Southern standard. (McMinnville, Tenn.) 1879-current, 1886-01-16
THE JACKSON CONVENTION.
A Southern Journals Warm Praise of
Progressive Tennessee.
New Orleans Times. Democrat.

multiplied in the New South. The
glorious work of industrial regenera-
ton and progress started by our great
Southern Expositions can be kept
alive and carried on in no better way.
Eternal activity is the price of success
inindustry, and wonderful and rich as
are the resources and opportunities Of
the section, comparatively little will
come of all the good seed sown at the
Worlds Fair and the Three Ameri-
cas- Exhibition unless the Southern
people everywhere and without ex-
ception hoe the ground and foster the
growing crop ofresults.
Tennessee has set us all a grand ex-
ample in this line. Within a very
few years that State, from the condi-
ton of an old and conservative farm
ing community, shipping away the
products and of course the life of her
soil, and deriving little revenue, save
the poor returns for raw materials,
has risen to the position of one of the
chief mining, manufacturing and
commercial divisions of the country.
The once, and not long ago, all but
uninhabited mountains of the State
TEEN today with the busy life of the
coal mine, the logging camp and the
saw-mill. Countless industries, great
and small, line the shores of the
streams and flank the railway lines.
Great iron furnances, rolling-mills,
foundries, machine shops, Touring
mills, furniture factories, and plain
ing-mills startle the traveller with the
evidences they give of thenew indus
trial era, and the trains from all di-
rections land fresh reinforcementS of
sturdy and capable immigrants daily
at all the points where the blaze and
smoke and hum of this activity are
to be found. The capital and chief
commercial city Of Tennessee was lit
tie more than bright and prosper
Gus provincial town ten years
ago, and probably the last thing its
leading spirits thought of then was
that it would enter the field in COM
petition for the jobbing and wholesale
trade with cities like Louisville and
Cincinnati. But today the Nashville
commercial traveller is the best known
type of his class throughout the Mis-
sissippi Valley, and the wholesale
houses of that city have been able to
capture and keep large share of the
best trade in the Valley States.
There is very simple reason for
all this progress. The people of Ten
nessee do not differ in character es-
sentially from their immediate neigh
bors; but they have been blessed for
years with small but active and fer
ribly earnest class of public men, who
have been able to translate their pa
triotism and advancedideas into pop
ular sentiment, and liberal appropri-
ations for the encouragement of agri-
culture, industry and immigration.
While our States have been discussing
the propriety of promoting immigra-
ton, Tennessee, through its admira-
BILE bureau of progress under the di,
rection of Col. A. ]. McWhirter, has
been attracting immigrants, and set.
thing thousands of them all over the
territory. Because most of them are
not foreigners, and were not import.
ed by way Of Castle Garden, they are
none the less immigrants; and the
further fact that large proportion
have reached the State ready to es.
tablish productive enterprise or in.
dustries, and have done so, makes
the immigration argument all the
stronger.
All these things are worthy of fame
and emulation, and the convention in
February will offer an excellent OPP
portunity for a free discussion and in
vestigation of the methods by which
the Tennessee bureau has been en-
abled to accomplish somuch. In ex
planning them it is to be hoped thai
CO... McWhirter will pay special at
tention to the Northern delegates, {
great many of whom are expected tC
attend. They will come actuated by
the most friendly sentiments, and
with the best wishes for the prosperi
ty and progress of Tennessee and the
South. 1t is to be feared, however
that their practical knowledge o
what the State or the section has &C
complished, or is capable Of accom-
plishing, may be found to be ratheI
inchoate. There are people in thu
North who know something abou
| thiS nnd Of tho pOuntrv hut thpi