The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1873-06-26
What the South Needs.

We have, from time to time, urged upon our
people the importance and necessity, if they
would make the South Independent and pros
perous of engaging in all kinds of manufac-
turing. That there would be more substantial
profit and accumulated wealth to capitalists
and the South in the erection of manufacturing
establishments of every description throughout
our sunny land, than in loaning the surplus
capital we have at an exorbitant per centage,
there can be no question. While manufactur-
ing enterprises would enrich the whole coun-
try and give employment to the thousands of
destitute poor scattered all over our section,
the money that might thus be invested, if
loaned at q high rate of interest, would benefit
and enrich no one but the fortunate possessor
of this surplus money capital.
We are certainly very shorted-sighted, indo-
lent or improvident people. There is untold
wealth all around, at our very feet, which might
be turned to great advantage in the building up,
enriching and making our section every way
independent. Immense coal fields, mountains
of ore, and every other element of wealth that
would enter into the manufacturing business,
are to be found in almost every portion of the
mountainous section of the Southern States !;
and yet our people continue to purchase North
ern castings, and almost all the stoves we use for
cooking and heating purposes are made in the
Northern States and all the trace chains, hoes,
spades, shovels, plough and agricultural imple-
ments of almost every kind, are shipped to us
from that quarter. And not only this, but we
go on from year to year growing cotton, and
suffer Northern capitalists and sharpers to reap
the reward of our labor, by letting it pass
through three or four hands before it gets to
the spinners, where it is converted into thread
then into merchantable fabrics, and then shipped
to our retail merchants, and we are thus forced
to become the consumers of our own manufac-
tured productive, of course, pay the per cent
age that accumulated upon the raw material in
its transit from our gin-houses to the Eastern
factories, and back to the retailer. How long
is this suicidal policy to continue? How much
longer do we propose to be "hewers of wood
and drawers of water" for the Northern people,
by paying to their mills the money that should
enrich our own people? Shall we still continue
welded to policy that impoverishes US more
and more each year-still refuse to take ad-
vantage of the lavish wealth with which Provi-
dence has surrounded us? God forbid If our
people will only awake from the lethargy that
seems to have paralyzed them-that seems to
have destroyed their energy and their manhood
and be themselves, there is wealth, prosperi-
ty, independence and happiness in store for
this beautiful southland.
The South's only source of wealth, as has
been maintained by some short-sigbted indi-
viduals, is not in raising cotton-is not exclu-
sively in the pursuit of agriculture; and the
sooner this fallacy is exploded, and our people
become manufacturers and exporters of goods
instead of importers and consumers, the better
it will be for them, and the sooner they will see
our waste places blossom as the rose, and the
people of this highly favored section occupying
a position that will command respect from
those at the North who now revile and traduce
them.-North Georgia Citizen.