The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1894-11-02

but since the close OF the great
struggle which the Southern people in
augurated in order TO secure to them
selves the perpetuation of slavery and
free trade, there has been great
change from the conditions then exist
ing American cotton is no longer
king. Foreign and New England man.
ufacturers are not now utterly depend
ent upon our Southern cotton fields for
their raw material-they obtain it freely
elsewhere and, under improved agricul-
ture since the abrogation of slavery,
the South produces double the amount
it did in the old days. Neither is the
South utterly dependent upon others
for its manufactured goods nor for its
market for its cotton. The South has
now money and varied industries.
There are cotton mills everywhere in
the South and the product of the cotton
fields of Alabama made into cloth upon
the spot where it is grown is sold in the
markets of China and elsewhere over
the earth to-day.
The deposits of iron and coal no
longer lie unnoticed, but furnaces and
rolling mills abound and no inconsid-
cradle amount of the iron products Of
this country now are of Southern origin.
All this change has been wrought in
the South through the policy OF pro-
lection which, for more than thirty
years, has been continuously adhered
to in this country.
Under the stimulating influence of
our beneficent tariff system the South
has prospered as well as the North and
the facts, which are the outgrowth of
its recent experience, are making in
roads in its old-time barriers of preju-
dice against tariff legislation. The
main thing that has lately prevented
the acquiescence of the South in the
tariff reciprocity system of the Repub
lican party has undoubtedly been the
prejudice against the party itself The
Republican party stands in the minds
of the Southern people as the represen
tative of their discontinue. To accept
protection would be TO acknowledge
the wisdom of the Republican party
and to contribute to its success and
supremacy The Republican party
sought, not only protection to Amer
lean industries, but political equality
the right of the negro to vote, and with
the Southern white the race question
was paramount to all else.
But with the bounties removed from
sugar, with the price of cotton reduced
to five cents per pound, and with the
so low that they cannot be produced
and meet expenses, even under the
favorable conditions that exist with
them, it would be wonder if the South
did not begin to realize that something
was rotten in Denmark. The South
has had period of prosperity, and if
the same conditions prevailed now it
would still be prospecting. If it had
overcome more of its old-time preju-
dices against Northern people and
Northern ideas it would have prospered
still greater. But its prosperity is gone.
Cotton is down to five cents and still
declining. This price will not, with
most planters, cover the cost of pro-
duction Under the new system there
must be surplus with which to buy
fertilizers for the next crop. The man
ufacture of fertilizers has become a
great industry in the South and the
article is sold largely at home-used to
raise cotton. But it takes money to
procure it and the present price of cot
ton insures no surplus to buy with. The
South can appreciate the fact that the
stagnation under which it suffers is due
to itself. 1t united with the Demo-
cratic party North in its warfare against
the industries of the people of the North
and its own have gone down in the
common ruin. The Southern cotton
planter may know more when now he
realizes that in reducing the value of
the wool of the Northern farmer below
living price, he has at the same time
brought down his cotton to the same
category There is no teaching like
experience.
The Louisiana sugar planters could
cry down protection because it is "a
Republican tenet, until they found that
Democratic success, which they so
strenuously upheld, meant financial
ruin, when they have awakened to their
senses and have come over into the
ranks of their former enemy.
How beautifully study of the situ-
alton discloses the fact of the utter i'm
possibility of beating down any one
important industry without injuring all.
1t was very well to knock out Northern
manufacture and Northern mines and
agricultural products; but it transpires,
to the edification of our Southern breth-
rem, that the like industries with them
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