
lands to be sold for the taxes of 1860
and 1861. These lands are offered for
purchase or entry to any one who will
pay the taxes of the years named,
and the taxes since accrued. But the
reports which are made every week
of sales of improved lands and lots show
that all such property sells for a mere
song. 1t does not bring twentieth
part of its value and often not even the
taxes, fer there is no money. And yet,
while this is so, the black and tan Con-
ventions authorized by Radical Con-
gress and called chiefly by negroes to
do work which nine-tenths of the
wkole people do not desire to have dsne,
and which is to place under negro con-
troll the intelligence and respectsbility
of the South, arc levying heavy taxes
to pay the expenses of the ignoramuses
who are framing proscriptive cOnstitu-
tions, and these taxes must be paid by
the pOyerty-stricken people. We hear
much of ''forced contributions" in Mex
leo, and money seized by officials to sat-
isfy their own greed. The'Radical sys-
tenn of forced contributions in the South
is not one whit less rapaciOus and op-
pressive than the worst ever heard Of
in Mexico. The Radical Conventions
there are as little authorized by the peo-
pie, and the representatives of property
as was Maxinillian's empire in Mex
leo. They sit by authority of Congress,
maintained by the army of the United
States. They imI ose taxes without the
authority of the people of the States, aud
they call upon the military to aid them
in seizing the peoples money. The car
pet-baggers and the negroes who COM
pose these Conventions, and the ne
groes and hites who elected them have
no property and no money. They are
mostly as poor as plantation negroes,
and those who do have the property
and the money, ard who pay the taxes
of the State, must be taxed to feed the
usurpers and sustain them in existence
wkile they do their illegal work. And,
in the event that the taxes are not paid
promptly to the mendicants, who de-
maRd them with bsyonets at their
backs, the property owners must stand
by and see the property sold.
This is truthful picture of affairs in
the South, and yet Congress continues
to pursue such apolicy as prevents cap
italists from using their funds in that
section.