Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1911-03-07

The third annual convention Of the
Southern Commercial Congress. which
will meet in Atlanta tomorrow, is to be
above all things, conference of men in
terested in the physical recovery of the
south. This meeting comes just fifty
years after the organization of the seces-
sion movement which precipitated the
civil war and wrecked the southern
states.
President Taft, former President Roose-
Welt, Gov Woodrow Wilson and Secretary
Of Agriculture James Wilson-these are
some of the famous men who will speak
before the convention on the broad
aspects of the movement for "a greater
nation through q greater SOUTH Scores
of practical men representing every
phase of industry and commerce will
speak during the three days of the ses-
sion. not only to the general convention,
but to the fifteen separate and distinct
sectional councils.
The Southern Commercial Congress was
organized three years ago to work for
the SOuth's physical recovery. and to adj
vance the commercial interests of the
southern section of the United States, in
the hope of neutralizing those influences
that still operate as a handicap to south
ern commercial progress.
!: X
1t is fifty years since the civil war
began, and We are fond Of saying that
it was all over long
Slow Recovery ago, that nothing of
W., it remains but MEM
1ioAi wal. DRY. In the northern
and western states that memory and the
quarterly distribution of pensions are in
deed about all that remain. But the
south has more concrete reminders than
these, for, strange as it may seem to
many people of other sections, the south
is only now beginning to see clearly
ahead of it the day of complete physical
recovery from the havoc wrought by the
four years war
Not only was the war itself devastating
in its destruction of life and property. in
its interruption of production and conf
merce, in it's inversion of political condi-
tons, but it also left the south too weak
and too poor to meet at the time certain
problems which arose quite independently
of the war.
For instance. the rapid improvement
of agricultural implements made it i'm
possible for the south to compete with
the level prairie states of the middle
west in the production of wheat, and this
circumstance forced the southerners to go
on with their ruinous devotion to the
one-crop principle. Before the war slav-
cry had made cotton king: after the war
the changed agricultural conditians made
cotton tyrant. Only in the last two or
three years has the south. by reason of
education and by expulsion of the boil
weevil, turned cotton lands into other
crops to any great extent.
X x
o;,
back. The emancipation of the slaves
left the south with what ap-
WaSteful peared to be large supply of
r. labor. But it was wasteful
A"ooA' labor. and it required many
years to arrange a readjustment of the
relations between the employer and the
employee. While the southern states were
working out this problem the north and
west were receiving from Europe millions
and millions of able-bodied white work
men, the majority of whom now are
recognized as full-hedged American citi-
zens. The south has received practically
no emigration whatever.
Industrial development was essayed, but
seemed doomed to certain failure because
of the lack of labor The negroes proved
to be. unsuccessful as factory laborers-
luckily for them-and there was no OPP
portunity to get any of the European inn
migration. Therefore the south turned in
ward and resolved to readjust it's own
affairs without outside aid.
The mills and factories levied on the
mountains and the hill farms for their
labor. They found it there and as con-
sequence hundreds of thousands of peo-
pie have been taken from the farms and
put in the mills. But it must be remem-
bered that there are farms and farms.
The word may bring before Your minds
eye a beautiful pastoral picture of con-
tentment and independence. But that is
not the kind of a farm the mills have
drawn upon i'm the south. They have
taken people from the one-roomed. WIN
dowless, dirt-foored cabins and in many
cases have materially improved their
condition by taking them into the mill
villages.
But still the south suffers from q lack OF
men OF do it's work. The mills have
robbed the land. The land cannot yield