The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1900-02-13
THE WORLDS NEW WATERFRONT
Canal to Open Up the South
to the Nations of the Earth-Stupen-
dous Figures and Most Wonderful
Development in Southern Indusrri :.

Within the next decade the southern
states Of the Union will command the
water front of the world,
Rash as this statement may seem to
be, IL is TO the man who looks at the
map Of the world with eliminating his
tory in his mind, a sure conclusion,
and in the development OF this won
derful change there will follow such
Industrial and commercial revolutions
as have never resulted from feats OF
arms, and which would be an IMPOSE
bility in the estimation of the world
heretofore.
With the completion of the Nicara-
guam canal, which is now a certainty,
with only details to be considered. the
change in conditions and in effect upon
communities, will be as great as the
changes in mileage to round which
ships have heretofore been compelled
TO circle the two great southern capes.
In the developments which have been
moving our southern country with cleo
trio speed, il has been impossible 10
fully realize the momentum at which
we We're going. a few figures tell the
story so far as local influences are con
cerned, and these alone would furnish
a subject for wide speculation.
For instance, in the twenty years
which are now closing, the money in
vested in cotton manufacturers has
increased from 81, 900, 900 to S125. GOO, 900.
a five fold duplication. and eloquent
with the story Of its own overmaster-
ing power.
The pindleS represented in the cotton
mills Of the southern states were only
1000 twenty a ago, against o.
600, 900 today.
Then we used 233,SS6 bales of our
home product, cotton, and now We use
1,400,0 600 bales, and it is safe to say
from figures already in land that the
southern mills will during the
coming year two million bales of cotton
or one-sixth of the entire crop raised.
We would need to go no further
than these figures to point out a revo-
luton run wild, loosed from every
method of measurement, and the fu-
ture possibilities of which it would be
idle to attempt to estimate. When
hundreds grow into millions it is time
for men whose minds are aged by the
~Slow-going process of old to stand by
and allow the triumphal procession OF
to pass on it's way.
Yet, with this accomplishment the
southern state nave had out o fore
ldSl6 OIL WHAT Is TO come. Inc average
cotton crop of about $3.50, 600, 900 nnu
ally has heretofore left behind it nothA
ing but the price paid for it raw pro-
duction, while out of the ground grew
the riches of argoSieS, there stood in
the fields lily paid producers, who had
no other resource but the production
d a crop the market Of which was con-
trolled by those whose sole interest
lay in cheapening it's price. 1t is from
this ~Stan6n0inf that we q ro RI onnCi6-
er the first revolution in which a little
more. than half a million home spin
dies bounded and multiplied and in
creased until it takes five million to
write the record within a short twel.ly
years!
This crop, which was so m
ative in it's raw condition, was the
basis of colossal wealth to old and new
England. In the hands of the skillful
operative it leapt from a value ofS350,-
600, 900 to a value of two billions of dol.
lars. 1t is a foretaSte of this immense
multiplication of wealth, lying within
their grasp, which has been experience
ed by the people of the southern states,
and hence the momentum of increase
In our spindles is but the evidence of
the determination of the people that
the cotton field shall be the cotton fac
toy as we'll, and that this two billions
of dollars which has heretofore gone
to enrich distant places, will hereafter
deposit it's golden dividends in outh-
ern popertieS. In the bringing about
of this condition of affairs, it must not
be supposed that home pide or local
influence is the principle which con-
trolls. The old adage OF business is that
it is dollars which talk. These dollars
lying o in p~rOfuSiOn wherever
cotton is raised, are just as plain to
the business man of old or New Eng
and as they are to our own people
and hence it is that in the additions to
manufacturing plants, or in the invest
ment of capital in new plants, that
these men are equally active in estab-
fishing mills in the south, as can be
the southern people themselves. 1t is
a case of business seeking it's normal
point, as when the Massachusetts of
Lowell invested half a million in the
Lindale Mills of Georgia, or Amory
Brown and Company put $4,000 900 into
the I~ndian-head mills at Cordova, Ala.
No wonder that men like these,
squeezing along through life at two
per cent. profits, are moved to change
their location when they req of a
ninety-tWo per cent. profit in Dalton,
or of the frequent twenty-five and fifty
per cent. dividends declared in other
places throughout the south.
The extent to which our trade in
cotton textiles with North China has
been growing during the last few years
upholds every claim which can be
made. AS recently as 1895 our whole
exports of cotton cloth to China were
only So, 600. 900 yards. In the last fiscal
year exports of cotton goods to China
amounted TO 221, 600, 900 yards, which
was a gain of seventy per cent. on the
amount of the previous year. This
trade is still advancing, and in the
opinion of some who have studied the
matter we have as yet merely scratch
ed the surface. One writer on the sub
ject says that the consumption of raw
cotton per inhabitant of these United
States was reconed in 1898 at wenty-
five pounds per nnu If the China
men eve attain that standard, as they
might readily do were their purchasing
powers equal to their desire to pos
sess an abundance of what is practical
ly the only material Of their clothing,
they would require to meet their de-
mands alone 17,5O0,000 bales of cotton
a year, or largely in excess Of the total
annual products Of the world. The po-
tentiality Of the demand for our cotton
textiles in the cotton market is thus