The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1900-06-12
correspondence.
FOR A PROTECTIVE TARIFF.

IVA @A@ -
ssThe Surviving Partner of Slavery and a
Menace TO Our Industrial Progress
correspondence of The Progressive Farmer.
Time brings youth to a period OF
maturity when that period is
reached the youth becomes a young
man and realizes for the fact that he
must abandon the rules that gov
erned him IN his younger life and
adopt those for his entrance into the
affairs with full-grown men. In the
development of nations there come
also periods when changed conditions
must be made or recognized.
This nation is face to face with
one of those periods; we cannot
stand still we must go ahead or go
backward. Under a system of pro-
lection we have developed manu-
featuring interests to an extent that
the domestic market will no longer
absorb our manufactured products.
Indeed, it has been shown by status
tics that our factories can make
goods enough in eight months to
supply all our domestic require
mentS.
Under adverse influences we have
already developed a very consider
sble export trade it is this trade
that is relieving our cotton factories
and taking all their surplus product.
If we can continue to extend this
trade, we may continue to build
mills indefinitely and still prosper in
the cotton regions; if we lose this
trade, we have too many mills now.
If we continue this development
there is ample room for all the cot
ton mills in the South and New Eng
land also; if it is not continued, it
will be not only a war between the
mills of New England and the South,
but many of the mills of the South
will destroy each other in the COM
petition for domestic trade.
The cotton crop of the United
States is 10, 600, 900 bales if this en-
tire crop were turned into plain
sheeting it would require the ser
vices of 1000, 900 employees this is
reckoning on a basis that one opera
tor will turn out ten bales of cotton
into standard sheeting in one year.
Then reckoning the population Of
the South at 20, OOO, 900, estimate
that of these 10, 1000, 900 are white
people and it becomes plain that we
can easily spare 1000, 900 of white
people for operatives in factories to
turn six cent cotton into IS cent cot
ton cloth. If we export this product
we receive from abroad 5000, 900, 900
for cloth instead of $500, 600, 900 for
raw cotton.
This is without increase of pOpula-
ton it is without additional outlay
over and above what we now put
out. 1t means a profit of twice the
present gross value of the present
cotton crop. 1t means that people
who now have one dollar to spend
will have three dollars to spend. 1t
means looking after our material in
terest and having material pros
perity. 1t means 81, OOO, 600, 900 for
the present cotton crop, which now
brings $500, 900, 900. 1t means cheap
houses for the working girls and
working boys to live in that toll
daily in the North Carolina mills. It
means good schools, low taxes, good
roads and the comforts of life as
against the pauper and camp life our
people have led so long under free
free trade administration.
It behOoves us to continue to diver
sify our industries and cling to the
system that encourages a profitable
interdependence of Jul citizens one
upon another we of the South have
only to look back to the dark days
of our civil wal to appreciate the
necessity of a people being able to
live at home. We had depended upon
foreign nations for supplies the
North, upon herself. The one sec
ton had stood by a tariff for the en-
enlargement and protection of her
industries the other had not. When
the planters slaves increased, and
when his granaries were filled his
next-door neighbor was not so pros
porous, but when the factory was
built in the Northern towns, values
increased in all the neighborhood,
employment was given to idle hands
and money was put into empty peck
cts. The staying qualities of their