Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1902-05-28
DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOUTH.
Address Of Mr.. John D. Cappemann at Banquet
OF Southern Vehicle Association.

The following is the full text of
the address made by Mr.. John D.
Cappelmann at the banquet rendered
the Southern Vehicle Association al
the Freundschafts Bund. Hall last
Friday evening. The toast was
"The South and it's Development
Mr.. Cappelmann was introduced by
Major Wilson q. Harvey and, after
the usual and proper complimentary
references to the visitors and com
mittee, said:
1t would not be fair on an occasion
like this to take up the time neces-
sary to give anything like an ade-
quate idea of the South's develop
ment from the time of Lees sur
render to the present, embracing a
period of nearly thirty-seven years.
Our observations must be, therefore,
more or less of a general character.
Let us picture in mind section
of our common country as it lay after
the broadcast devastation consequent
on warfare between brothers in a
common heritage, where valor, hero
ism and devotion to principle was
displayed in degree the like of
which does not find parallel in his
tory. Absolutely dissipated was the
credit of States whose obligations
had commanded the highest respect
and confidence in the commercial
marts of the world. The homes of
a heretofore thrifty agricultural
people broken up or destroyed their
places of business ruined and the
commerce of their seaports gone.
Those who in the course of events
had been in servitude to freehold
ers and others, Anglo. Saxon citi-
zens of our country, suddenly placed
in political liberty and rights, the
equals of their former masters and
owners, and, Notwithstanding their
absolute unfitness, made electors in
the conduct of government by which
was thrust upon the people of the
South a problem the solution of
which baffled the best thought of
the age. The government of the
States involved passed, in many in
stances, into the hands of wreckers,
demagogues and carpet-baggers,
whose chief and sole aim was plum
der and pilfering and to be redeemed
from which required the hcrculean
efforts of the best leaders of the day,
under whose wise statemenship the
Gordian knot was finally cut and
home rule and honest government
restored.
Emerging from the war with these
surroundings, let him who would re-
cord our history mark well the con-
ditions which existed and the obsta-
cles which confronted our people.
Graphing with the many new ques-
tions which arose by reason of the
changed order of things-in addition
to the restoration as far as possible
of the agricultural prestige of the
South, with entirely new labor con-
ditions-under the keen pressure, too,
of necessity, little by little attention
was given to manufacturing enter
prises and to the development Of the
mineral, iron, coal and timber re-
sources hitherto lying dormant. To
accommodate the growing demands
of the hour the railroad facilities,
crippled and limited al best, were
from time to time increased and ex-
tended--at first slowly, but as the
needs and occasion presented, more
rapidly, affording from time to time
ready communication with the diff.
ferent sections of the South and with
North Atlantic ports and money CEN
tres. And 30 in these thirty seven
years a marvellous development has
taken place and, although the rail
roads have done much, it is but
proper to say here and in this pres
ence that they would have amounted
to naught except supported by the
disseminating and circulating influ-
ence which the carriage builders and
carriage material men directly exer-
cised those who supplied the wag-
ons, carts, buggies and carriages
of commerce, of trade, or of social
intercourse in the use of which il
most naturally followed that the at