G 000 083 305 3 
 
 .■.;'-.''-.:.:'■ O'" •■:,-. 
 
 S 13 Si 
 
 / A ^ A 
 
 & 
 
 i-ATO 
 
 fCl£i,LEY i

 
 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 21 — The Solution of the Mormon Problem. By Capt. John Codman. 
 
 Octavo, paper . . . . . '. . . . 25 
 
 22— Defective and Corrupt Legir!-t:c.: ; the Ccujo and the 
 
 Remedy. By Simon Sterne. Octavo, paper ... 25 
 23 — Social Economy. By J. E. THOROLD Rogers. Octavo, cloth, 75 
 24 — The History of the Surplus Revenue of 1837. By Edward G. 
 
 Bourne. Octavo, cloth . . . . . . . 1 25 
 
 25 — The American Caucus System. By George W. Lawton. 
 
 Octavo, cloth, $1.00; paper ...... 50 
 
 26 — The Science of Business. By Roderick H. Smith. Svo, cloth, 1 25 
 
 27 — The Evolution of Revelation. By James Morris Whiton, 
 
 Ph.D. Octavo, paper ....... 25 
 
 28— The Postulates of English Political Economy. By Walter 
 
 Bagehot. Octavo, cloth . . . . . . . 1 00 
 
 29 — Lincoln and Stanton. By Hon. W. D. Kelley. Octavo, cloth, 
 
 50 cents ; paper ......... 25 
 
 30 — The Industrial Situation. By J. Schoenhof. Octavo, cloth, 1 00 
 31 — Ericsson's Destroyer. By Wm. II. Jaques, Lieut. U. S. Navy, 
 
 Octavo, paper, illustrated ....... 50 
 
 32 — Modern Armor for National Defence. By Wm. H. Jaques, 
 
 Lieut. U. S. Navy. Octavo, paper, illustrated ... 50 
 33 — The Physics and Metaphysics of Money. By Rodmond 
 
 Gibbons. Octavo, paper 25 
 
 34 — Torpedoes for National Defence. By Wm. H. Jaques, Lieut. 
 
 U. S. Navy. Octavo, paper, illustrated .... 50 
 
 35— Unwise Laws. By Lewis H. Blair. Octavo, cloth, 1 00 
 
 paper 50 
 
 36— Railway Practice. By E. Porter Alexander. Octavo, cloth, 75 
 37— American State Constitutions : A Study of their Growth. By 
 
 Henry Hitchcock, LL.D. Octavo, cloth ... 75 
 
 38— The Inter-State Commerce Act : An Analysis of Its Provisions. 
 
 By John R. Dos Passos. Octavo, cloth . . . . 1 25 
 39— Federal Taxation and State Expenses ; or, An Analysis of a 
 
 County Tax-List. By W. H. Jones. Octavo, cloth . . 1 00 
 40— The Margin of Profits : Hov/Profits are now Divided ; What Part 
 
 of the Present Hours of Labor can now be Spared. By Edward 
 
 Atkinson. Together with the Reply of E. M. Chamberlain, Rep- 
 resenting the Labor Union, and Mr. Atkinson's Rejoinder. Cloth, 
 
 75 cents ; paper ......... 40 
 
 41— The Fishery Question. A Summary of Its History and Analysis 
 
 of the Issues Involved. By Charles Isham. i2mo, cloth, with 
 
 Map of the Fishing Grounds 75 
 
 42 — Bodyke : A Chapter in the History of Irish Landlordism. By 
 
 Henry Norman. Svo, cloth, illustrated .... 75 
 43— Slav or Saxon. A Study of the Growth and Tendencies of 
 
 Russian Civilization. By Wm. D. FouLKE, A. M. Octavo, 
 
 cloth 1 25 
 
 44 — Literary Property and International Copyright. By Geo. 
 
 Haven Putnam. In press. 
 45— The Old South and The New. By Hon. \V. D. Kelley. 
 
 Octavo, cloth . . . . . . . , 1 25 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, Publishers, New York and London.
 
 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY— XL V 
 
 THE 
 
 Old South and the New 
 
 A SERIES OF LETTERS 
 
 HON. WILLIAM D. KELLEY 
 
 AUTHOR OF " LINCOLN AND STANTON," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 &bc "Knickerbocker press 
 
 1888
 
 COPYRIGHT BY 
 
 WILLIAM D. KELLEY 
 
 Press of 
 
 G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
 New York
 
 HC 
 / 07 
 A 1 3 K g, 
 
 TO HIS COUNTRYMEN 
 
 1" WHOSE GENERAL INTELLIGENCE, INVENTIVE GENIUS, SKILL IN APPLYING SCIENCE TO 
 THE PRODUCTIVE ARTS, ENERGY, ENTERPRISE, AND CAPITAL 
 
 THE EMANCIPATED SOUTH OFFERS INVITING AND PROFITABLE FIELDS 
 
 THIS VOLUME 
 
 IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED BY 
 ITS AUTHOR 
 
 The Elms: Philadelphia 
 October i, 1887 
 
 292641
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 This volume is the result of an earnest desire on the 
 part of its author to understand the industrial and social 
 condition of the people of the Southern States. The 
 better to gratify this desire, he revisited in 1887 substan- 
 tially the field he had traversed in 1867. A few days 
 sufficed to convince him that to chronicle his observa- 
 tions with photographic fidelity, and to report them, with 
 his conclusions therefrom, to his countrymen at large, 
 might prove to be a fitting close to the labors of a long 
 life which has been devoted chiefly to the investigation 
 of social and politico-economic questions. 
 
