The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1899-06-21

coal; this past record-breaking winter
you have warmed your hands over
fire of So to 81 coal, corporation mined.
You have paid shoe maker months
wages for a pair of boots now you
pay the merchant profit in the one
days work, the wage of which buys
you a better pair, corporation made.
Your experience will multiply these
trite illustrations almost adinfinitum.
Not all of this price-making has
been done by the corporations, but not
ali others causes combined would have
made modern prices possible if corpo-
rate capital had not become "a price
maker. If you doubt this, try the cost
today of handmade articles, not for
getting to reckon the cost of hand
made raw material, tools, etc., and
even if you give to the workmen
every modern tool and machine which
the largest business can possibly
enable his individual enterprise to use
with profit, the lowest cost at which
he can produce the com menest article
will be many times what you can now
buy its equal for in the nearest store.
When q price is reduced from y
months wages to days pay sombody
besides the price-maker has made q
profit. The consumer has gained,
surely. Could any shouter get your
vote to annul the charters and burn
the plants Of all the big boot and shoe
manufacturers, and put the prices back
to the months work basis I? Would
you consent to laws making the price
of coal what individual mining would
have kept it at if the corporation price
maker had let coal alone? Do you
want every article of iron and steel
that you buy or use or the price of
which determines some other price
put back to the Accent nail basis ?
He spoke truth who said: "You can
argue around, over or through q
theory, but when you meet fact you
must just face it," The price of every
article you buy that has felt an artis-
ans touch is fact. 1t is prosperity
fact, rich with lessons we Of the South
may heed with profit.
The center of wealth of this country
is where corporations flourish. That
center would be in the South if it
were located according to natural ad-
vantages. 1t will be in the South
when the South abandons prejudice
and adopts wisdom.
I am not one Of those who imagine
that the real sentiment Of the South is
expressed in the laws we have regard
ing capital, nor il the lack of cor
diality with which, sometimes, new
capital is welcomed. We all know
how much louder sound the empty
barrel gives forth when 1t is set roll
ing, as we'll as the smaller effort
needed to put it in motion. We have
put the empty barrels in office. We
have sent them to our Legislatures.
We have let them outvote the think.
ing people in our constitutional con-
ventions. Perhaps we thought them
harmless because empty. Perhaps we
let them do our thinking because they
were so ready to do our bowling. Per-
haps we were 30 busy working we did
not get correct idea Of what their
howls signified. In all this the South
has slandered itself. It has let the
howler put an embargo on trade. 1t
has let him discourage capital. 1t has
let him say "let us alone."' 1t has sur
rendered to him the making of our
laws. It is time the South put on
record its protest against all this. It
is time the South made known the
fact that the spirit of hospitality per-
vades Southern business no less than
Southern homes. It is time the right
hand of the business South be
extended, offered to stranger capital.
1t is time that capital, outside or
home capital, be encouraged
to form here the bundles
of twigs that shall meet modern busi-
ness conditions and bring modern
business results to the South.
The Power of a Highway.
From the Father of Waters west to
the continents backbone stretches a
million square miles of what Is fast
becoming the garden of a continent.
A little of this vast empire was "a
good country and fair to see" as nature
made 1t. Most of 1t was once known
as the Great American Desert. Bones
marked the trails that made its only
routes of travel. Death lived there.
In it's arid plains, its poisoned airs, it's
furnace breath or its ice.nurtured
winds its barrenness divided existence
between summers burning death and
winters frost-begotten sleep. Its few
travellers, gold seeking and gold enthus-
ed, dared its horrors with trembling
and were oftener than not its victims.
Scarce any. life, except it's wolves and
it's vultures, loved it.
That desert is gone. Gone from our
maps. Gone almost from our meme
ries. Gone from natures face. Its
horizon-bounded plains, its sand
storms, its blizzards, its alkalies,
its whole list of curses
pregnant with death-alJ are still
there. Three things only have been
added-railroads, people,, wealth.
The first made possible the second,
and they two could not, did not, long
dwell together in desert till the third
was there. If these things could be
where nature was false and the earth
unkind, what might not flower in the
South if but steel-bound paths were
open to all its sunkiss ed hills and
green-carpeted valleys?
The answer is bugun to be written
along the few railroads we have per-
mitted to come among US. The full
answer is in the blessings Of him who
lives near "the road" and the curses of
him who markets his toil-won produce
from some finland" place forty miles
from nowhere.
We'll, railroading is q business mat
ter. Business is but capital in motion.
Capital would rather rest than move