Sullivan republican. [volume] (Laporte, Pa.) 1883-1896, 1895-03-29
1 SUICIDAL POLICY.
THE SOUTH HAS CUT OFF ITS
NOSE TO SPITE IT'S FACE.

Cheap Foreign Wool Now Used in
the North as a Substitute For Cot
ton-Sugar Can Save the Plant
ers-Eli Perkins in the South.
have visited several old sugar plan
tations in Florida during the last
week. The great freeze which dropped
the mercury twenty degrees below
freezing point from Palatka to st.
Augustine has frozen n third of the
orange crop and killed all the old
trees. The calamity brings sadness to
all Florida. When 1 asked Judge
Hunt, of Palatka, how he felt about
it he said:
s'This frost has been calamity to
our State, but it stops with the
orange groves. Overproduction was
killing the orange industry and provi-
dence has come to our rescue. But
there Is another overproduction in
the South in n worse condition than
the orange crop"
"What is that?" I asked.
cit is cotton, sir. Our farmers are
now getting 81 and four cent pound
for what we used to get ten cents for,
and it is going lower every day. When
I think how foolish we Southerners
have acted it makes me sick. We had
the chance to save ourselves offered
us and we threw it away. We are now
convinced of our own foolishness.
"Well, what have you done?" ]
asked.
"We could not have done worse"
said the Judge. "We know now that
cheap wool is a substitute for cotton.
That is, cheap cotton was substituted
for wool, but now cheap wool is
substitute all over the North for cot
ton. Cheap Thibet, Asiatic and Aus.
tralian wool used to cost from sixteen
to twenty-five cents. We Southerners
thought it was smart to stab the wool
farmers and take the ten cent tariff of
of wool. We did it and now that same
wool is being sold to Northern knit
shirt and cloth factories for from six
to fifteen cents. With six-cent wool
the mills are throwing back our cot.
ton. Who would not give two cents q
pound more for wooden shirts or cloth
than for the same things made of cot.
ton?"
"How much cotton will this throw
out of the market?" asked.
ga million bales, sir. A friend Of
mine who has been in the New York,
Connecticut and Massachusetts mills
writes me that cheap foreign wool is
hurting the South more than the
North. 1t will reduce the demand for
cotton a million bales, he says, and
send the price of cotton down to 81
cents to our cotton farmers Then
see what idiots we have been on the
sugar question !"
"What have you done?" I asked.
"Why, we Southern men voted
solidly against the bounty on sugar.
Sugar was growing prodigiously in
Florida, Southern Alabama, Louisi-
ana and Texas. 1t was spreading all
along the Gulf of Mexico from Lake
Charles to Corpus Christi. It was
going up the Brazos. In five years,
with the bounty which Germany kept
on till she now makes sixty million
dollars worth of sugar annually
say in five years this sugar would have
taken 1000, 600 bales of cotton out of
our way and put $50, 900, 900 worth of
sugar in it's place. Think of 1t, we
Southerrars have cut off the demand
for cotton million bales in the North
and increased our product 1000, 900
bales in the South.
"What made you do it?" asked.
ooh, politics. Dog-on silly, idi-
otic politics. We thought we must
back the Democratic party, and now
they've swamped themselves in the
North and made paupers of us in the
South.
''And what do you propose to do?"
"Why, let us put that wool tariff
back aud let our cheap cotton take
the place of Aslatic wool, and then
put that sugar bounty on again and
send sugar into the cotton fields.
Editorials in the papers and prayers
in the churches won't save us now.
We must quit politics and use our
brains!" Eli PERKINS.