 W. D. K.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 LETTER I. 
 
 The South in 1867 — Nashville, Cowan, South Pittsburg, 
 Chattanooga, Birmingham, Anniston, and Atlanta in 
 1887 1 
 
 LETTER II. 
 Florida — The Winter Farm and Garden of the Union . . 15 
 
 LETTER III. 
 
 Anniston — A Romance ok the New South . . . .47 
 
 LETTER IV. 
 
 South Pittsburg — The Entrepot for the Sequachek and 
 
 Tributary Valleys 68 
 
 LETTER V. 
 
 The Mineral Resources of the South — The Relation of Hek. 
 
 Iron Industry to That of the Country at Large . ()o 
 
 LETTER VI. 
 
 Cotton-Growing and Agriculture Contrasted . . .112
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 LETTER I. 
 
 THE SOUTH IN 1867 — NASHVILLE, COWAN, SOUTH PITTSBURG, 
 CHATTANOOGA, BIRMINGHAM, ANNISTON, AND ATLANTA IN 
 1887. 
 
 Washington, D. C, December 15, 1886. 
 
 I gladly comply with your request for a communica- 
 tion on the resources, progress, and prospects of the South 
 as seen during my recent visit to Tennessee and Alabama, 
 and while making a trip through Northeastern Georgia 
 and across South Carolina on the Piedmont Air Line 
 road, en route from Atlanta to Washington. 
 
 I have points of comparison in vivid recollections of 
 visits to these States in 1867, and to Florida and Georgia 
 in 1875. The progress in wealth, in the means of individ- 
 ual comfort, and in productive power made by those por- 
 tions of the country with which I can thus institute com- 
 parisons has been marvellous. In 1867 the South was a 
 land of desolation, her fields were fenceless and unculti- 
 vated, and her people were without reproductive stock, 
 or that with which to impel modern agricultural imple- 
 ments, if these had been bestowed upon them gratuitously. 
 They were, numerically speaking, without seed for food 
 crops, except such as had been bestowed upon them by
 
 2 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 personal friends, or the government through the Freed- 
 men's Bureau and the agencies of the Agricultural De- 
 partment. 
 
 The war had undoubtedly been the proximate cause of 
 these deplorable conditions ; but it was not their primary 
 cause, as investigation discloses the fact that this was to 
 be found in the economic opinions and industrial system 
 that had dominated the South before the war, and under 
 which she neither had nor could have populous towns or 
 a great city, which her leaders regarded as great sores. 
 Without such aggregations of people, no development of 
 her boundless and infinitely varied mineral resources could 
 be had. These were, in fact, treated as of little value, 
 and as involving in their possible development dangers to 
 the prevailing system of field labor. In the absence of 
 cities and of mining and manufacturing populations, the 
 productions of the South were restricted to a few great 
 staples, s".ch as cotton, rice, sugar, and tobacco ; and in 
 the inevitable absence of fertilizers, which in those days 
 were chiefly derived from the barnyard, and the refuse 
 of towns and cities, these crops were so exhausting as to 
 require the land to be recuperated by being permitted to 
 lie fallow for twenty or more years, so that each planter 
 was required to own vast bodies of land in order to have 
 at all times a plantation susceptible of profitable cultiva- 
 tion. As the labor on these large estates was performed 
 by slaves, there was no employment for the white families, 
 who occupied small patches of poor land, and most of 
 whom derived a precarious living from the game and fish 
 they might take, and from such cotton or tobacco as in the 
 absence of implements and barnyards they could extort 
 from their exhausted acres. 
 
 Referring to the poverty of the people and contrasting
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 3 
 
 it with the incalculable value of the mineral wealth with 
 which their State abounded, I appealed to an audience of 
 thousands of people at Montgomery, Alabama, in May, 
 1867, to relieve themselves from the drudgery of ill-paid 
 manual toil, and the penury it entailed upon them, by ex- 
 changing part of their land for capital with which to de- 
 velop the coal, iron ore, and limestone to be found in or 
 near to that which they might retain. By recurring to 
 my remarks, as reported by a citizen of Alabama in the 
 Montgomery Sentinel, I find that I said : 
 
 " It is in the interest of our country that I speak when I ask 
 you how you use the advantages with which nature has so 
 bounteously provided you, and tell you that you have impov- 
 erished yourselves by treating them with contempt. We turn 
 our coal and iron to most profitable account. You permit 
 yours to slumber in their native earth. Availing ourselves of 
 their power, one man with us does the work of a hundred with 
 you. One little girl, tending a machine in a factory, will spin 
 or weave more cotton in a day than one of your women will in 
 a year by the ancient method of the wheel and the hand-loom. 
 You have not deemed your mineral wealth worthy of considera- 
 tion. In your devotion to your peculiar system of labor, you 
 have forgotten that iron and coal are the most potent agents 
 of modern civilization. Mere muscular power has become a 
 thing of secondary consideration. Iron is the muscle of 
 modern civilization, and coal — ignited coal — is the nervous 
 force that animates it." ' 
 
 In view of the immense development of the coal and 
 iron ore of these States, and the increase in number 
 and extent of industrial centres I saw in Tennessee and 
 Alabama, the States in which I had most frequently spo- 
 
 1 Speeches, Letters, etc., by Wm. D. Kelley, p. 162.
 
 4 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 ken in 1867, the recollection of the remarks just quoted 
 made me fear that well-instructed men among my audi- 
 tors must have felt that I was treating them as children, 
 and giving them what might be regarded as a kindergar- 
 ten lesson in the elements of the civilization of the latter 
 half of the nineteenth century. Certain it is that they 
 have outgrown the need of such elementary suggestions. 
 The changes wrought in the meantime have been marvel- 
 lous, and may justly be regarded as the work of Titans. 
 
