The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1894-12-12
DIVERSIFIED INDUSTRIES.
| Necessary Requisite OF Prosperity In any
Country or Community.

To the Editor of the Ne,cs and Courier:
A purely agricultural people can
never be rich. They are necessarily
customers of commercial and manu-
featuring nations to whose wealth they
contribute while they themselves re-
main poor.
If one-half the ploughs that are run
in South Carolina were stopped, and
the people that run them by some
magic could be transferred to work
shops and factories to furnish articles
for home and foreign consumption,
the State would in afew years become
incomparably more prosperous than it
| can ever be under present conditions,
where the products Of soil have to be
shipped hundreds and sometimes
thousands of miles to get sales. Even
| the few fruits and vegetables made in
the South for sale have to be market
ed in Northern cities through thous-
and miles of nearer and competing
territory. The Northern people, who
had the foresight to found college as
| soon as they founded q colony, are
| always wise enough to provide mar
ket for their farm products. AS soon
as one of their new States is settled
and has surplus of bread and meat,
which is about all they can raise, they
at once look around to make home
market, and build workshops and fac
tories, to whose operatives they can
sell the products Of the farm.
A citizen of o Northern town in a
letter to the writer says:
"We wanted factory and subscrib-
ed $40, 900, with which We boug bit a
lot and erected building and adver-
tised that the property would be deed
ed to anyone who would establish q
shoe factory and run it for three years"
The offer was accepted, and the gen
tleman adds: 'I contributed 81 900
of the amount and all I ask is to be
allowed to do the like again.
Illinois is a fertile prarie State,
with very little water power, and
seems to have good reasons for re-
naming purely agricultural State,
yet it has made its workshops keep
pace with agriculture, SO that it is the
second State in the Union in the
amount of it's manufactured goods.
The farm and the factory support each
other and the continually increasing
surplus overAows upon the improvi-
dent South.
South Carolina has over 1000, 600
available water horse power, with no
ice to clog the wheels. Of this not
5,OOO-horse power is utilized and raw
cotton constitutes almost its only
article of export. New York State
alone produces $500, 100000 worth Of
manufactured articles more than the
whole South makes. We need look
no further to find the cause of the
wealth of the North and the poverty
of the South, in spite Of the acknowl,
edged superior natural advantages OF
the latter. It is funny cry, "We
make them rich" It is that our little
surplus all flows into Northern Golfers
and that we must remain hewers of
wood and drawers Of water for the
North until we become wiser.
But the source of the North wealth
is the home market, which its people
have the sense to build up, and their
own selfhelp. A Northern farm jour-
nal offered premiums for the best ac-
counts of mortgage lifting given by
farmers from their own experience:
I have read the essays Of dozens OF
these farmers whose lands cost from
$50 to s1OO per acre, and in every case
the debts were paid by the sale Of
some of the following articles: Milk,
butter, eggs, poultry, Irish potatoes,
lambs, pigs, calves, oats, fruits and
vegetables. How surprising this must
appear to cottontot!
We need not hug to our bosom the
delusion that any large portion Of the
Northern people are poverty stricken
as we of the South are. Their very
prosperity makes the laboring popula-
tion presumptuous, causing them to
bring trouble on themselves by strikes,
etc. Our people are too poor to at
tempt such things. The tide OF en-
terprising young men which constantly
flows to Northern cities attests the
fact that industry and business tact
accumulate wealth there sooner than
in the South. People do not emigrate
to poor countries. Before the war
South Carolina was extremely pros
nerous This was partly owing to the
fact that it was full of workshops and
was almost self-supporting and cotton
was to some extent a surplus crop.
The country abounded in carriage,
wagon, gin, tailor, shoemaker and
blacksmith shops and in -four mills,
corn mills, tanneries and hand looms.
Now such occupations are almost ex-
tinct and we import all that we eat,
all that we wear and all that we use,
and only have cotton to exchange.
Then. in proportion to population,
there were five times as many people
working at the ordinary trades as there
are now, furnishing a market for the
products of the farm and keeping the
money at home.
Some years ago the Legislature, IN
order to develop home markets by the
encouragement of mechanical indus
tries, enacted law partially exempt.
ing from taxation for ten years all
| capital invested in new enterprises OF
this nature. 1t served to invite for
eign capital to enter the State, and to
draw from hiding places money that
had hitherto escaped taxation, putting
such treasures in tangible shape for
future taxation, at the same time in
| creasing the school fund, building up
towns, giving the farmer market for
all the products Of his farm, with a
higher price for his cotton and enhanc-
! ing the value Of all the neighboring
lands, thereby increasing the States
revenue. Thus all the property upon
which Piedmont Factory was located
only paid in taxes to the State thirty
dollars annually all told, yet the fac.
tory soon paid into the school fund
alone 81, 900, and now after the expir-
alton of the ten years probably pays
$4,000 or $4,000 in taxes annually.
Had the benefcent law remained on
the statute book the State would pro-
badly at this time have had $40, ,O0O,-