The record-union., 1893-01-23
TIE SOUTH OF TO-DAY.
Remarkable Progress Since the Close
of the War.
Exercise of the Elective Franchise
South of Mason and Dixon's
Line.


in the South during the quarter of a CEN
tury that has elapsed since the Civil War.
The South has been like the sleeping
Beauty' in the fairy story, and Northern
capital and enterprise, Yankee grit and
gumption, have touched the Princess
with a fairy wand. The South has learned
that her mountains are ribbed with ore,
scanned with coal. dotted with granite,
marble and limestone quarries which are
mines and magazines of untold wealth.
1t seems marvellous that the South oc-
cupied her great domain for 100 years
and never suspected what mineral wealth
slumbered beneath her feet. Much of
the South is worn out by unscientific
farming, the scratchiculture of the shift
less slavery times, but her hills are
veined with ores more golden than all
her haryests, while the swarthy servitors
that lie on the matches in her coal meas
ures are worth more than all the slaves
emancipated by the war.
The coal area of West Virginia, Ken
lucky and Alabama and Georgia exceeds
the combined coal area of Pennsylvania,
Great Britain, Germany and France
by 1,500 square miles. West Virginia
and Kentucky alone have iron enough to
supply the | Mon for one hundred years,
and while coal lands in Pennss slvania are
held at 81 900 per acre, they can be bought
IN this region from So to so per acre.
The streams of the South that used to
flow unveXed to the sea are now har-
messed to the mill-wheel and are turning
ore into untold wealth. The anvil chorus
OF peace and prosperity is ringing in all
her valleys; peace has her victories as
well as war, and the South to-day is be-
ipp WILLINGLY hiIIoatad NV
capital and enterprise.
1t is safe to predict that within the next
ten years the tide of capital and immigra-
ton, of money will set mere strongly to-
ward the South than toward the West
In 1880 the South made 100000 pounds of
pig iron. Her output this year will easily
reach 2,0O0,OO0 pounds. She has learned
that one Yankee emigrant is worth
twenty foreigners, and so has wiped out
Mason and DiXon's line. That part of
the nation called tile South is a large part
of North America. 1t may be described
as extending from Delaware along the
Atlantic and Gulf coasts of Mexico; going
westward it embraces all south of the
Ohio River.
The South contains fifteen of the States
of the Union, five of them being of the
original thirteen. These States embrace
territory of 100000 square miles, more
than twelve times the territory of New
46AdS dlOl1S MOuIu make IOuI
New Englands, and would make 2l0
Rhode Islands. 1t could have produced
all our food crop last year, and could have
raised the worlds supply of cotton and
then had cattle range left larger than
the State of New York and $4,000 square
miles of timber.
The Colorado River cuts its way
through a mountain of solid marble 100
miles long. Texas is larger than France,
has greater agricultural resources than
all the other sixteen Southern States
combined, and is destined to be the gar
den and granary of this Western world.
The race question, which has played and
IS destined to play an important part in the
future of the South, never before received
the amount of attention and discussion
which it IS now inducing from all classes
and conditions. The Southern States
have one-quarter of the white and twelve
thirteenths of the negro population of the
whole country; in other words, one
ninth of the population of the United
States belongs to the colored race, and it
is nearly all massed in the South.
Let us look at the race question from the
standpoint of American citizens. Ours is
republican Government, the stability
of whose institutions we are never tired
of repeating and reiterating, depends
upon the virtue and intelligence of its
citizens. Illiteracy in republic is a
gangrene ofpolitical corruption, eats out
the very vitals of nation's life.
Out Of the 100000 voters of this Nation
who cannot read their ballots, nearly
three-tourths are in the South.
We used to be told that when the negro
was emancipated that they would die out
as the Indians are doing. For 100 years
this Nation tried to count the negro out Of
its civilization, only as Il newer of wood
and "a drawer of water. But fate has
counted him in, made him powerful in
numbers and placed in his hand a tre-
mendous power for good or evil.
He has 100000 votes, the balance of
power, and if he has a free ballot and a
fair count he may some day elect Presi-
dent. How important that he should be
educated. Rum is after them, Rome is
after them, the politician is after them
wherever they have vote. The moral
weakness, resulting from years ofslavery,
still clings to them.
At the beginning of this century there
were 100000 negroes in America. AT the
close of the rebellion there were 4. coo. COO
and to-day there are 100000. They in
creased from 1880 to 1892 35 per cent. bv
births alone. Five hundred births day.
while our white population has only in
creased % per cent. by both births and
immigration.
Fifty years from now there will be not
less than 40,000,000 negroes in this Union
at the same rate of increase, and thew
will hold in their hands the destinies of
this nation. AS to not being able to take
care of themselves and starving to death.
they not only take care of themselves but
the white people.
They do nineteen-twentieths of the
manual labor of the South. They have
raised more cotton in the last fifteen wears
than the whole South did in fifteen wears
before the war, and they were assessed
last year for 500, ,000, 900 taxable property.
Wade Hampton once proposed TO get
rid of the race problem in the South by
deporting the negroes 10 Africa or New
England or some other foreign country,
The negroes could stand this vastly better
than the South could, for it is abiectlv
dependent upon negro labor, the only la
Dor that is adapted to the Southern cli-
mate and the cheapest and best labor in
the world. But the negro is not going to
leave the South. He did not come there
OF his own accord, but now that he is
there he is going to stay. He made the
wealth and prosperity of the country.
and he has certainly as good right to
enjoy it as any f. f. Y. in all the land.
Look again at the illiteracy of the
South. The Southern States, with only
one-third of the Nations population has
three-fourths of the Nations illiteracy,
and this ignorance is not among foreign
ers, as it is in the North, but among
native-born citizens, white and black.
Out of half million illiterates in New
England rs per cent. are foreigners, but
out of the 100000 illiterates in Ala
bama, Arkansas, Georgia and South
Carolina, only q per cent. are foreigners.
Now, ignorance among foreigners
usually passes away in a generation.
The children of the ignorant Irish and
Italians are in our public schools. But
the ignorance of the South is handed
in fact, been on the increase since the
war