 The systems of railroad that now traverse the South 
 are as perfect in the construction of road-bed, track, and 
 bridges, and in passenger cars and the means provided 
 for the transportation of freight, as those of the North. 
 Lateral roads branch from them into such valleys as are 
 known to be specially rich, not in iron alone, but in other 
 minerals, some of which are found in such profusion and 
 juxtaposition as to seem to defy geologic laws as else- 
 where illustrated. 
 
 I have said that prior to the war the South neither had, 
 nor could have, great cities. It is also true that her states- 
 men preferred that their workshops should be in foreign 
 lands, and that the ships which exported their raw products 
 and brought them manufactured commodities in exchange 
 should be built and owned by foreigners. In this respect 
 the change is most striking. 
 
 Nashville is a beautiful city, nearly every one of whose 
 many hills is crowned by an edifice which, though it may 
 not rival the magnificent State Capitol, does vie with it in 
 challenging the admiring attention of visitors. The city 
 has become a manufacturing and commercial centre. 
 While there I visited a foundry, which though originally 
 large has doubled its extent and capacity within the last 
 two years, and is sending out an immense variety of
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 5 
 
 stoves and hollow-wart, but which uses no iron not made 
 from native ores in Tennessee or Alabama ; also an im- 
 mense cotton factory, which is one of four within the city 
 limits, all of which are supplied with the most improved 
 machinery. Nashville's manufactures increase in variety 
 as rapidly as they do in volume, and its growth as a dis- 
 tributing point has been sufficient to prove that it is des- 
 tined to enjoy the advantages of a producing and com- 
 mercial centre, and to become at no distant day a popu- 
 lous city. 
 
 Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Birmingham, Alabama, 
 are marvels each in its own way. Chattanooga may be 
 described not inaptly as lying at the foot of Missionary 
 Ridge and Lookout Mountain, though when the battles 
 were fought which made the names of these mountains 
 famous the smoky little village on the Cumberland River 
 was at its nearest point to either of them more than a mile 
 away. It is a growing place, and grows because its people 
 are all busy. It is, at least, in one respect cosmopolitan. 
 We were told that its adult population is about equally 
 divided between ex-soldiers of the Confederate and of the 
 Union army, and that recruits from either, or masters of 
 industry who have never meddled with arms or politics, 
 are alike welcome to a share in its fortunes. For so young 
 a city its industries are widely diversified. Of course those 
 connected with ore beds, coal mines, and furnaces pre- 
 dominate, but it has others. Its lumber trade, especially 
 in white woods, is claimed to be second only to "that of 
 Chicago. It has a tannery, too, which is said to be the 
 largest in the world, and, without having seen all its ri- 
 vals, I am prepared, from its dimensions, to believe that it 
 is the largest. The labor it employs is colored, and it 
 was in connection with the homes of these laborers that
 
 6 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 my attention was first drawn to the striking contrast be- 
 tween the neat, commodious, and well-painted homes of 
 the negro laborers engaged in mining, smelting, and me- 
 chanical pursuits, and the cabins in which the poor white 
 growers of cotton live now, as they did before the war. 
 With a party of friends, in a special car on the belt road, 
 which encircles the city, we visited foundries for miscella- 
 neous wares and cast-iron pipe works, and passed several 
 furnaces. We examined the rolling-mill which was con- 
 structed by the government during the war for the re-rol- 
 ling of old rails, and after the war was greatly enlarged and 
 improved by private owners, among whom were Messrs. 
 Cooper and Hewitt, of New York, and which is now 
 being fitted with all the 1 appointments necessary for the 
 production of Bessemer steel and its conversion into rails. 
 But the establishment which interested me as much as 
 any in Chattanooga was a Bessemer steel-nail works, of 
 which Mr. James Duncan, formerly of the Cambria Works, 
 of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, is superintendent, and, I 
 think, proprietor. The establishment is not remarkable 
 for its extent, but is very remarkable for the compactness 
 of its arrangements and the perfection of the nails it 
 produces. The labor is colored, though the fact that an 
 applicant for employment is white is not an impediment 
 to his engagement, if he be a skilful nail-maker. The con- 
 verter used by Mr. Duncan is the smallest I have seen, as 
 are the ingot moulds into which the metal is cast. The 
 rolling apparatus is, of course, proportioned to the supply 
 this diminutive converter can create. When the nail mill 
 is in operation the bodies of many of the negro workmen, 
 who are youths or very young men, sway to its music, 
 and, at times, the whole gang break out in a negro melody 
 or chorus. Here I found unexpected evidence of the in-
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. J 
 
 dustry and mechanical skill of some of these colored boys, 
 in attestation of which I purchased from one of them a 
 steel paper-cutter made from a railway spike with such 
 imperfect tools as he had himself constructed. The maker 
 disliked to part with this evidence of his skill, because it 
 had not received the finishing touches, and the blade was 
 less smooth and polished than he had intended to make 
 it. I also secured a lady's button-hook, made from a 
 spike with the same artless tools by the same lad. Mr. 
 Duncan assured us that for the privilege of testing their 
 skill and improving it some of the boys would devote 
 more than half of the hour allowed for dinner to this 
 work, and that the only limitation upon the number of 
 articles they might produce was that they should work at 
 them during dinner-time only, and should report the fact 
 whenever they required another spike. The establishment 
 of an industrial-art school in the midst of a population 
 like these Chattanooga nail-makers would soon produce 
 gratifying evidence of the adaptation of negro labor to 
 mechanical pursuits requiring a high degree of skill. 
 Chattanooga, in addition to its productive industries, is 
 also a large distributer of groceries and dry goods, and 
 evidently has a commercial future. 
 
