The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1901-06-22
GROWTH OF INDUSTRIAL
SOUTH In TWENTY YEARS
Address of Richard A. Edmonds Before the North
Carolina Bankers Association.
MOST SIGNIFICANT TABLE OF STATISTICS


1880. In the cotton mill industry we have
won the fight; we have demonstrated
that the South is to be the dominating
cotton mill center of America, if not of
the world. But until the discovery of
oil in Texas opened up new possibilities
which cannot yet be fully understood. The
South was in danger of relatively falling
somewhat behind in it's iron and steel
and machinery producing interests. AS
great as has been our progress, we can
not afford to put any obstruction in the
way of material advancement. We must
rise with the swelling tide of industrial
and financial activity for world wide SUI
premaey, or we must be engulfed If we
fail it is our fault. for when we turn to
the study of our material resources we
find that no other country or no other
section of any country has such a marvel
Gus combination of wealth creating possi-
bilities. 1t has been said that in the
great stretch Of mountain country which
runs from Wheeling to Birmingham there
is forty times as much coal as Great
Britain had before she stuck the first pick
in the ground. West Virginia alone has
10000 square miles of COAL as compared
with Great Britains IL, 000 We have
nearly one-half of the standing timber
of the United States. We hold a practi-
cal monopoly of the production of cotton,
and while we furnish three-fourths of
the cotton for the 100, 00O, 900 spindles in
the world, we only have 5000, 900 spindles
ourselves. We have almost a monopoly
of the phosphate rock, the foundation of
the fertilizer business of this country
and of Europe Along our mountain range
we have coal in inexhaustible supply,
furnishing abundant fuel at low cost
with water powers, great and small, al
most without end. And now the Gulf and
Atlantic coast have in Texas oil a fuel
supply equal to the utmost demands of
commerce and manufacture. With
prophetic eye Commodore Maury. the
great geographer of the sea, fifty years
ago painted a thrilling picture of the
Gulf of Mexico as she center of the world
commerce when an isthmian canal had
been built, but it is possible that the fuel
supply which Texas offers to us will
even in advance of the canal prove al
most equal to making the Gulf--so often
called the Mediterranean of America
the center of a commercial and industrial
activity scarcely dreamed of, even by
Maury"
Pointing out the room for growth based
on these natural advantages, Mr.. Ed
monds contrasted the development of
Massachusetts with what the South has
done, and said;
with limited agricultural possibilities,
buying from the South their cotton from
Pennsylvania their iron. from Maryland
and Virginia their coal, from Georgia
their pine, and from the West thir food
stuf1s, and even importing from Canada
and Europe their mill operatives the peo-
pie OF Massachusetts have established
on this artificial foundation an industrial
structure which demands our admiration.
With population of only 2,250000 in
1890, and on this artificial foundation of
imported raw materials and foodstuffs
Massachusetts in 1890 had an Industrial
business which employed a capital of
$3.50, ,O00,000 with product of $780, 000,-
600, against a total capital invested in
manufacturing in the same year in the
fourteen Southern States from Maryland
to Texas of $657 900, 900, with a product
of SS76 ,0O0, 600. In other words the
2,25G.000 people in Massachusetts took
our cotton our lumber, our iron and the
Vests foodstuffs, and produced $12 200a,-
600 more of manufactured goods than we
produced in the South. Shall it be said
that in the creation of busness-the
foundation of civilization upon which
must rest our schools, our churches and
everything that combines to make life
worth living Massachusetts has greater
brains or puts its brains to better use
than the South? The answer must be
with us. If we fritter away our time
with trifes or with cross roads politics
we shall lose the substance while grab
bing for the shadow. If we esteem the
lawyer, the doctor or the professor more
highly than we esteem the man who can
chain the lightning and turn it to mans
use, more highly than the engineer who
can open up the riches of our iron and
coal and gold mines, more highly than the
superintendent who can direct the whirl-
ing machinery of a cotton mill with its
thousand operatives, we shall fail to real
ize the value of brains or understand that
education does not consist altogether in
book learning. A few weeks ago three
professorships in Virginia college, each
paying $4,000, were vacant, and 500
learned men applied for these positions
Had there been an equal number of
vacancies requiring trained skill in the
management of some important industry
in the South, would there have been even
ten applications from thoroughly compe-
tent men? And yet the trained expert,
who in the mine or in the factory is able
to do the work which the world requires,
is doing fully as much for his own benefit
his own happiness, the broadening of his
own life and the advancement of the
people surrounding him as the man who
is teaching Greek or Latin. The atten-
tion of the South must be focused upon
the fact that in the coming years the
men who are to dominate and control this
section in finance and in politics, in man
ufacturing, in the church and in the
school, are the boys who today are being
fitted in technical schools for managing
it's industrial affairs. Our material ad-
vancement and the part which the people
OF the South must play in the upbuilding