The Columbia herald. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1850-1873, 1872-09-13

Under this head the veteran editor of
the Mobile Register, Hon, John
Forsyth, has this to say:
A Southern man, after having made J
ny,nS trip Though the New England ,
states, cones back filled with astOnish-
ment % what he has seen, and per- !
of country. There he saw little vii
lagos sticking i'm the midst of barren
and uninhabitable mountains, with no
surroundings to support them, evinc-
ing q spirit of life and prosperity I'M
known to even our large towns-tbe
recognized trade-centres of our best
agricultural regions. And i'm the
country he saw little farms producing
like fint-class English gardens, though
on soil originally too poor TO have
grown bear grass, and in situations
that Southern man never would |
have thought capable of being con-
verted into a goat pasture. The reO-
pie, all as q general thing, seem con-
tented and prosperous and if he had |
inquired into their circumstances he
would have found, strange as it may
appear, everybody i'm these little viii
lagos well off and making money, and
the little farms, with their stone piles
here and there, and their stones con-
stantly working TO the surface to be
carried of into other piles, and their
annual calls for fertilizers to the ext Mt
of one hundred and fifty dollars per
acre, actually clearing their owners
from two to three hundred dollars on
every acre enclosed. No wonder that
he is discouraged when he looks from
this picture upon our favorably-lccated
towns and notes their inactivity, tht ir
poverty and general dilapidation, and
upon our broad and fertile acres, and
reflects that they are really, in very
many instances, not paying the expense
of culture.
One would naturally conclude that
there must be some secret connected
with all this, and so there is. At the
the village station the close observer
would notice piles of cotton bales, n
circumstance calculated to create no
particular interest in the South, bat
there, thousands of miles awsy from
where cotton should be grown, it
would take the form of mystery. Step
ping out upon the platform i'm quest of
a solution, his ears would be greeted by
a sound rs Of a waterfall having Decu-
liar humming -spindles.
The case would be made PLAINTIFF
strange little village would be recog
nized as manufacturing point, and
then he would know that ace, i'm a far
off section, were digging ITS prosperity
from our sOil-feedIng it into a vigor-
Gus life upon the very food for which
our towns were starving, and asking
il nothing in return Actually ship
ping our cotton at our OaCn erpc7tsc,
and then, i'm order that it might grow
fat on its business, buying its fabrics
ut its own profitable figures and pay
ing transportation on them to our
homes. What a kind-hearted people
we Southerners must be!
Then for the secret of success among
the farmers: Passing through the
country with his eyes open, the close
observer would at the proper season
soon have his attention arrested by an
improved mower sweeping over the
meadow under the exclusive manage
ment of youth of, say, sixteen and
accomplishing more i'm a day than
could i'm that time he wormed out of q
dozen freedmen with their scythes. A
little later and he would see the younger
brother of the youth tuning the hay;
and then in due time would come a
still smaller boy with horse rake, fol-
lowed by trio of little fellows having
all SORTS of fun rs they, with hay
fork, stored away the crop i'm the hay
loft.
In everything done Oh the farm i'm
New England this same plan is re-
sorted TO. If the soil must be prepared,
instead of setting dozen freedmen at
1t with their mules and pIows, to sweat
through "a week, as we would do, out
comes machine managed by a boy or
two, and in an incredibly short space
of time the job is done, and aoeU dime
A lot of seed is to lie sown that would
give our hands a long, tedious task, but
then stripping with a seed sower
puts it down exactly light and in very
short order. And when the crop is
ready to lie hOed, instead of charging
ii with black army TO play for pay, a
hoy harnesses his nag TO horse hoe,
takes his seat as in sulky, and tides
about over the field hoeing several
rows at time. In short, New Eng
land works by machinery, and therein
lies the secret of Yankee prosperity.
She has simply changed places with us
she OiC7ls her labor. If 1T were other |
wise; or, in different words, did she
have to woIk on our plan, and depend
cd our kind of labor, and did we not in
the goodness of our hearts, give her
the profits on our products, a few years
would find her entirely depopulated-a
happy hunting ground, upon which
the red man might pitch his wigwam,
never to he disturbed 10y any encroach- |
ment of civilization.
There is no reason why we i'm the |
South should not own orr labor i'm the |
same way, and set our spindles going,
thus giving prosperity TO our own
towns and villages. We can never c |
a success till We do it. Let us think
the matter over.