The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-04-10
MORE "INFANT INDUSTRIES" :"

l MORE "lNFANT INDUSTRIES.
 The production of beet sugar is not
 the only infant industry that is like ly to demand the attention of our na-
 tional lawmakers in the near future.
 Repeated efforts have been made in some sections of the South, and notably in South Carolina, to cultivate tea, but
 until quite recently the effort has been a commercial failure. Now, however the industry has been re-established, on
 a small scale it is true, but success | fully The one tea planter of the
 Palmetto State is turning out about
 4,000 pounds annually of the leaf that
 cheers while not inebriating, the cost of
 raising being 15 cents q pound, while he l finds a ready market for his crop at 1 just double that figure.
 | The industry is still in such an in fantile stage that it has not as yet at l tracted much attention, but Senator ] Tillman at least has his eye upon it. In I the course of the recent debate on the repeal of the Spanish war taxes he did
 not hesitate to abandon the traditional ire trade policy of his party by ad- vocating the retention of the tea tax of 10 cents pound, ostensibly that the
 $9, 000,000 year produced by this inn
 post might be devoted to paying for
 digging the isthmian canal, but in real ity as an entering wedge for the protec-
 tion and encouragement of South Caro-
 lina's new, or rather revived, infant
 industry"
 But South Carolina will not be satis- fled with the e-establishment of tea culture; silk culture, too, Is being re- vived in the one Southern State which, l according to the opinion generally en- i tertained in the North, is the least en- terprising and progressive of all the | communities in that section of the | country The first attempt at the pro duction of silk in the South dates back to the earliest settlements in Virginia | nearly 300 years ago, but the industry did not obtain a foothold until the mid dle of the 18th century, when it flourish ed for time in Georgia and South Carolina, as long as it was bounty fed, after the modern fashion of fostering the cultivation of the sugar beet in Con- tinental Europe. The abandonment of | the payment of bounties brought the industry to such a low stage that the Revolutionary war extinguished It. In some sections of the North 1t has been at times even more flourishing than 1t ever was in the South, and even Phila- delphia has had it's silk booms-one just before the revolt of the colonies against the mother country, and another at the later period, of which the former Ger mantcwn landmark called the Cocoon ery' was soon the only remainder.
 The revival of silk culture in South Carolina is on an even less imposing scale than the cultivation of tea but when it's promoters are able to obtain the most improved machinery for reel Ing the fibre, they hope to place it on a substantial basis. Already, however, hey are figuring out that six weeks easy work in the summer will yield a product that will bring as large finan- ,ial return as six months hard labor n the cotton field. The prospect is cer- ainly an alluring one, and when 1t be- ,omes a trife more so, we may look Or speech from Senator Tfllman de- handing protection for the new fin ant industry" General Hancock was lot the only Democrat ready to regard 1 md treat the tariff question as ''local { ssue. From the Philadelphia Tele- { ,raph ]