The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1895-10-23
Southern Progress.

"The South is very large express
sion, and progress in the South indicates
a movement distributed over many
States not at all alike, either in natural
advantages or lately acquired enterprise.
Some parts of the South are still very
backward, while others have made ad-
yapces of late years which it would be
difficult to find excelled in any other
section of the country. People have be-
come familiar with the rapidly increasing
production of the great agricultural sta
ple of the South. Between 1880 and 1885
the crop kept within 100000 bales, by
1886 it was $500, 600 bales, and by 1889
close on to 100000. The maximum was
thought to have been reached when the
crop of 1890 exceeded 100000 bales, but
that was thrown into the shade when the
extraordinary crop of last year showed a
total of nearly 9,500,000 bales. The pres
ent years. crop will be very far short of
this in quantity, though, thanks to the
advanced price, its value may be as great.
In the natural order of things. the crop of
1894 will not stand long without rival:
When Texas grows more cotton than all
the South did before the war, and she is
still at the beginning Of her agricultural
development, the cotton producing possi-
bilities of the South are very far from
being exhausted.
Side by side with the growth Of what
used to be the only source of Southern
wealth there has been growing up more
diversified agriculture and the beginning
of wide range Of manufactures. It is
characteristic of the new spirit of the
South that the cotton seed oil industry is
the growth of the period since the war.
A product which was reckoned useless in
1860 figured in 1890 as having a value,
after treatment in the mills, of S25, 1884 900,
and is to-day the basis of an investment
in buildings and machinery of $50, ,000,-
600. In 1880 the whole South produced
only 143,00O,000 bushels of grain, last
year the yield was 600, 100000. The num-
ber of tons of coal mined in 1880 was but
little over 100000, while in 1894 it was
80, 100000 The output of pig iron in the
South in 1880 was 300 tons, and In
1894 100000 tons. The value of the
product of the sawed and planed lumber,
which in 1880 was sac, ,gSs, 900, had risen in
1894 to S1l4,746,674. The true value Of
sus returns of 1880, was S7,641 200, 900;
last year it was estimated at 81 per cent.
more.
There are to-day some 100000, 900 in
vested in manufacturing enterprises in
the South, with an estimated annual
value of product of 81 ,OOO. 900, 900. Of the
former, about sos, 900 is invested in
cotton mills, or five times as much as in
1880, and some $93, 100000 is invested in
lumber mills. A recent writer on the
South remarked that with the possession
of all the raw materials entering into
manufactures, with cheap labor and cost
of living, the industrial future of the
South should be of the brightest But
the fact that these resources remained 80
long undeveloped and are now coming 30
fully into evidence argues change in
the spirit Of the people more significant
than the inexhaustible bounty of nature.
No one at all familiar with the old South
can fail to be struck with the resolution
with which the men whom the war left
pepniless set themselves to repair their
| wasted fortunes. While there we're many
that succumbed to the struggle. as we'll
as many that surmounted it, they have,
as rule, left there some much better
fitted for the competition Of modern life
than they were themselves. The rapid
accelerstion of Southern progress may be
| due partly to an infusion of Northern
energy, but it is mainly the work of
| Southerners who were two young to
know anything of the war or its passions,
or who were born after its close. In the
hands of this generation the South has
taken its first great stride Of real progress.