The Hattiesburg news. (Hattiesburg, Miss.) 1908-1917, 1911-04-14

You ask me to give you something
about the South for your Southern
Number. l could write from now I'M
til you go to press, ana then not have
half time to tell the story. Limited
to few hundred words, can only
say that the South today offers great
er opportunities than any other Sec
tion of the country-opportun for
highly profitable investment, industri-
al or agricultural. The farmer who is
going from Iowa on account of the
high value of agricultural farming
lands there and who is locating in
Canada, where the same capitaliza-
ton yields better returns, pays the
penalty of self-expatriation by freez-
ing half to death four months of the
year.
And yet these same farmers, with
identically the same money they take
to Canada, could, by coming South,
earn double the same returns they
could reasonably expect in Canada.
And here in the South they can find
the most inviting all the year round
climate on earth, for in all the world
there is on, such climate for twelve
months in the year as is to be found
in that vast section of which the APP
palachian ridge is the backbone.
With cotton even at ten cents a
pound-not fifteen, as it has been for
the past few years-the South is des-
tined to become the richest section of
the world, regardless of its limitless
additional industrial possibilities.
For years after the civil war the
South existed and even gradually
prospered on six, seven and eight-cent
cotton. The planters, by no means,
got fair returns for their efforts, and
not until the ten cent basis was
reached did they begin to throw off
the incubus of debt and cancel the
mortgage which had been inseparable
from farming operations ever since
the chaos of reconstruction. With
ten-cent cotton they paid their debts
When cotton reached eleven cents
they began to lay aside an annual sur
plus and to diversity their farming
operations. When cotton reached
twelve cents they enlarged their ba
sis of operations, amplified their farm
ing equipment and built new and bet
ter houses. Fifteen-cent cotton has
put them on the basis of independ
ence and the period of the millionaire
farmer is at han din the South.
And yet at fifteen cents the cottor
farmer, in proportion of his invest
ment of energy and capital, is moi
earning the net result to which he IL
entitled.
Think of single crop distributing
every year in one limited section
$500, 5000 in cash-and that is ex
actly what the cotton crop is doing
for the South this year and what i
has done for the past few years.
Mind you, this does not take int
consideration the value of the by-pro
duct of the seed or the value of thu
manufactured lint in any one of III
thousands of details. The cotton seet
alone is worth $5000O,O0O a year t.
the men who grow it. The value o
manufactured product of the lin
which clothes the world and which Il
Just az acceptable In India as it is il
america, reaches into the hundreds o
millions.
OF this vast lint manufactured pro
duct, the output on the South's par
is so rapidly increasing that it is nov
manufactured more in volume thai
all the American mills outside of tn
South, whereas but comparatively
few years ago the south's part in tn