The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-06-05

IN every banking house, this motto:
The development of the South Means
the Enrichment of the Nation"
Smiling property, born of higher and
tairer prices for cotton, has brought
new hope and courage to a sorely tried
and deeply discouraged class-the
growers of Americas most important
asset. 1t has given them a chance to
do what for forty years some of them
have been wanting to do, viz, to utilize
local opportunities with local money
and local energy. The best and health
lest kind of development is that which
a community brings about on Its own
initiative and at it's own expense. Self
help and self-rellance. so Characters
tic of our Southern people. but dwarfed
and enfeebled by decades of privation,
are today reviving all over the land.
A half-starved people-and five-cent
cotton produced that condition--are
unable to do things aggressively, and
what is worse. are unable to see things
in their true proportions. The world
wondered how It ever occurred that a
people with such antecedents, tradi-
t!ons and inherited character could
have been afflicted with the financial
and economic heresies that were cpl
demic in certain parts of the South af-
ten w. J. Bryan got into the political
saddle. The reason of II was they felt
that with cotton at starvation prices
they were not getting fair play The
|truer to type your real Americanized
Anglo Saxon may be, the keener his
resentment of injustice, and the more
dangerous does he become when
aroused to resistance. Not only were
starvation prices for cotton the cause
of much of that wrong thinking which
prompted anticorporation activity and
fomented general hostility to what
.
was the cause of the delay in the COM
inG of milliGns of desirable population.
The blight was moral mental and ma
terial May II never recur. To pre-
vent such recurrence the great brains
In finance and politics may well be ex-
ercised
Since cotton commands price in
keeping with the sweat and go, the pa
thence and endurance required in its
production. homeseekers who may
come into the South will see very diff
ferent expressions in the faces of the
pople. Some years ago a farmer from
the West, who had been induced by
the enterprislng immigration agent of
the Southern railway to make a trip
Of investigation through several cot
ton states, remarked to the writer as
he was returning that the country
seemed all right but the people SEEM
ed pitifulIy poor and looked discour-
aged; that he didn't want TO move into
a country where everybody had the
blues" Now nobody in the South has
the bluesS What is the question of
a large or small dividend or any dlvl-
dend at all to the stockholders of
few hundred cotton mills in compari-
son with the happiness and hope and
new life to 100000 of men, women
and children?
The homeseeker-who goes South to-
day on an investigation tour will want
to stay and cast in his lot with the
cheerful. cordial people he will meet
in the land Of cotton. There is small
ground for fear that we shall ever
again see starvation prices for the sta
pie. There is need for all the cotton
the South can produce. The cry is for
more cotton and better cotton. The
very maintenance Of American supre-
macy in cotton requires more growers.
Nothing is so needed as an influx of
enterprising, wide-awake. Industrious
farmers from other sections. How to
get them is a question of transcendent
Importance.