The age-herald., 1902-02-23

zine writers such amusement, have prov ed to be the very best cotton mill labor CTS in the world-patient careful, loyal and industrious and without desire to organize labor unions and dem and unjust exactions from their employers. It is a poetic and refined justice that puts it in the power of the so-called Crackers to be chiefly instrumental, through their capacity as cotton mill laborers, in trans ferring New England's great cotton in- dustries to the South
 Then it was said that the South could never make the finer grades, but must conf1ne itself to the coarser cloths. Again we see a theory exploded and find the Dwight, Merrimac and other Eastern mills duplicating their fine plants in the South with new and improved machinery and manufacturing the finer grades of cloth.
 You ask me the cause which pro- duced these results? It is the old story of the struggle for existence and survival of the Attest Did you ever see a beehive when the hive was full of honey? How laziy and slowly the bees go in and out Did you ever see the same hive when it had been stripped of it's honey? How unceasingly and industriously the bees work until it Is full again. So it was with the South. Until the Civil war slavery and agriculture were so profitable that nearly all the South's earnings were in vested in slaves and land, while our min erals and other great natural resources remained uhdeveloped, but when by the fortunes of war our hive was stripped of its honey, and slavery was no longer Nossible or even desirable, it became necessary for us to develop what we had hitherto neglected and we are merely applying the lessons we have learned from the bees. The young men in the South today are not seeking to know what are the rights of the States, as did their fla thers, or even what are their individual rights, for they have been long since de- fined, but they are seeking to know what are their opportunities and how they can best improve them. To them it is of more consequence to know how to locate and mine iron and coal, or how to con struct and prohtably operate manu- featuring establishment, than to know the history or terms of the Wilmot Pro- viso or the Missouri Compromise. To them the building of the Nicaragua canal, which would connect the two oceans at our doors and make a Medl- terranean of the Gulf of Mexico in it's shipping and commerce, with its result ant advantages to our gulf ports and inland manufactories, is of vastly more tndn lIle I1dIu plOH ItOduS Conference or even than as to who was in command at Santiago. There is no part of this country which is living more in the future than the South. and there is no part for which the future holds out greater promise of usefulness and devel- opment
 Future Holds Great Question.
 But, gentlemen. the future, while full of promise. also holds great questions to be solved. The new century we have just entered upon contains within itself the problems of the future What has been settled in the past century Is scarce ly now of more than academic interest, and it Is burning. living issues which engage the greatest thoughts of man. kind As Americans we are no longer deeply interested in the rights of man in his individual capacity as a vital ques- ton. They have been so firmly estab-