Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1890-06-20
FRIDAY MORNING. JUNE 20. 1890.
THE PERMANENCY OF THE AC-
TIVITY AT THE SOUTH.

FnIDAI mOnNINQ, SONE GVs hOoos
THE PERMANENCY OF THE AC-
TIVITY AT THE SOUTH.
The most conservative and cautious
minds in the country-those that have been
slow to accept, and still slower to express
their acceptance of the permanency of the
present activity at the South, are beginning
to be convinced that the boom OF the day
in this section is not to end as other specu-
lations-with profit to few and loss to
many-but is to endure like the other ma
terial progress of the other sections OF the
Union. The Iron Age, ajournal whose spe-
cialty is indicated by its name, and whose
province it is to gather all information at
fecting it's present and future, has been
a nong the reticent ones. P ublished ina loca-
lity-Pittsburg, to which the startling
growth of iron manufacture in the South is
a formidable and victorious rival, its silence
was to be expected. But even that journal
Yields to the pressure of multiplying facts,
and in it's last issue holds these important
views under the title-"The South on an
enduring basis:
s'The traveller through the South cannot
fail to be impressed by the evidences of pros
perity on every hand. He may have been in
clined to discredit the laudatory articles on
Southern progress which he had previously
read but the evidence of his own eyes is too
convincing to be lightly dismissed. The res
idents of other sections have heard SO much of
In in ctota oud
featuring property that it is no. at all strange
that they have been looking forward appre-
hensively to the time when the boom would
collapse with disastrous results? This has
been the case in other localities, and it is,
therefore, to be expected in the South. But
the predicted collapse does not yet come.
Waves of prosperity and of depression pass
over the country with the effect of increasing
the Southern pace during the former and
stacking it a little in the latter. The prophets
of disaster have not entirely ceased to predict
evil times ahead for Southern investments,
but they have so often failed that greater con-
fidence than ever seems to be repOsed in South
ern land and manufacturing schemes.
Sufficient time has now passed since the
South entered earnestly into the manufacture
basis upon which it rests. This explains the
situation and furnishes the reason why the
expected collapse in Southern speculations
has been so long deferred. Raw materials
cheaply mined and lying close together, with
but reasonable wages paid to Dor, and ready
access to the best market in the world for their
product-these are the keys to the situation.
The success of early enterprises has stimula-
ted the establishment of others, and the stream
OF gold pouring into the South seems to grow
larger in volume rather than smaller, So
strong is the tide now flowing to the South
that the industries of that section promise to
be maintained for years, until some over
whelming financial crisis occurs Of world
wide effect which will be as severe in Penn
sylvania as in Alabama and in Great Britain
as in Virginia. Fortunes are being made so
rapidly in the South that capital is becoming
domesticated there, and auxiliary enterprises
which are being undertaken will serve to
assist, if not support, those which were
first established.
at is most promising sign of the time S
and is as we'll an indication of the widespread
prosperity of the South, that the manufacture
OF finished products is rapidly being intro
duced. Many of the new towns now spring
ing up so rapidly in Virginia, Kentucky,
Tennessee, North Carolina and Alabama will
have blast furnaces, it is true, for their coal
and iron ore deposits, make this industry ma
tural and desirable, but at the same time steps
are being taken to manufacture some more ad-
vanced product than pig iron for sale to other
localities. This policy has been preached to
ha OIL, 1orx
industry there. But the preaching would
never have been effective without the great
movement now in progress of active business
men toward the South. They are seeking To-
cations near the cheapest raw material in the
country, SO as to get every advantage possible
in competingwith other manufacturers The
most important question to most manufactur-
ers to-day is how to cheaper the cost of their
product so as to preserve a foOthold in the
trade. And that question is being solved to
some extent at least by the movement of fac
tories toward the South OF by the establi.h-
ment Of factories in the South by enterprising
men who see a better chance there than in the
oversupplied North"
This opinion Of: the Iron Age receives
confirmation in the large Investments that
are now being made in Virginia by men
who have experience in the industries they
are starting. In an interview at Richmond
last Friday, President ingalls, of tie Chesa'
peake & Ohio Ry. is thus reported:
During the conversation with the reporter
President ingalls, said Virginia is making
rapid advancement; that in few years Clifton
Forge, Iron Gate, Goshen, Basic City, Staun
ton, Charlottesville, Buchanan, Glasgow and
other places along the line of the Chesapeake
and Ohio system will be flourishing manufac
turing towns; that capitalists from the Wes
and North are being attracted to Virginia
and are making large investments in mineral
lands and are laying out immense sums for the
erection of furnaces, coke ovens, and SC
FORTH