 Birmingham lacks the advantages Chattanooga derives 
 from its situation on a river. It is an interior town. 
 When the war closed its site was a tenantless wilderness, 
 but it is now an industrial centre, the energy of whose 
 more than 25,000 inhabitants and the resources, found 
 chiefly within a few miles of the city limits, which they 
 have made tributary to their prosperity, would be a mar- 
 vel in any country. About six miles out upon the line 
 of one of the railroads, which traverse the property of 
 the Pratt Coal and Iron Company, are ranges of coke ovens,
 
 8 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 which reminded me of the Connellsville and Westmore- 
 land coke regions of Pennsylvania, and about the same 
 distance on another road parallel to the former, and but 
 two or three miles from it, we saw gangs of men quarry- 
 ing iron ore by the use of the drill and explosives used 
 by those engaged in quarrying stone. In view of the 
 fact that the narrow strip of land which divides the coal 
 and ore beds is a mass of limestone, it is not surprising 
 that the over-sanguine men of Birmingham really believe 
 that they will be able to make iron so cheaply as to soon 
 close up the works of Pennsylvania and force her iron- 
 masters and their employes to re-establish themselves at 
 Birmingham. The consequence of this faith is a wild 
 speculation in town lots, which is without a parallel in 
 my recollection. Just before the arrival of our party, a 
 corner lot ioo feet square, which appeared to be swampy, 
 because it was rather below grade, and in front of which 
 was a peanut-stand, had been sold for $100,000, or $1,000 
 per front foot. Of course such speculation will retard 
 the immediate growth of Birmingham, and time, by vari- 
 ous processes, will determine the actual value of corner 
 lots in a city whose success is to extinguish the furnace 
 fires of Pittsburg, Braddocke, Johnstown, Bethlehem, and 
 generally throughout Pennsylvania. 
 
 I was much impressed by some things I saw at Cowan, 
 especially by the fact that the close proximity of fuel, 
 ore, and limestone at that point enables the proprietors to 
 produce a superior quality of foundry iron, which I saw 
 in use at Nashville, from ores that are so lean that they 
 would not be worked on the costly lands of Pennsylvania 
 and with the more expensive fuel used in that State. 
 This furnace, the erection and working of which have cre- 
 ated a prettily situated village, embodies all the latest im-
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. g 
 
 provements, as do the two that are operating at South 
 Pittsburg, and the four charcoal furnaces of the Wood- 
 stock and Clifton companies at Anniston, Ironaton, and 
 Jenifer, prosperous villages but a few miles from An- 
 niston. At South Pittsburg work has been commenced 
 on another furnace, and we were told that contracts had 
 been made for the immediate construction of two others ; 
 and while I yet lingered at Anniston, Mr. John S. Perry, 
 proprietor of the great stove works at Albany and Sing 
 Sing, having determined to remove the last-named branch 
 of his works to South Pittsburg, contracted for land on 
 which to erect a foundry and finishing buildings, which will 
 cover ten acres, and proposed to purchase twenty acres 
 on which to erect homes for his workmen. It is believed 
 that South Pittsburg must enjoy a large trade in lumber 
 generally, and compete with Chattanooga in poplar and 
 other white woods ; and there is much talk of the early 
 establishment at this place of pipe works and other indus- 
 tries that will gather about them large numbers of labor- 
 ers. There is no doubt that South Pittsburg is destined 
 to grow rapidly and become a town of considerable size 
 and importance. Its situation is on a beautiful bank of 
 the Tennessee, and slopes from the river gently to and up 
 the side of the mountain, in whose evening shadow it will 
 grow. I heard much said about Sheffield, and read much 
 of what is to be done there, but as I did not visit the 
 place I cannot speak advisedly of its prospects. 
 
 The objective point of my trip was to visit my friend, 
 Mr. Samuel Noble, the founder and chief manager of the 
 settlement of Anniston, in Calhoun County, Ala., and my 
 opportunity to study the progress and present condition 
 of the industries of Anniston, and the resources of the 
 territory, of which it may be said to be the capital, was
 
 IO THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 complete. We remained there ten days, occupying apart- 
 ments in the magnificent hotel known as " Anniston Inn," 
 a favorite summer resort for the people of the Gulf 
 States. This picturesque edifice, which is a perfect speci- 
 men of the prevalent architecture of the days of Queen 
 Anne, stands at the head of a gentle slope, near the base 
 of which are Anniston's workshops, which include two 
 charcoal furnaces, a foundry, car-wheel and axle factories, 
 a machine shop, shops for the construction of freight cars, 
 a large brick cotton-factory, and several other establish- 
 ments, including an ice factory capable of producing five 
 tons per day. The water supply is drawn from a bed of 
 pure white sand, eighty feet below the surface, and is 
 crystalline in its purity. The pumping force raises it to 
 a reservoir 236 feet up one of the mountain sides, and the 
 supply is said to be sufficient to meet the wants of a popu- 
 lation of many thousands. But to return to the Inn 
 which overlooks these hives of industry. Its apartments 
 on the office floor, including dining-room, parlor, smoking 
 alcove, and reading-room, and the sleeping apartments in 
 the upper stories exceed in finish those of any baronial 
 hall of the olden times. Except some red-wood shingles 
 from California, which were required to produce an ef- 
 fective contrast, the timber in the structure is all native 
 to the surrounding hills. There is not a particle of paint 
 on the interior of the building. The polished woods de- 
 rived from the immediate neighborhood afford a study to 
 the tourist as he roams through the spacious apartments 
 of this old-fashioned Inn, whose guests enjoy the comfort 
 of every modern improvement. In its broad fireplaces 
 there lie upon massive andirons logs six feet or more in 
 length, and in many of the sleeping apartments logs of 
 about four feet.
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. II 
 
