The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1871-09-21
HOYT & CO., Proprietors.
Horace Greeley on the Needs of the South.


find the following considerate and temperate
article-considerate because it exhibits such an
interest in our material Development and tenn
perate because Mr.. Greeley refrains from abuse
and Misrepresentation of our people and our
section:
We receive many letters from the South
which seem to indicate greivous misappre'
hension of the pressing want of that section.
Their commonest error is an assumption that
her people are deficient in capital, and that
their industry languishes for want of it. Yet
the South has hundreds of millions of acres OF
Unused lands, rendering no income whatever to
their owners, and often subjecting them to taxes
that they pay with great difficulty if at all.
Those lands are in good part covered with val
liable Timber, while many of them are richly
underlaid with Coal, Iron, Copper: Lead, Mar
BILE, &c. To value the unused and unproduc-
tive lands, minerals, timber, and other capital
of the South at Three Thousand Millions of
Dollars might be to estimate it at all the mon
ey it would sell for under present circumstance
and in the present condition, but it is really
worth far more.
It may be true that the South needs money,
or such capital as is instantly available and
convertible but she cannot afford to borrow it.
If she could borrow five hundred millions to-
morrow it might give her instant relief; but
that relief would be Fictitious the strength
obtained by the tippler from his dram-and
would but increase her ultimate embarrass-
ments. She needs rather to get out of debt
than to get in deepeer-to sell property that
she is unable to use, and to devote the proceeds
to making available the residue of her now dor
mant resources. If her men of substance could
sell two thirds of the land, timber, ores, &c,
which now employ no labor and afford no In
come, the residue would have greater market
value than the whole does at present, and they
would be able to buy the stock, implements,
machinery, fertilizers, &C., for lack of which
their efforts are now relatively inefficient and
fruitless.
The first need of every Southern State to-
day is the application to its soil of the system
of SURVEYS, Which is one of the most benefcent
| devices for which mankind are indebted to our
Union. If Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia and
West Virginia were surveyed into right-angled
sections and parts thereof as are the public
lands of the United States, their real estate
would be worth at least twenty-five per cent.
more than it now is, and a thousand acres OF it
could be sold where hundred can now be.
Such survey would affect no mans title,
affect no existing boundary: Nodoubt, owners
would gradually buy and sell, exchange and re-
|
with the official surveys but they would do
this only SO fast and so far as their own interest
should dictate. But estates of FIVE to forty
thousand acres, which are now scarcely salable
at any price, would be readily bought in Sec
tions, quarters and eighths at rates now unat-
tainable.
Having been surveyed, all the lands that the
owners did not wish to retain should be brought
into market That is impossible under the
present no system. Owners are anxious to sell |;
they would gladly accept very low prices; but
thereare now no buyers. He who has thousand
or even five thousand acres to sell cannot afford
to advertise as his lands should be advertised {;
the cost would be ruinous and probably his ad-
vertisement would sell ten others estates and
not sell his after all. An inquirer who started
southwark expressly to look at his place would
encounter so many would-be sellers on his way
that he might never reach that place at all.
Now, there should be very extensive adver-
tising of Southern lands, not merely at the
North, but in Great Britain and Germany yet
it cannot be done in an isolated way. But let
all those who have lands to sell in Virginia put
| them into the hands of one agent or company,
and let that agent advertise them SO as to reach
every freside in the North and half those of
Great Britain and Germany-let him advertise
so many acres in this, so many in that county,
with capacities and prices-let him make ar
rangements with steamboats, and railroads for
the cheap transportation of those intending to
purchase and advertise where and how excur-
sion tickets may be obtained, and there would
be no difficulty in selling ten millions of acres
per annum. The agent or company should pay
all expenses, take all risks, and be allowed q
liberal commission, such as would warrant and
incite the most extensive advertising, and, un-
less exorbitant prices were asked, there could
be no failure. We are confident that one hum
dred thousand tenant farmers or sons OF far
mers could be drawn from the British isles
alone to Virginia within the next two years, If
adequate efforts were made to enlighten them,
with regard not merely to the cheapness and
value Of the lands, timber, &C., but to the
means and cost of reaching those lands, the en-
hancement of their values by railways already
built or in process of construction, and the ease
wherewith their owner could be recalled to Eu-
rope by telegraph and set down at his fathers
or brothers door within two weeks from the
dispatch of the telegram. The masses in Eu-
rope know just as much of this country as we
do of Australia, and are generally in doubt
whether Virginia is in Boston or little north
of Chicago. Show them that it is within n
days ride of New York, with ample and ex-
cellent harbors, bays, rivers, &c, supplemented
by canals and by railroads, and they will much
prefer it to the remoter regions and harsher
climate of the northwest The facts that In
dians no longer stray within hundreds of miles
of its borders and that it has Episcopal churches,
roads two hundred years old, and established
social order, &C., will prejudice multitudes in
its favor.
The South needs more people, greater diver.
sity of pursuits, more skill, more energy and
thrift-morc mills, more shops, more factories,
moro fnrnocnS-shn does not need more capital
than will inevitably flow in upon her If she
can but utilize what she already has. We sub
nit these suggestions to hes leading minds, in
the hope that they may SOW some seeds of fl-
ture thrift and progress.
"WHAT THE SOUTH EDs."-Under this
aant;oz, tLo Nau Nor, T..iL,l,e latelv sIlnnested