The Newberry herald and news. (Newberry, S.C.) 1884-1903, 1892-02-10
LESS POLITICS AND MORE PRACTI-
CAL BUSINESS.

letter by O. P. Bowser to the Dallas
(Texas) News. We find it in the Manu-
facturer's Record. There is so much
truth in it,-though some parts OF 1t
we may not endorse-that We feel that
some good will be accomplished by re-
producing it here. AS long as we buy
more than we sell, money is bound to
60 away from US and be scarce among
us.
What we want is capital, to come
to our State to build factories and other
enterprises. Instead of sending off
everything we raise to be manufactured
somewhere else, and buying it back at
from five to ten times what we got for
1t, we should manufacture it at home.
What is said in this letter as true in
Texas will apply in large measure to
South Carolina. We should not have
legislation antagonistic to capital, but
we should encourage it to seek invest
ment in our midst. It puts more
money in circulation and gives en-
ployment to more people.
The truth Of the business is we waste
toe much time talking about politics
AMI looking to legislation for the reme-
dies that we can apply ourselves. We
should get down to business and no;
get too much excited about who is
elected to office. WI the time comes
to vote we should = o the polls and
cast our votes for good, sensible, prac-
tical and successful bushes men, aud
let the professional politician and place
hunter seek other employment:
"Wbile we discuss constitutional and
theoretical questions the Yankees go
right along in their practical way and
select their representatives on business
principles, always getting the better OF
US.
by way of illustration will give
few figures to show why the practical
Yankee is long on cash, while we theo-
retical and constitutional Southerners
are always short in finances.
''We sell our cotton at s cents per
pound and buy it back at 20. We sell
wool at 20 cents per pound and buy it
back at 50. Sell hides at - cents and
buy them back in boots and shoes at 81
to S3. We rush our wheat off to glut-
ted markets by the carload and buy it
back by the 100 pounds. Sell broom
corn by the ton and buy it back by the
broom. Send our hogs TO Kansas City
and Chicago and get them back in ba-
cor, hams and lard. Sell beef steer
in Chicago for $25, and when we have
purchased the manufactured articles
| from the horns, hair, hide and hoofs
and the packed beef FROM the carcass,
we have paid near $3.50 to get him back,
a profit to the Yankee of about Sl25:
I'VE have the finest stock-raising
country in the world, yet buy our
horses from Kentucky, our mules from
Missouri and our blooded cattle from
Iowa. With superior corn country
we get our starch from New York,
glucose from Illinois, whiskey from
| kentucky and bacon and lard from
everywhere. We send ont of Texas
every year from $4,000, 900 to ST., ,OOO,-
| 900 for machinery and agricultural I'M
plements Of every kind, while our own
| iron mines remain undeveloped and
our virgin pine forests untouched. And
so on until we have imported every
thing from a needle to steam engine,
from an axe handle to thrashing ma
chine or binder.
"On all these things we pay the manu-
facturers from 500 to $500 per cent.
profit, while our raw material lies un-
used and wasting. The manufacturer
becomes millionaire and the Eastern
farmer grows rich supplying the popu-
lous cities with the products of his farm,
while our Texas farmer grows poorer
and more dependent and despondent
with each succeeding year.
"An unwise State policy, followed by
suicidal legislation, has temporarily ag-
gravated our troubles and multiplied
| our embarrassments. While we have
| lust marketed the most bountiful crops
ever produced in the State, and should
naturally be enjoying corresponding
prosperity, it is well known that. our
people have never suffered so greatly
from a Statewide depression. Moth
ing but grumbling and discomfort
everywhere, no railroads being con-
structed, no factories being built, no
new enterprises of any kind being es-
tablished, while thousands of honest
working people are cut of employment
and hundreds Of these idle unfortun-
ates suffering for the necessaries Of life.
The whole commercial and financial
field is strewn with the wrecks of for
tunes of our best and most enterprising
and pubIic-spirited citizens. Men who
have spent their lives building up the
State, developing her resources and
accunulating a competency against
old age are helplessiy seeing all swept
away by two years Of folly and incom-
potency.
Massachusetts, laid the foundation
for her immense wealth and perpetual
prosperity when she enacted laws re-
quiring every family in the old Com
monwealth to spin at least three pounds
of wool, cotton or fax per week for at
at least 80 weeks in each year, and built
on that foundation by enacting laws to
keep her money at home and get as
much of other peoples as possible. AS
result of that course the banks Of the
city of Boston alone collect over $780,
900, 900 per annum in interest and divi-
dends, while we are laying the founda-
ton for perpetual poverty aud depend
ence in legislating money out of the
State by enactment of alien land laws,
railway commission bills, land forfeit
ure suits and every kind of legislation
unfriendiy 10 capital - that capital
which is the only means by which we
can construct railroads, erect factories
and develop the wonderful natural re-
sources of the State, with which we
haze been more bountifuly blessed
than any part of the United States, if
nos of any part of the inhabitable
globe.
Now let US 60 to work and build in
the State of Texas 500 factories every
year for five years, and I will stake my
life that we will enjoy prosperity
never experienced by any other people
on earth in any period of the history Of
the civilized world. And if I had two
lives 1 would stake them both that in
ten years our great Democratic majorl-
t1- oon16 ha for rorotaotiva tariff on-