 It is a noteworthy fact that Anniston has a direct trade 
 with China, at least to the extent of part of the produc- 
 tions of its cotton-mill. It was indeed a surprise to find 
 bales of goods marked and branded for direct shipment 
 from this interior town in Alabama, the history of which 
 runs through less than seventeen years, to a commercial 
 correspondent in China. The ores used in the furnaces 
 at Anniston, Ironaton, and Jenifer are procured from 
 mines belonging to the companies, and the wood from 
 which charcoal, the only fuel used in the furnaces and 
 shops, is derived from the mountain spurs which are dis- 
 tant far enough from the Inn, as viewed from its broad 
 verandas, to give the scene the character of an en- 
 chanted valley. Not only is the Inn the property of the 
 Woodstock Iron and Steel Company, but until four years 
 ago that company had, under the management of Messrs. 
 Samuel Noble and Alfred L. Tyler, controlled the settle- 
 ment, as the towns of Pullman, in this country, and Sal- 
 taire, in England, are controlled by proprietors ; but 
 during the last four years town lots have been offered 
 for sale, and quite a commercial centre has been estab- 
 lished by private enterprise. Fifteen thousand bales of 
 cotton will be handled this year, much of which will be 
 received from poor whites in exchange for their very 
 limited annual supply of store goods. The Woodstock 
 Company owns over 50,000 acres of land on which are 
 immense deposits of brown and red hematite, fossil- 
 iferous and specular ore, mountains of limestone, and 
 seemingly inexhaustible supplies of wood and coal. The 
 companies have just completed a railroad more than sixty 
 miles long down the Talladega valley from Anniston to 
 Sylacauga, which is known as the Anniston and Atlantic 
 road, and by which their properties are connected with
 
 12 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 the system of roads that connect the interior with South- 
 eastern Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. The first pas- 
 senger train traversed the valley on schedule time while 
 I was at the Inn. The next work in hand is to complete 
 a road of about thirty miles, which will connect Anniston 
 with the Cincinnati Southern road at Gadsden, and give 
 her direct connection with Chicago. The Woodstock 
 Company has also determined to construct two furnaces 
 for the manufacture of coke iron as a preliminary step to 
 the establishment of foundries, and I venture the predic- 
 tion that though Anniston has never had a " boom," and 
 its planting and development have been managed so 
 quietly that its name is hardly recognized by the popular 
 ear, it will, before two decades shall have passed, be one 
 of the most remarkable centres of iron, steel, and kindred 
 industries to be found in those wonderfully endowed 
 States, Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee. 
 
 Space will not permit me to say anything definite about 
 the marble deposits which extend through Tennessee, 
 Alabama, and Georgia, and embrace almost every variety 
 of marble. I may, however, mention an illustrative fact. 
 In passing by the Woodstock furnaces, the attention of 
 our party was attracted by a pile of broken marble of 
 singular whiteness, pieces of which bore such an appear- 
 ance of polish, as to create the impression that they were 
 fragments of a manufactured article. This, however, was 
 not the case. They had been brought there to be used as 
 flux. The quarry from which they had been taken was 
 the one selected to furnish the block of marble Alabama 
 was to contribute to the Washington monument. When 
 it had been finished and properly inscribed, the block was 
 forwarded and received by the builders of the monument, 
 and having been scrutinized and submitted to the judg-
 
 '/■///■: OLD sorrn and THE NEW. 13 
 
 ment of experts, it was returned with a communication 
 stating that the law required the stone from each State to 
 be a specimen of its own resources, and that this was 
 Italian marble. So firm was this conviction that it re- 
 quired the certificates upon honor of the governor of the 
 State, of senators and members of Congress, and the affi- 
 davits of parties connected with the quarry to convince 
 the experts who had the erection of the monument in 
 charge that it was not Italian, but Alabama marble. 
 
 With my son, who accompanied me throughout my 
 trip, I lingered at Anniston until Congress had actually 
 assembled. Accompanied by our friend, Noble, we de- 
 parted with regret, and proceeded by the Georgia Pacific 
 Road to Atlanta, and thence next morning by the Pied- 
 mont Air Line, which traverses Northeastern Georgia and 
 the Carolinas, for Washington. 
 
 In 1867 I saw the ruins of what had been the little city 
 of Atlanta, which had prided itself upon the amount of 
 cotton its merchants handled annually. It was literally in 
 ruins — I may say in ashes; but as I looked upon it now I 
 saw thaf. I had then looked upon the ashes from which a 
 phoenix was to rise. The census of 1880 found more than 
 50,000 people in Atlanta, and the number has certainly 
 increased since then. That they are prosperous people 
 is attested by every thing you behold in Atlanta. Into 
 and out of its union depot pass the cars of eight through- 
 line railroads, to which three important ones are now be- 
 ing added. The Kimball House, which is one of the best- 
 appointed hotels in the country, cost considerably more 
 than a million of dollars for its reconstruction after its 
 destruction by fire in 1883. The office from which the 
 Constitution issues its many thousand papers daily is im- 
 pressive alike by its extent and architectural beauty. The
 
 14 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 Markham House and other fine hotels cluster about the 
 depot and the Kimball House. The evening was cold 
 and the streets were sleety, but it was the only chance I 
 would have to see any thing of Atlanta. I therefore 
 walked far enough to see some of the great business 
 houses of the city, and, by the aid of street railroads, saw 
 something of the portion in which the elegant residences 
 of Atlanta's millionaires are found. As we left in the 
 morning we discovered pregnant proof that the growth 
 of Atlanta had exceeded the expectations of its earlier 
 settlers, for factories, warehouses, freight depots, and other 
 massive buildings are rapidly enclosing the beautiful ceme- 
 tery, which, when laid out, was evidently believed to be 
 too remote from the town for the possible encroachment 
 of its stirring life upon this quiet city of the dead. 
 
