Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1874-06-10
THE SOUTH'S GREAT NECEsSI.

THE SOUTH'S GREAT NECEsSI-
TIES.
A late number of the London Agri-
cultural Gazette contains the following
instructive statements:
The report of the Superintendent of
Banking, Just published at Albany,
shows deposits IN the savings banks of
the State of New York population
5,OOO,OO0) at the end of 1873 of Esq.,
OOO, 600; at the end of 1864 there were
e22, 000. 000-increase in nine years,
f35, 100000. During the same period
(IS6473) the total deposits In the post
Office and other savings banks IN Great
Britain have increased from f44,-
100000 to co. 100000. While one
State in America holds nearly
the same deposits in saving
banks as the whole of Great Britain,
and the increase has been f35, 900, 900
in one case, and in the other only
91S,000,000 in the past nine years, We
are not likely to see the current of emf
grafton reversed or stayed.
We have more than once c@lled the
attention of our readers to the large de-
posts in the savings banks of the State
of New York, and to the fact that the
agricultural products of that State ex-
ceedcd two hundred and fifty million
dollars, as returned to the census of
1870. Facts relating to the art of
giving existence to property where 1t
did not exist before, and to the best
ways and means of saving it from loss
and needless consumption, are not too
much studied, nor too well understood.
Our London contemporary over-stated
the population of New York by half
million or more; and, continuing
its figures in pounds sterling, we
should credit the industry of four and
a half million people in an American
State with a gain in savings banks of
EDS, 100000, while a population of
some twenty-five million in Great
Britain have gained only flS,OOO,OOO,
with more capital and labor-saving ma
chinery in their hands than any other
people possess. That English publ
cists and statesmen should ponder
facts like these above stated need sup
prise no one; no more than the fact
that the dairy men and the Royal Ag-
ricultural Society, of England, got Mr..
Willard, of Herkimen county, n. T., to
90 to England and instruct some of
the best manufacturers of cheese and
butter in the world, how to organize
cheese and butter factories on the New
York plan. They are quick to discover
and prompt to use industrial improve
ments.
If we are slow in the South to at
tract persons leaving Great Britain
and the continent of Europe to find
new homes in the New World, it is be-
cause we are so reluctant to consider
the true sources of our agricultural
wealth, and use them for the equal
benefit Of ourselves and of mankind.
knowledge and science come by think
ing and careful study, not by intuition.
Immigrants settling in the South use
their eyes and ears, and many leave af-
ter staying few years, because they
are dissatisfied. Europe is a grass
country; and the people generally cul-
tivate grass as the basis of home COM
forts, wealth and civilization. Two
centuries ago tobacco planting and
other planting were crystalized in the
popular mind of Virginia and the Caro-
linas; and these crystals promise to be
as durable as the offspring of any
planting State.
We must assimilate our agricultural
ideas and practices to those of the
white races in Europe, or they will be
as slow in coming to us as the noun
tain was In going to Mahomet. Our
system Of agriculture affirms that Eu-
ropean farming is impracticable in the
planting States; and we almost rejoice
when a Northern man fails in the South
to inaugurate a more diversified tillage
and system of busbandry. Crystallized
planting forbids progress and repels
immigrants who would settleamong us.
1t is like the hereditary aristocracy of
England, which keeps all the land on
the island in few families, and COM
pels millions to emigrate to Aus
tralia and America to find bread, while
large deer-parks flourish on British soil.
1t is land monopoly in Great Britain
that reduces the deposits in savings
banks per capita to one-tenth of