The Prescott daily news., 1914-12-10
THE AWAKENING OF THE SOUTH

After five weeks trip through the South, making a personal study of it's business conditions, the editor of the Manufacturers Record in this weeks issue says:
 Cotton is now beginning to move. Farmers are beginning to sell; foreign spinners and American spinners are beginning to buy; the financial situa- tion throughout the South is easing up, and men are once more turning their thought away from stagnation in determination to develop trade. Pessimism has given way to optimism. The South has caught its second wind. It has been quickened by the cotton situation and the worldwide condi- tions brought on by the war to livelier thought than for many years, and in every avenue of life, from the highest to the lowest, men are thinking more, and on broader lines, than for many years. Many of them are thinking more than they have ever thought be- fore. The whole mental activity of the South is being quickened, and out of this will come vast amount of good. One of the results will be the larger development of diversified agri- culture in the cotton-growing States. One will be greater economy in the de- lvelopment of business interests. One will be the development of a general spirit of economy which will be of in- finite value to every interest in the South. This spirit will not lessen en- ergy, but it will quicken energy. It will lessen waste and develop thrift. It will tremendously increase the South's power to develop it's own re- sources. It will stir farmers and merchants and bankers and manufac- turers to doing many things for their own good which will lead to the broadest development of the South, as we'll as their individual prosperity.
 There are many sections of the South which will be benefited by the high prices of foodstuffs brought on by the war A very large proportion of the South does not raise cotton, but grains and livestock, and these sec tions, like the West, will be enriched by the higher prices for all their pro- ducts. The Virginias, Maryland, Ken lucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Louisiana and very large portion of every Southern State will, like the West, share in the prosperity which is to come from higher prices of grain due to Europe's enormous demand. Even under ordinary conditions the value of the diversified agricultural pro- ducts of the South is more than twice as great as that of cotton, but cotton has so largely been the basis of credit in this section as stocks and bonds have been in Wall Street, that people have talked in terms of cotton rather than terms of diversified agriculture.
 "There are sections of the South which have not even felt the effect of the war. The peanut-growing re- zion of East Virginia, with it's excep- tionally large production of hogs, is enjoying great prosperity. The toba cco- growing regions of Virginia and Carolina, except for the general talk of war, would hardly have known that war existed, for tobacco is command ing good prices and the tobacco fac tories of these States are doing big business. Tobacco growers of Mary land and Kentucky, whose products are largely shipped abroad, have, of course, had to bear something of the same kind of burden that the cotton growers have had, but this situation will of necessity tighten up in the near future and conditions will i'm prove.
 "The Manufacturers Record feels safe in making the assertion that the profit to the South as a result of these conditions will hereafter an- lnually exceed the loss on this years cotton crop compared with what the South had expected to get for it's cot ton. The quickening of the life and thought of the whole South, the de- termination of the cotton growers to raise their own foodstuffs to larger extent than they have done since 1860, the mental stir and life which has been given to them, will all combine to produce wonderful results. More