 In having complied with your request, and thus told 
 the readers of the Manufacturers' Record what I saw in 
 my brief visit to Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia, I have 
 given them but faint intimations of the resources of the 
 South, of the impulses that now animate her, and of the 
 rapid strides with which the spirit of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury is changing not only the aspect of the country but 
 the purposes and aspirations of her people.
 
 LETTER II. 
 
 FLORIDA THE WINTER FARM AND GARDEN OF THE UNION. 
 
 The Inn, Anniston, Ala., May 9, 1887. 
 I passed the month of March, 1875, in Florida, dividing 
 my time between Jacksonville and Hibernia, whence I 
 made visits to St. Augustine, Palatka and Green Cove, 
 and took the customary trip to Silver Spring by the Ocla- 
 waha. I had gone South for rest in a genial climate, both 
 of which I found on the banks of the beautiful St. John's. 
 The repose, however, became too absolute, and engendered 
 ennui, which drove me North while winter yet covered 
 the lap of spring throughout Pennsylvania. The con- 
 trolling impression I received was that at some period 
 when, by the decay of successive growths of her luxurious 
 vegetation, Florida should have been lifted out of the 
 water, she would probably be a safe and agreeable home 
 for human beings. She was apparently without resources, 
 and was, as she to some extent still is, a terra incognita, 
 Indeed, I find on the face of a very recent map a notice 
 covering parts of Dade and Monroe counties, equal in 
 size to two States of New Jersey, which begins thus: 
 " This unsurveyed and but partly explored region." Let me 
 therefore, in justice to myself, present to my readers some 
 of the circumstances which seemed to justify the un- 
 favorable conclusion to which I had been forced. In this 
 immense State, with the fame of whose fruit and flowers 
 Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe had just filled the land, Col.
 
 1 6 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 Hart's grove, near Palatka, was everywhere cited as proof 
 that oranges could be raised in commercial quantities in 
 Florida, and I heard that Gen. Sanford had planted a 
 grove near a town to which his name has been given, and 
 that others were planting groves in that vicinity. It was 
 also said that the lumber of Florida was valuable and in- 
 exhaustible, but I could not see that anybody had been 
 tempted to use it commercially ; and as schedule time by 
 rail for passengers from Savannah to Jacksonville, which 
 is now five hours, was then sixteen, and as there were, in- 
 cluding disconnected and unfinished roads, but 484 miles 
 of railroad in the State, I concluded that the lumber of 
 Upper and Middle Florida was not manufactured because 
 it would not pay the cost of transportation. As the people 
 who used milk depended on Northern manufacturers of 
 condensed milk for their supplies, and as the cows I saw 
 were very small, and obtained their food from beneath the 
 surface of the St. John's, at a depth which required them to 
 submerge their horns, and sometimes their shoulders, I 
 concluded that they were not kept for dairy purposes, but 
 belonged to a class of amphibious animals of which I had 
 not read, which the Spaniards had probably introduced as 
 a means of supplying themselves with hides and tallow. 
 This impression was strengthened by the fact that nowhere 
 did I see an effort to produce pasturage, fodder plants, 
 corn, wheat, oats, or any other of the cereals, and by the 
 type of the only flouring mill I saw. It was located at 
 Hibernia, so near to my chamber that I could hear the 
 noise of the machinery when it was in motion, and was 
 used for grinding corn. It was modelled after the mills that 
 were in use before the Christian era, and which had sug- 
 gested to the apostle his apt illustration of the uncertainty 
 of human life : " Two women shall be grinding ; the one
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. \J 
 
 shall be taken and the other left." On examination I found 
 that its motive power consisted of a venerable-looking 
 colored man and a lad ten or twelve years of age, who was 
 probably his great-grandson. Nor was my conclusion, 
 which now seems so ludicrous, inconsistent with replies 
 made to queries by intelligent white Floridians. For 
 instance, when I asked a group of them upon what they 
 lived, one said : " On sweet potatoes and consumptive 
 Yankees " ; and to the question, What have you to sell ? 
 another replied " Our atmosphere." 
 
 Soon after my return home I determined to re-examine 
 the conclusion from which I had all along revolted by bring- 
 ing it to my favorite test, that of experience expressed 
 in statistics, reports of the census, and Poor's Railroad 
 Manual. Careful examination of these volumes confirmed 
 my adverse conclusion, by showing the following compar- 
 ative results : Florida was granted a territorial govern- 
 ment in 1822, and Iowa not until 1838, and both were ad- 
 mitted to the Union as States on the 3d of March, 1845. 
 Florida includes 59,268 square miles, and Iowa but 55,475. 
 The report of the census taken in June, 1840, five years 
 before their admission, shows that Florida's population 
 then numbered 54,477, and that of Iowa but 43,112. Yet 
 the census of 1870, the last taken before my visit, showed 
 that Iowa's 43,112 had expanded into 1,194,020, and 
 that Florida's 54,477 now numbered less than the thou- 
 sands Iowa had in excess of a million, the totals standing 
 thus: 
 
 1870 — Iowa, population .... 1,194,020 
 Florida 187,740 
 
 Adverse to Florida as was this showing, that made by 
 the Railroad Manual was more so, for the general govern-
 
 1 8 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 ment had been specially lavish in its grants of land to the 
 State directly, and to her railroad companies. The first 
 grant of land in aid of a railroad ever made by the national 
 government was to a road in the territory of Florida, at a 
 time when few of the American people had seen a rail- 
 road or a locomotive. That grant, which was made March 
 3, 1835, to the Tallahassee and St. Mark's Road, gave the 
 company a road-bed and 30 feet on each side thereof, 
 together with the right to take lumber for construction 
 within 300 feet on either side of the road, and 10 acres at 
 the terminus. By a single act, that of 1855, Congress 
 ceded to Florida about 20,000,000 acres, and Senator Call, 
 who is now vociferous in condemning land grants, intro- 
 duced during the last Congress a bill entitled " A bill for 
 the forfeiture of the land granted to the State of Florida 
 for the construction of certain lines of railroad in that 
 State," which included the following grants, made as early 
 as May 17, 1856: 
 
