The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1912-07-11

dustry and especially to enable the
south to continue along the lines de-
fined by high prosperity which have
now for some years chara cterized that
section of the country. How great the
interest of the southern states is in
maintaining policies that are reason
able, not radical may be illustrated
by some statistics which have recently
been collected. These show how great
ly the south has changed within the
past ten or fifteen years, so that, in
stead of being almost exclusively a
region of the United States devoted to
agriculture it is rapidly taking rank
with other parts of the country as an
industrial section.
Already in the south nearly three
billion. five hundred million dollars is
utilized in manufacturing. enterprises
and a reasonable estimate is that these
manufactures produce annually COM
modities of the money value of about
four billion dollars. Business activity
of this kind never fails to exert wise
and reasonable political influence
There is no socialism or anarchy in
statistics of this kind. Not vet does
the south match induStri;illy the agri-
cultural south. for nearly eleven bill
lion dollars are invested in agricul-
ture. When we bear in mind that the
annual value of the Gotten crop of the
south, including by-pro6ucts, is in
normal times about a billion dollars,
we can understand why manufactur-
ing is now supplementing agriculture
wealth created by the marketing of
cotton and its by-products; is invested
in industrial undertakings. The south
is producing now nearly four hundred
millions in money value of minerals
each year and its business men realize
that its opportunities, especially in the
development of coal and coke, are
amazing The estimate is that in the
south there are now about two-thirds
to three-fourths of the coking coal of
this country. How rapidly wealth has
been produced in the south in the past
thirty years is disclosed by statistics
which show that the individual de-
posits in the national banks of the
south are today about eighty-fve mil,
lion dollars greater than the total
amount of such deposits in all of the
national banks of the United States in
the year of the election of General
Garfield as president in 1880.
This sense of growth. of prosperity.
of opportunity. was so our business
men have been Informed. one of the
striking features of the Baltimore con-
vertion Prosperity the realization of
very great opportunities, the conf
dence that the opening of the Panama
canal will vastly stimulate industrial,
mining and agricultural activities in
the south caused the representatives
of southern states to the Democratic |
convention as a whole to be |
distinguished, strikingly so, from repre- |
of the south who have at |
tended earlier conventions of both the |
Republican and Democratic parties |
The industrial development of the south |
since the day when the people of that |
section almost unanimously accepted |
the proposition involving the free coin
age of silver at a ratio of sixteen to one
is to be included in the list which in |
cludes several marvellous changes
which have taken place in the United |
States since 1896, one being the advent
Of this country as world money
power, another being the great increase
in our expectation of our manufactured
products which now in money value
matches our expectation of agricul-
-uraI products, and not the least of
-hese various impressive phenomena,
has been the industrial and commercial |
progress of the south.
Those who have returned to New