The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1880-08-26
THE GROWTH OF THE SOUTH.
Nothing Either Remarkable or UnIntu-
raj.

Nothing Either Remarkable or Unntu
raj.
WASHINGTON, August II.
The most notable development of the
past week has been The outbreak of the
Republican organs with charges of whole.
sale frauds in the census returns in the
from the South. Their disappoint.
mcnt at the showing is very great
For years they have been predicting
that the census of 1880 would show
but little growth in the South as against
large grains in the North, and that the
Congressional apportionment based upon
it would consequently greatly diminish
the strength of the former section, both
in the lower branch of Congress and in the
Electoral College. Disguised al the dis
coyery that the growth of population has
been about as rapid at the South as in the
North, they insist that there is something
wrong about the figures, and elaborate
articles are constructed 10 show that there
must have been gross frauds. Fortunate
ly for the country the superintendent OF
the census,
GEN. FRANCIS A. WALKER,
is not the sort of man who will lend his
aid to any attempt at making party cap!
ital out of great national work. A Re-
publican in politics, be is entirely inde-
pendent, and his first aim in taking the
census is to get full and accurate returns,
not to make good showing for the party
to which he belongs, and the section of
the country where his home happens to
be. He has already thrown cold water
upon the Republican organs by declaring
that be has thus far found no reason to
suppose that tile census has not been
honestly taken in the South, and by rid.
iculing the idea that wholesale frauds
have been perpetrated. The papers which
make these charges seem to have entire.
ly forgotten the fact that much the larger
proportion Of the supervisors in the
South are active Republicans, and that
if there has been conspiracy to swell the
returns throughout that section, many
prominent Republicans must have been
privy to it. They overlook also the OBJ
vious consideration thatsuch frauds could
not possibly be perpetrated and escape
detection. Each enumerator had but q
small territory, and if the returns from
any county should appear suspicious, q
special agent provided with duplicates of
the returns could easily discover wheth-
er names had been fraudulently added to
the list.
EXTENSIVE FRAUDS,
such as are now charged, would involve
the completely of hundreds of minor Off
cials, as we'll as the supervisor. The
penalty for tampering with the returns
is imprisonment in the penitentiary for
as long a term as two years and it appears
utterly unreasonable tc suppose that hun
dreds of men have deliberately run the
risk of such punishment. For these rea-
sons Gen. Walker takes no stock in the
current charges Of fraud.
THE GROWTH OF THE SOUTH.
There is really nothing. so remarkable
in the fact that the South has grown as
rapidly as the North during the past de-
cade. There is an old and homely prov
erb which recites that you cannot eat
your cake and keep it. A great many
Northern people seem to have forgotten
this fact. For years they have been
complacently regarding the rapid in
crease of population in the far West and
the Northwest, and figuring out the gains
which the north, as section, would de-
rive from the growth of Kansas, Nebras-
ka, Minnesota and other States in that
region. They have not reflected that
the great bulk of this increase has beer
drawn from New England, the Middle
States and even the nearer of the West
ern States, like Ohio, Indiana and Illi-
noise, and that the North as section has
not gained by this transfer of people
from east of the Mississippi River to the
west of that stream. The older States
could not suffer this drain without feel
ing the effect, and the returns show that
some Of them, like Maine, New Hamp-
shire and Vermont, have remained al
most stationery during the past ten years,
while even New York and Pennsylvania
have not made gains, and some districts
of the nearer Western States have lost so
much by emigration still farther West
that they contain fewer people now than
in 1870. 1t is true that the North has
gained much more than the South by
immigration from abroad, but in consi'-
eripg the enormous proportions Will.
this immigration has reached in the last
few months people forget that it dropped
of in the years of depression which fol-
lowed the panic of 1878 to less than half
its former proportions, and in 1877 had
fallen rs low as only 13S, ,469 souls. An
other thing which Northern people forget
is the fact that the natural increase of
population is larger in the South than in
their own section.
THE lGRoEs
are proyerbial for fecundity, and among
the whites large families are much often.
er found than in the North. The small
number of childrenint the Eastern families
has attracted the attention of allstatisti-
clans and good ministers in New England
have been known to preach to their con-
gregations upon their neglect to fulfill the
Divine command "to replenish the earth" J"
The difference in this respect between
the North and the South is so marked
that it cannot fail to attract the travellers
attention, and this is most vital clement
in the problem. Moreover, this relative
advantage on the side of the South has
been even greater than usual during the
past decade. The North suffered much
more than the South from the panic and
the hard times which followed it. The
extensive interruption of manufacturing,
the general upsetting in business centers
and the depression caused thereby were
felt much more keenly in the upper than
IN the lower half of the country. The
population of the South, supported al.
most entirely by agricultural industry did
not experience the difficulty in obtaining
even bare subsistence which befell large
classes in the North. Now, no fact is
more conclusively proved by statistics
than that hard times greatly diminish
THE NUMBER OF MARRIAGES,
,,1 ,,,tor;o11,, roduoo thu hirfh. ratio