 Florida. — Florida Railroad .... $289,984.17 
 
 Florida and Alabama . . . 165,688.00 
 
 Florida, Atlanta, and Gulf Central . 37,583.29 
 
 Pensacola and Georgia . . . 1,275,212.93 
 
 Notwithstanding these early and more than munificent 
 grants of land, the Manual for 1874, the year preceding 
 the visit of which I have spoken, showed that Florida 
 had of railroads, finished and unfinished, but 484 miles, 
 and that Iowa was then operating 3,850 miles of such 
 road. I think I may here confidently propound to my 
 readers the question : Did not the facts I have submitted 
 justify the unfavorable judgment with which I left Florida 
 in 1875? Yet, ample as seemed to be the evidence in 
 support of the opinion that Florida was not yet fit for
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AX J) THE NEW. 1 9 
 
 human habitation, it would, had I known the whole 
 truth, have led me to an opposite conclusion. 
 
 My judgment was at fault, because I was not familiar 
 with the early legislation of Florida. Had I been I would 
 have seen that it was man and not nature that had inflict- 
 ed bankruptcy upon the State, and stagnation and gnaw- 
 ing penury upon her people. The men who controlled 
 her affairs from her erection into a territory until the 
 close of the civil war evidently believed that they could 
 compel nature to adapt her operations to the principles of 
 the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798, which as- 
 serted the supremacy of a State over the Union, and the 
 free-trade dogmas enunciated by Richard Cobden, which 
 were designed to perpetuate England's monopolistic claim 
 to the title " the workshop of the world." The effects of 
 this delusion are everywhere apparent in the economic 
 and social history of Florida, which, while under the in- 
 fluence of the men referred to, is a record of blundering 
 egotism. From the disastrous consequences of their legis- 
 lation, Florida and her people were not able to emanci- 
 pate themselves till toward the close of 1880, when it 
 was made possible for them to accept the progressive life 
 of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and yield to 
 the spirit that is animating, illuminating, and blessing the 
 New South. 
 
 To dispense the affairs of a single State was not ade- 
 quate to the aspirations of her early rulers, though that 
 State was an empire in extent and a marvel in the luxuri- 
 ant diversity of the crops it could produce. By con- 
 trolling the taxable resources of the State, together with 
 her credit and the enormous grants of land she had re- 
 ceived from the national government, they were able to 
 entrench themselves in the exercise of Florida's executive,
 
 20 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 legislative, and judicial functions; and when this was ac- 
 complished they abandoned all pretence of promoting her 
 settlement and the development of her resources. Having 
 made a settlement, consisting of a few princely estates 
 north and west of the Suwannee River, they devoted their 
 energies to the promotion of a scheme for the destruction 
 of the mining, manufacturing, and carrying interests of 
 the Northern States by the sinister regulation of the 
 international commerce of the Union. This is not the 
 suggestion of fancy, nor an exaggeration, but a cold fact 
 of history. He who will consult a map of Florida and 
 note the lines of railroad from Jacksonville to Tallahassee, 
 from Tallahassee to St. Marks, and from Fernandina to 
 Cedar Keys, will discover the length of railroad Florida 
 carried into the Confederacy, and may see how subservient 
 it all was to the purposes I ascribe to the aristocratic 
 dwellers north and west of the Suwannee. The com- 
 pleted portions of these roads, which did not include a 
 bridge over the Chattahoochee River, were available for 
 but about 337 miles of continuous travel. 
 
 Few of my readers will, I fear, perceive the significance 
 of these facts, and I must therefore submit an explana- 
 tion. Florida embraces more than six degrees of latitude. 
 Jackson, her northwestern county, is bounded by the 31st 
 degree, and the Keys with which her bay abounds are be- 
 low the 26th degree. To promote the population of the 
 State and the development of her resources required 
 routes of travel not from east to west, but from north 
 to south. But the roads, the construction of which, short 
 as they were, reduced Florida to insolvency, ran from 
 west to east, and are, with the exception of the short 
 extension of the Fernandina and Cedar Keys road from 
 Gainesville to Cedar Keys, compressed into less than
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 21 
 
 one degree. These facts, together with the name be- 
 stowed upon the line from Fernandina to Cedar Keys, 
 " The Transit," illustrate the mad purposes of the con- 
 spirators, who sought by controlling the destinies of the 
 Peninsular State to compass the paralysis of our manu- 
 facturing industries, and the destruction of the Union. 
 
 They openly proclaimed their belief that the carrying 
 trade between the Mississippi valley and transatlantic 
 countries would be diverted from the North and concen- 
 trated at Cedar Keys, on the gulf, and Fernandina, on the 
 Atlantic coast, if these ports could be connected by a 
 direct railroad to be known as " The Transit." The 
 establishment of this practically through water line for 
 the carriage of international freight would, they believed, 
 prevent the construction of east and west roads in the 
 North; and in the perpetual presence of non-protective 
 tariffs the cheapness of water transportation would also 
 prevent the growth of mining and manufacturing on this 
 continent. Thus vain men, to whom a little brief author- 
 ity had been given, proposed to shape the destinies of the 
 American people. Their dream of supreme power was, 
 however, but brief. Most of them lived to learn that it 
 was for Him, who had bestowed its boundless measures 
 of infinitely diversified resources upon their country, to 
 dispose of His gifts to the human family, to whose use, 
 comfort, and instruction He had adapted them all. The 
 agents He employed to effect his beneficent purposes were 
 discontent, strife, and war, the discussion of which has no 
 place in this letter. 
 
