The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1886-08-18
INDUSTRIAL,
GROWTH.

aS snow III lIOIl Ills W Ili1lS III the
semi-annual reviews, is suggestive
in many ways. And this industrial
Growth has set in since the close of
the war, about twenty years ago.
According to the figures of the
Baltimore Manufacturers Record.
the industrial growth of the fourteen
Southern States has increased from
s36. $4,000 to $63,61S,2OO in the
past six months, and this immense
sum represents about all kinds Of
industrial enterprises. The South
is no longer dependent upon the
North, not even for it's wash-basins
and combs, and prayer-books and
matches as it was before the Gun
pleasantness," when nearly the whole
body of the people were engaged in
agriculture; and where the whole
body of the people n thus engaged
a home market for any considerable
surplus of the crops is a simple
impossibility. The growerofcotton,
or tobacco, or rice, or wheat, or corn
has neither heed or desire to pur-
chase a like product; he is always a
seller, not a buyer of the commodity.
If his excess Over his wants cannot
find consumption in his own neigh
borhood, it must be sent to a distant
one for that purpose; and if Gus
toners or consumers cannot be
found nearer than Liverpool, his
growths must o the ocean in
search of a market. His pay, after
deducting the cost of a long trans
~portation and the profits of many
middlemen, comes back in the shape
of cloth, clothing, boots, shoes, uten-
sils, implements, furniture, and the
whole round of articles required to
meet the demands of household and
plantation or farm life. Many tons
of raw material are exchanged for a
ton of finished products. A piece Of
dress silk or bolt of broadcloth rep
resents a number of bales of cotton,
or hogsheads of tobacco, or tierces
of rice, or bushels of wheat or of
corn, packed in small compass. The
tax Transportation on the outgoing
freight is large and onerous, because
of the great bulk of the commodity;
that on the incoming freight is small
and easily borne, because of the
diminutive bulk. These several taxes
com out of the pockets of the sew
eral producers; for he who is DEEPEN
dent p o a distant market for his
products must either himself pay
the cost of their transportation to
that market or else sell to some
trader who will, the price received
not being minus the sum required to
remove the purchase to such market.
In this transaction each several agri-
culturist is a considerable loser, on
account of the large size and weight
Of his raw material; while the man.
utacturer suffers only a trifing loss,
his finished product being compact
and usually light.
Such is the system of exchanges
which long prevailed at the South,
as a necessary o%utgrowth Of the
divorce of diversified industry from
agriculture and trade, that section
having refused to accept manutac-
turing development because believed
to beinimical to the economic theory
of capital owning it's labor.
On the contrary, the North, par
ticularly the eastern portion, which
adopted tariff protection and elevat-
ing force, became the middlemen
who purchased the surplus of the
South's plantations and paid for it
in wares and merchandise. Her
producers we're always in debt for
supplies, and evermore di%scounting
the growing crops. Indeed, for a
quarter of a century previous to the
Rebellion, there were very few days
when she was not indebted to the
productive North to the value OF
one seasons growth of cotton. Her
dependence upon distant markets
for almost every necessary, comfort,
convenience and luxury OF life not
extracted from the soil in the shape
Of a raw material was complete,
universal, helpless and discreditable.
1t was a case of humiliating DEEPEN
dence. But all this is now being
changed. The South is utilizing its
raw material, and it's capital no
longer remains buried under ground.
Ideas are being circulated, brains
+ coming to the front and the
South now has industrial exhibitions