Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1921-12-01
New South Comes Into It's Owon
Through Wide Publicity
Advertising Expert Tells of Awaken
ing And It's Future
(By st. Elmo Massengale)

Editors -Note:-St. Elmo Massen
gale is the leading figure in advertis
ing circles in the South As mos
people know, the big advertising ex
pert of today is a man of wide know
ledge, great executive ability and il
constant and close touch with the &c
onomic needs and conditions of tn;
territory wherein his work lies. What
ever the head of the Massengale agen
cy says will be accepted as absorbing
facts by the merchants and leaders
of the South, and can be accepted BY
those of the North as the note of au-
thority.
Up to a few years ago capital was
not sought in, nor did it hurry to the
South. Dixie was considered as a
pretty section of the country about
which one should-and often did
write songs, novels and dramas main
ly remarkable for an impossible negro
dialect and the number of roses that
intruded upon every scene and set
ting.
Cash, as the country considered its
use in Dixie was pretty contrivance
used strictly as medium of exchange
and not as power of development.
With blind allegiance the South clung
to cotton as its great and only staple
and the shifting market on that single
staple spelled relative poverty of af-
fluence for the territory south of the
Mason-Dixon Line
A change has come to Dixie 1t still
has its roses and its negro population,
but added to that has come a great
outpouring of industrial blood through
the veins of southern progress and in
instant response the South has de-
veloped until from a weak and pretty
sister in a cotton gown it stands today
an industrial power to be reckoned
with in the offices of the worlds great
est banking, transportation, develop
ment and commercial units.
Figures may weary the average
reader but beneath them lies re-
nance greater than any fctionist ever
drew with swift running pen Of one
has the ability to see and understand
Of the entire output of the United
States in corn the South gives 5415
per cent, of tobacco "a ITO per cent,
potatoes 90 per cent, peanuts 80 9-10
per cent, apples 16 9-10 per cent, rice
85 per cent and sorghum syrup 85 per
cent. The annual peach crop is nearly
$44, 100000, sugar cane syrup $780,
000,0O8, oats 100000, wheat $500
100000 and cotton $2,0OO,0OO,O0O,
with a live stock value in the South
of $2,5OO,OOO.
The South's development as an agri-
cultural, dairy and live stock country
is due to one cause more than all 9TH
ers. Advertising was the force that
changed the South from a one-crop
to a varied-crop and live stock sec
ton. 1t was not until the Southern
newspaper and farm publications had
given the widest publicity to the ben
efits to be derived from varied crops
and live stock raising that Southern
farmers could be induced to dethrone
king Cotton" It took years of con-
tinuous advertising on the part of
the far-seeing Southern publications
to sell the Southern farmers on the
idea that prosperity depended not up
on one kind of crop, but upon many
kinds of crops
Papers Repaid
While the Southern newspaper and
farm publications were never direct
ly repaid for such advertising the re-
sultant prosperity of the South has
repaid them many fold for the space
they so generously donated for the
upbuilding of the Southern states ag-
rucultural interests
But advertising has been not only
the means of building up the South
agriculturally. 1t has built up the
South industrially from practically a
minus quantity SO far as manufact-
uring inductries were concerned, to a
point where Southern industries rival
the industries of other section of the
country.
1t was only a quarter of a century
or SO ago when the Southern people
had to obtain even the simplest OF
manufactured commodities from the
North. 1t was this condition which
inspired the late Henry w. Grady
the beloved publicist of the South, tt
write in one-of his editorials as fol
lows:
at was a ne-galloused fellow
whose breeches struck him under
meath his armpits and hit him at tn.
other end about the knees. He dit
not believe in decollette clothes The,
buried him in the midst of a marbl
quarry. They cut through solid mar
bic to make his grave and yet, tn
little tombstone that they placed a
the head of the grave was from Yer
mont. They buried him in the hear
sf pine forest an yet, the pine cof
fin was imported from Cincinnati