The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-12-08

strengthen this movement to obliterate all sectional lines and leave nothing oi l dlHerence between the north and the south have friendly emulation for ben ef1t Of our common country
 Finley's Address.
 President Finley said in part:
 Tn his letter inviting me to address you this evening your worthy president gave me to understand that he wanted me to be brief and to be serious. shall be both; but if l am so brief as to leave you wishing for more, or SC serious as to tire you, the responsibility rests on him. He asked me, in effect, to assume the role of a physician and to | pi piescribe, from my point of view, such a course of living for North Carolina and | our entire southern section for the next 70 years as will assure the continuance of the most exuberant industrial health.
 Mature has provided our section with a strong and vigorous constitution. Its economic strength lies in the variety and richness of it's natural resources and in the agricultural industrial and com mercial adaptability of it's people. For merly the southern states were content with the profits which came from the production of raw materials The energy and enterprise of our people have led
 
 raw materials the profits of manufactur- ng. That economic law which tends to concentrate manufacturing in proximity to supplies of raw materials is constantly working with them.
 The climatic and soil conditions of the south are so varied that within it's limits there can be procured profitably all the agricultural and horticultural pro- ducts of the temperate zone ana many of those of the tropics. It is furnishing each year an increasing proportion of the fruits and vegetables consumed in the United States. These are sent to market before they meet northern competition and the southern fruit and vegetable grower receives the benefit of the high CT prices generally commanded by early products There are still standing south- ern forests which, with proper manage ment, can be made of great present profit and can be preserved as a source of wealth for future generations. Already other sections, which had exhausted the greater part of their timber resources be- fore the necessity for forest conserva- tion in the United States for timber and for manufactures of wood. Flowing from. the wooded mountains of the southern Appalachian range are streams capable of generating millions of horse power, not only to be used on the banks of the streams, but to be carried in the shape of electrical energy wherever 1t can be utilized to the best economic advan- tage. Beneath the soil of our southland are stores of marble and stone for the builder, clay for the potter and brick maker and the whole range of useful and ornamental minerals. Marble and granite for many of the majestic buildings of the country are supplied by southern quar- ries First and foremost among the nat ural assets of the south is the cotton plant, which has been termed the most useful plant that grows" This plant gives to our section almost a monopoly in the production of the most widely used textile fibre in the world. It produces a seed from which are pressed a salad oil that compares faVorably with the pro- duct of the Mediterranean olive groves and cooking fat that has driven lard from many of our kitchens. The residue of the seed yields high class stock food and a valuable fertilizer. The cot ton plan already provides us with cloth ing and food and we are looking for ward to the time when from its stalk a large proportion of the paper supply of the world will be made. An increased proportion of southern grown tobacco is manufactured in the south; the southern iron and steel industry has already grown until it ranks next to that of Pittsburg and North Carolina is steadily gaining on Michigan in the manufacture of fur niture Southern progress in the future is destined to take the direction, not only of the expansion of industries en- gagged in primary manufacturing. but also of a multiplication of industries which will use it's primary products as their raw materials. Southern cotton textiles, in increasing quantities, will be made into articles ready for wear; southern iron and steel will be made more generally in southern establishments into rails, struct- ural shapes, locomotives, machinery and tools; southern leather will be sent to other markets in the form of boots and shoes, harness and belting, and the pro- ducts of southern sawmils will be shipped to other localities, not only in the form of furniture, but manufactured into the great variety of commodities of which wood is a raw material.
 Inspired by the record of past south ern achievements, we look forward to- night, MT Postmaster, with full confi- dence in the future of the Old North State and of the entire south. We know the extent of our resources and the eapa- bilities of our people, and we are justi- fled in predicting a material development in the next 25 years that will even sur pass the record of the past quarter of a century. Our fields our forests, our mines and our factories will supply an ever increasing volume of the lifeblood of commerce and will make increasing de- mands upon our circulatory system. To keep pace with these demands the ca pacity of that system must be enlarged. Each increase in southern production must be accompanied by a corresponding increase in southern transportation ca pacity.
 'It is not a mere accident that our industrial development has been contem- poraneous with improvement in tho transportation system of the south, and with the amalgamation into through sys- tems of the disjointed railway lines which had survived the Civil War. Without this railway development our industrial progress would have been impossible. Our advantages of climate, of natural re- sources, and of the industrial adapta- bility of our people would still be lying dormant had there not been provided the means of placing the products of our factories in markets where there exist effective demand for them. As our industrial progress in the past has been made possible largely by our railways, so in the future, the carrying capacity of our railways must keep pace with our industrial progress. The southern states are not now so well supplied with rail- way facilities in proportion to their area and population as are some other sec tions of the country. It is the duty of those who are engaged in furnishing transportation in the south to provide adequate facilities, so far as it is within their power to do so, but they can only keep pace with the demands which our future progress will impose upon them if they are sustained by a healthy and constructive public opinion.
 Superintendent of Schools Joyner de- clared in his address that North Caro-