The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1873-09-04
Manufactures in the South.

Ours is a material, money-seeking age. Its
| favorite pursuits and Investigations are not
speculative, chivalric nor romantic, but are
employed in those fields which promise to
yield the greatest amount Of wealth, comfort
and independence to the individual, and to So
cicty. The Southern people are in condition
to feel the force of this fact rather painfully.
| They have lost many hundreds of millions of
their property, at a time when other portions
of the country have been accumulating wealth
rapidly. The Northeast and West are rich and
prosperous; the South only moderately so in q
few scattered localities. Yet the mass of the
people in all parts Of the United States belong
to the same intellectual, active, thrifty, enter
prising Anglo.Saxon race. The agricultural
capabilities and mineral resources of the South
are of the first order, while its climate is one
of the finest on the globe: There is no good
reason why the South should lag in the rear in
the accumulation of wealth, and the acquisi-
tion of material power generally. While our
lack of development is attributable in no small
degree to political causes, much Of the blame
Justly falls upon the Southern people them
selves. There is lamentable want of enter
prise apparent in many of the finest portions
of our territory. What city of thirty thousand
inhabitants in New England would, for exam
u,
falls to run to waste for years IS we have done?
Here is G. mine of wealth which, if worked
with the right object, would not only at once
bring force of operatives to our doors in their
own numbers equal to the population OF large
city, but every interest and trade now existing
in Louisville would receive powerful impetus.
The merchants would double their retail Gus
tom, the wholesale merchants would double
their trade, the professions would be benefited
in the same proportion, and every vocation,
from the highest to the llumblest, would re-
ceive an infusion of new life. Not Louisville
only sleeps over patent advantages and oppor-
tunities. Many instances of like neglect exist
over the South, whose people are slow to learn
the fact, shown in the history of every country
in Christendom, that the wealth of a nation
comes from her manufactures far more than
from the raw material that it produces. 1t is
nonsense to say that manufactures will not
prosper in the South. we maintain, on the
contrary, that they can be made more protta-
bic, with fair business management, IN the
South than they are to-day in Great Britain,
Germany, or New England. An Alabama
newspaper Of recent date says:
"Ex-Governor Patton, of Alabama, in let
ter to THE South, says that the dividend paid by
the Augusta cotton mills is over twenty per
cent. a year. A cotton mill at PETERSBURG, va,
pays twenty-five per cent year. One at Co.
lumbus, Ga, pays over twenty per cent Inc
mills in this State DO at least as we'll. And at
this very time the New England mills are strug-
Cling along with small profits, and even talk of
working short time so as to reduce stocks and
improve prices. The difference between their
feeble and sinking condition and the vigorous
activity of the Southern mills is accounted for
by the Give cents q pound'' advantage which
the Southern manufacturer has in his tilt with
New England, and yet we have but few facto-
ries in Alabama"
One fact like this is worth thousand .theo-
ries which aim to explain why it is that manu-
factures will not thrive in the South. They do
prosper wherever good business men conduct
them, and on their establishment in the future
depends the hope of Southern restoration and
not restoration only, but an excellence and
prosperity which she never attained in the past.
louisville C0uricr-JournGt