Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1885-02-18
THE S0UTH-POLITICAL AGRICULTU
RAJ, AND COMMERCIAL.

entail a journal as the London Times, and
who has resided in our State-is impartial,
and "knows whereof he speaks" when he
views the South through spectacles that
have not become blurred by sectional ami
mosities or pride of geographical position.
It is well at times that we ''should see our
selves as others see us, and profit by in
teIligent criticism. We have read with
interest an able letter in the Industrial
South, COPIED from the London Tin'es,)
and endorsed by our commissioner OF
Agriculture, Colonel Randolph Harrison,
who is himself an experienced and practi-
Cal farmer, and is indefatigable in his eff
forts to advance the interests, prosperity,
land welfare of Virginia. The letter is too
lengthy for republication in the columns
of the SPECTATOR, but few of the main
points it would be we'll to consider Our
English friend says:
'Politics are still, perhaps. the greatest
bugbear of the South, and Virginia has the
reputation of possessing the greatest num-
Der of amateur politicians. 1 have never
yet heard contradicted the universally ad
mitted fact that the frequency of elections
in America is that country's greatest bane,
and this period is we'll calculated to bring
| that truism most forcibly home"
This is indeed truism. We hardly pass
through one campaign before another COM
mences. The country is kept IN a contin-
ual turmoil, agricultural interests are not
benefited, commercial affairs are stag
mated, and the only benefciaries seem to
be the officeholder and politician. This is
a defect in our republican form of govern
ment, which must sooner or later be rem
edied. 1t is the bounden duty of an
American citizen to exercise his preroga-
tive and vote his sentiments at the polls,
after which it is equally his duty to drop
politics and help advance the prosperity OF
his immediate community, county, and
State. Then, indeed, would we commence
new era of progress, and what would
naturally follow, plenty, contentment, and
happiness. The writer again says:
"There is great deal of solid work now
done in the South, but there is still a vast
amount of talking. The steady progress
of the country bears witness to the work
ers; but it is a slow advance compared to
the magic transformation of the face of the
land which haunts the fancy of the less
practical and the less energetic. There is
young generation of business men now
rising up all through the country whose
ideas are at variance with what may be
called the old fogyism' of their fathers.
The antagonism of two generations is Wis
ible in almost every town council through
the South, and in almost every community
your young Southerner will speak of the
obstructive tendency of his seniors with as
much unreseryed Impotence as if he were
a yankee or a westerner, and as years 90
by, this detection from old timcy' south
ern notions seems to grow stronger and
stronger, and the prospect for development
to proportionately increase. donot mean
to say for moment that all enterprise in
the South is confined to the younger gen.
GRAFTON, nor that the latter have by any
means cast aside all sectional characters
ties and sectional prejudices; but at the
same time there is distinct departure
from old lines on the part of those who
have grown up since the war, and whom
the loss of property during that struggle
compelled to depend upon their own ener,
gies for livelihood from tibet. e ..r,est
years,
+
The State of Virginia may always stand
for purposes of illustration, past, present,
and future, as an admirable type of the
South. No southern State will compare
with her from historical point of view,
nor will any equal her record during the
late Civil War. Materially and physically
she is fair example of the South, en-
bracing all varieties of climate, surface,
and production, with special advantage,
perhaps only Of location"
We are only told in this what all can en-
dorse. We have everything within our
own borders to make us great and prosper
Gus, and with little western push and
energy, there is no difficulty in its being &C
complished We are undergoing process
of transformation. Everywhere the talk
is of improvement, and Improvements are
being made, and it is becoming recog-
nized fact, that the South has joined in the
forward march of American prosperity.
Our English friend continues as follows:
Southern progress may not inaptly be
compared to a stream of water suddenly
turned on to dusty road, which pushes
forward hundred little rivers, trickling
this way and that, like network over the
sands before the main current soaks the
ground The manufacture of cotton in
Georgia is, perhaps, the greatest item of
advance the South has to show. Florida,
though hardly so developed as to be in an
historic sense southern State, has more
nearly approached the western sense of the
word boom than in any other portion of
the South The success of her orange
groves has been so real as to enable her
sanguine inhabitants and promoters to i'm
pose on visitors and the outside public
with regard to other less suitable indus
tries to mervelous extent. Tennessee,
Western North Carolina, and West Vir-
ginia are slowly but surely attracting south
ward the great mineral interests of Penn
sylvania. The magnificent forests that
over millions of acres cover the mountains
of the South are silently bIdiDg their time
and increasing at a prodigious rate i'll ac-
tual sale value, while the rapid thinning of
northern and northwestern forests is max
| ing timber one of the most valuable in
vestments for the future. North Carolina
has distinguished herself by some moder-
ately successful adventures in the direction
of Swiss and German colonization. The
old-established stock farmers of Kentucky
and Southwest Virginia have been doing Of
late years admirably under the pressing de-
mand fer fine cattle and horses at remu-
neratiye prices, and hold the best grass
lands in America at figures that many an
English proprietor nowadays would be
glad to take for his own acres
One or two of the best peopled counties
of Virginia have in the last ten years COW
cred their hlll-sides thick with vineyards
to the great advantage of their local pros
perity. The eastern shore of the same
State has been turned within the same Pc
riod from halft'lled desert into market
garden for the people of New York, Bos-
ton, and Phi adelphia; while its southern
border, with considerable slice of North
Carolina, so long as men smoke pipes and
chew tobacco, will defy the world to COM
pete with it in the production of that pc.
culiar and unequaled quality of leaf that
! bears its name''
We have in the South natural advantages
against which other sections of the country