New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1875-10-10
WHY WE HAVE NO MANUFACTURES.
A correspondent of the New York
World saws; ....


her cotton manufacturing interests and en-
ter into successful competition with North
ern and British mills is q question which
has been of late much debated by both the
planting and the industrial classes. She
has abundance of water power throughout
the cotton belt to manufacture large por-
ton of her crop.
This water power is really one of the
smallest advantages which the cotton
States possess for the conversion of raw
cotton into cloth. The possession OF the
staple without transportation, insurance
or interest, the mild climate, abundance
of food, and the immense amount of un-
employed operative labor, are also sub
stantial incidents of manufacturing cost
which would be DESTROYS. Besides cot
ton spinning, there may now be estab-
ished in the South great number of
other mechanical trades, because the
change in the condition of the laborer
has enabled him to apply a much larger
proportion of his product to his own
comfort than formerly. There is then a
home market for manufactured commodi-
ties which did not formerly exist, and
they may be exchanged against the
specie staple instead of being bartered
for other commodities, or for an in
convertible currency as elsewhere.
With all these elements and with
necessity which since emancipation has
fallen upon thousands of worthy people,
why is it that the South has no manufac-
tories worthy the name?
1t is the result of Democratic ascend
ency in the South. This assertion is
made in no party sense, and with no pur-
pose to charge upon the Democratic rulers
of the South less character or patriotism
than their Wing opponents. The absence
of manufactures and shipping, and the
transfer of immigration and commerce
grew out of the principles of the Demo-
cratic party of the South. There was
great wisdom in two dogmas OF the Dem
ocratic party. They opposed protective
tariff because it was indirect and unequal,
and virtually taxed the poor more than
the rich. They opposed paper currency
because labor being the measure of value,
any medium Of payment which gave labor
less than the par standard was fraud
upon labor They objected to works of
internal improvement because there was
no power to tax the property of one man
to carry the produce of another to market.
Public schools were opposed with the
much more plausible reason that slaves
being property and not scholars, the slave
holder could not, in most cases, get the
benefit of his own taxes.
These were really Democratic doctrines.
They, however, involved two incidental
disadvantages. The Democrats inveighed
against the tariff and attacked the morality
of manufactures. They acclaimed upon
the merits of specie currency and repu-
dated the credit system in all its financial
forms. They preferred to sell where it
was dearest and buy where it was cheap
est, and SO sent their cotton and tobacco
to Europe, and imported the manufac-
lures Of Europe. One argument against
manufactures was that restitution and
vice existed in populous manufacturing
cities, therefore that manufactures were
for poverty and vice.
Then came the question of the aboli-
ton or the expansion of slavery, and
the Democrats of the South formed their
political alliance with sole view to opin-
ion upon that question. Mr.. Douglas was
q Jefferson Democrat; Breckenridge was
a Democrat of the Calhoun school, or was
the candidate of those who were. The
Democratic party having passed from the
doctrines OF Thomas Jefferson adopted
those of John G. Calhoun. These great
teachers were SO radically differen. as to
head opposite schools. Mr.. Jefferson was
the earnest advocate of common schools,
and of employing every member of society
in some means of earning his own sup
port, and bearing his share of the COM
mon burden. Mr.. Calhoun regarded the
pursuits of agriculture as of paramount
consequence, and the institution OF slavery
as indispensable to keep the administra-
ton of government in intelligent and
conservative hands. The maintenance of
slavery then depended upon resistance to
immigration, educs ton and manufactures,
because they would have brought free
mechanical labor with its ideas among the
slaves; to commerce, because if vessel
from New England lay near tobacco or
sugar plantation, it might carry away
slaves; and to railroads, because they in
tensifed the evils of commerce and the
mechanic arts. These principles, thus
arising as an original justice to labor,
became subsequently the rampant and
breastwork of an institution invaded by
the liberal sentiment of the world. This
policy fenced outthe mechanic. the mari
ner and the school master.
The Democracy Of the South knew
nothing Of these mixed industries, and
discouraged their adoption. One conse-
quence Of this hostility was the total des-
titution Of mechanical skin during the
war, the expectation Of cotton for war
supplies. and the immense disadvantage
with respect to the North, which had
adopted different system.