The Lakeland evening telegram. (Lakeland, Fla.) 1911-1922, 1918-08-17
Louisiana and one in Texas.

so vast are the iron ore resources
of the South that the United States
Steel Corporation alone has In its
Alabama property between 100000.
600 and S00,O00,OO0 tons of iron ore,
as compared with total of 600, 000,.
900, the entire amount owned by the
Steel Corporation when it was or.
ganized.
Every ton of the raw material
which enters into the production. of
aluminium is produced in the South.
More than 60 per cent. of the entire
oil output of the United States comes
from the South.
The entire cotton production of
the country, without which the nation
could not be clothed, without which
explosives could not be made and
without which there could be no
tents for our armies, is produced In
the South, and purely as by-product
OF the cotton industry the value of
the cottonseed produces annually
S35O,OOO,OD0 of food and feed stuff.
The cottonseed oil of the South
an essential fat, is very nearly equal
IN quantity to the entire butter pro-
duction of the United States.
Nature has given to the South
three-fifths of the total coast line of
the United States and many splen.
dld harbors; and the country would
be recreant to its own life and civil
zation If it did not use these advan-
v2ntages and natural resources for
the making of iron and steel and ri.
trates for the production of coal and
iron and oil and the building of ships.
The one charge which can Justly
be made against the, Administration.
and by that l do not mean President
Wilson, but against the entire Gov.
eminent Administration at Washing
ton, is the slowness with which it
has utilized the truly marvellous and
amazing resources given by nature
to the South.
Owing to the conditions which pre.
vailed for many years after the Civil
War and the concentration of the
thought OF the entire country upon
the development of the West and the
making of iron and steel in Pennsyl.
wanna and on the Lakes, it became
the fixed policy of the national Gov.
eminent to concentrate work in those
sections and not to utilize, except ON
very limited scale, the boundless
resources of the South and South.
west.
For ten years it could have been
clearly forseen by &ny intelligent
man who cared to study the matter
that the East and the central West
We're being overdeveloped industri-
ally as measured by available trans
portation facilities. This situation
is now so acute that the War Board
and the Railroad Administration have
found it necessary to refuse to per.
init the building of any new plants
or the giving of additional war orders
IN very large portion of the central
East. This situation could easily
have been forseen, and it should
have been foreseen by the Govern.
ment, by the capitalists and by the
railroad people of the country years
ago. President Cassatt of the Penn.
sylvania Railroad had a glimpse of
II when against the protests of the
bankers and many of his stockhold.
ers, he decided to undertake the
doubling Of the entire TRANSPORTATION
facilities of the Pennsylvania Rail.
road Before he died he made the
statement that when he began the
campaign he thought he had planned
Tor at least twenty-five years of ex.
pansion, but that he then realized
hat he had not planned enough for
EN- years. (
Today every new enterprise built
n this congested centre where /
transportation cannot catch up with
he traffic for years come, becomes
national liability, since it weakens
he ability of existing plants to Sc.
ure transportation, while every
liant built in the less congested dis.
riots of the South ard Southwest
ecomes vitality important national
sset
RICHARD H. EDMONDS,
Editor Manufacturers Record,
Atlantic Titu NJ TALL 90