The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 18??-19??, 1909-11-09

Birmingham, the centre, as every one
knows, of the iron region IN Alabama
is a great and growing city and rap
idly recovering from the temporary
effects Of the recent panic, put II IS
not only the iron n coal interests
Of the State that are ~prosperlhs.
Everywhere in the agricultural as
we'll as in the lumber and timber re-
gions I found undoubted evidences OF
prosperity. In one little town in my
old district, BreWton, OF about TOUR
thousand inhabitants, there are sew
eral m~illiOnaireS many Splend1d RESI-
dences and prosperous schools. Otner
towns, like G~reenville, which was once
my home and now en-
tirely on the farming interests sur
rounding it, the evidences Of increas-
ing wealth are abundant. In another
county. Darlington, which, when l
last saw it in 1890, had only one
town in it, the county-seat, then Q
$50 inhabitants n which then had
no railroad there are now TWO or
three railroads., five banks and sew
eral rapidly growing towns. The price
of land everywhere all over the dis
trict has doubled and trebled n Of
ten uuadrupled. That is to say this
is true of all counties in which the
whites predominant. In Montgomery
county which is called the Black
County, because the negroes largely
predominant on the plantations, LANDS
are improving in value but lot SO
RAPIDLY as in the white counties. The
city of Montgomery is however going
ahead with rapid strides and with the
brightest prospects for the future.
What The War Has Done.
"In thinking over h our people
nave accomplished and the great diff
fo,1t;oS thoV have SnTn1O11n(od L cal
but call to mind some figures l made
once in a speech at a Iii
ner of the bank presidents OF
Boston, somewhere in the nineties. In
endeavoring to picture to them the
obstacles we Of the South had encoun-
tered since the war, / began with the
anecdote of some shrewd Yankee who
had advertised in a Northern paper
tina for twenty-five cents he would
send to any one the secret Of making
a fortune. A .Southerner who had
succeeded IN raking up q quarter, got
in esponse to his letter this reply:
"Work like hell and don't spend a
red
1 had the figures then before me
which I had collated as carefully as
might be to show the reasons why we
had followed this fellows advice and
though / do not remember them &C
curateIy now they were somewhat as
follows: We had lost our slave prop
erty, estimate two billions Of dollars;
lost all our currency, the
tons of capital, except now and then
a spare bank note and this amounted
probably to another billion of dollars.
Our cattle and our horses, our pillow
stock, were more than half destroyed;
we were largely without corn and
meat and other provisions of all kinds
in some places we didn't eve lave
cotton seed left enough to plant; we
had to borrow money at high prices
with which to make our crops, and
this nearly all came ultimately from
the North; the premiums we paid for
life and fire insurance all went North;
we had to pay our share Of govern
ment expenses, and but little of this
came back to us; the expenditures Of
the departments of Post Office and
there was the army, every dollar for
clothing, arming and supporting the
army vas expended in the North. And
then the navy, the material of the
ships. the building Of the ships and
the construction of h guns and the
manufacture Of arms, and the feeding
and clothing Of the officers and sail
6rs, all this was paid for in the North,
not a dollar went South. Then there
was the constantly growing pension
list. My recollection is that I esti-
mated ron the official figures that
the State Of Alabama, at that time
nearly an average State in population
had then paid into the Federal cof-
fers for pensions during the thirty
years that had passed since the war
about one hundred and fifty millions
of dollars. Practically all this had
gone year by year, or rather quarter
by quarter, into the towns and cities
of the North for distribution Among
the Northern soldiers and their
families.
South On Its Feet Again.
These figures are not recalled in
any spirit Of complaint, but only for
the purpose of emphasizing what has
been accomplished by the pluck and
energy Of our Southern people. What
is true Of Alabama, I am happy to say,
is evidently, as far as I can see, true