 Justice to my subject does, however, require me to re- 
 ply to the question, What was the condition of Florida 
 and her people when the war ended? It has already been 
 shown that there were but 416 miles of railroad, and less
 
 22 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 than 187,000 people in the State at the close of 1870. 
 The railroads were badly located, and the extravagance 
 and corruption that attended their construction had bank- 
 rupted the companies to which they belonged, and the 
 State. What the condition of the people was ten years 
 later I have endeavored to show. The State having guar- 
 anteed the bonds of the railroad companies, and secured 
 their payment, principal and interest, by a mortgage 
 pledging to this object all the land she had received from 
 the general government, or might acquire, her supreme 
 power was thenceforth restricted to the further impover- 
 ishment of the people' by taxing their uncultivated and 
 unproductive land. Nor did sanguine hope promise re- 
 lief from the apparently inextricable meshes of poverty 
 and litigation in which her ante-war doctrinaire rulers had 
 involved her. With each recurring default of interest on 
 the guaranteed bonds her helplessness increased, and, as 
 she had conveyed to the very men who had in their own 
 interest contracted the debt, under the title of the Board 
 of Trustees of Public Improvement, all her lands, they 
 had deprived the State of available resources and sub- 
 jected her to legal jurisdiction. This device, which had 
 been resorted to for the purpose of establishing beyond a 
 peradventure the perpetual supremacy of the oligarchy 
 that invented it, now came back to plague the inventors. 
 Foreigners who held the bonds brought suit and obtained 
 judgment against the Board of Trustees, and the United 
 States courts, on the application of one Vaas, a holder of 
 bonds, enjoined the board from selling land for any other 
 purpose than the payment of the proceeds to a receiver 
 to be applied to the interest and principal of the bonds. 
 Large bodies of land had meanwhile been granted to 
 companies proposing to build several judiciously located
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE JVEIl . 23 
 
 railroads, but the mortgage and injunction covered the 
 land thus granted, and until these incumbrances should 
 be removed the grants were unavailable. But, further, 
 the Board of Trustees had been authorized to contract 
 for the drainage of the swamp and overflowed lands of the 
 State, for which service the executive offered one half of 
 the land that should be reclaimed to the party who might 
 reclaim it. But no one could be found to accept the 
 contract, because the lands which might be reclaimed 
 were covered by the injunction, and could not be trans- 
 ferred even in compensation for this work, which, if 
 accomplished, would relieve the State from her embar- 
 rassment. The case was hopeless, and so it continued to 
 be until toward the close of 1880, when a citizen of Phila- 
 delphia lifted Florida from insolvency and her people from 
 despair. 
 
 When I was elected to Congress, in i860, a slender lad 
 of fifteen, the son of my late friend Henry Disston, hav- 
 ing graduated from the Jefferson Grammar School, had 
 just entered upon work in the lowest branch of skilled 
 labor in the practical department of what is now the 
 greatest saw manufactory in the world. He was a diffi- 
 dent and quiet lad. His devotion to his new pursuit and 
 the facility with which he mastered minute details and 
 general operations was a constant source of gratification 
 and pride to his father. When in 1878 Mr. Disston died, 
 his son Hamilton, of whom I speak, became the senior 
 partner of the firm of Henry Disston's Sons. Though 
 devoted to his great business, his trained familiarity with 
 every detail of its management left him master of part of 
 every day. As he was not addicted to sport or society, 
 he longed for another great enterprise than that which 
 had been brought to ideal perfection by his father, to
 
 24 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 which he might profitably devote these unemployed hours. 
 Florida's proposition to bestow half the land that should 
 be reclaimed on the man who would drain her swamp and 
 overflowed acres took possession of him. He instituted 
 broad preliminary investigations from which he received 
 satisfactory reports ; he surveyed the entire field of the 
 proposed work, and with Napoleonic instinct and foresight 
 saw in the proposition an opportunity to promote his 
 country's welfare by the reclamation of a more than 
 kingly domain. Competent engineers were employed to 
 make scientific surveys, and to report on the practicability 
 of the scheme and the probable cost of the work. The 
 legal questions involved were referred to eminent counsel ; 
 and it was the lawyers and not the engineers who found 
 the obstacle that seemed to be insurmountable, for they 
 came upon the judgment of the United States Court, and 
 the fact that these lands were also in the hands of the 
 receiver to secure a debt which, though said to have been 
 but $125,000 when contracted, had by a recent adjudica- 
 tion been found to be little less than $1,000,000. 
 
 Few prudent business men would have attempted to 
 remove such an embarrassment in order to enter upon 
 what was but an experiment, though a right royal one. 
 The magnificence and beneficence of the enterprise had 
 fascinated Hamilton Disston, and he sent into every 
 county of Florida in which there was a considerable body 
 of land belonging to the State competent and trusty 
 agents to report upon the character of the soil, its native 
 productions, and what, if any thing else save these, it 
 would yield under cultivation. Having scrutinized the 
 reports of these agents and submitted them to a few judi- 
 cious friends, he found himself prepared to submit to Gov- 
 ernor Bloxham the question : How many acres of land, to
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 25 
 
 be selected by my agents, will the State convey to me for 
 $1,000,000, with which to pay the judgment against the 
 lands vested in the Board of Trustees of Public Improve- 
 ment, any balance of the sum which may remain after a 
 settlement of that claim to be paid into the State treasury 
 for general purposes? Four million acres was the Gov- 
 ernor's instant reply, which, though prompt, had been 
 well considered, as the Board of Trustees for Public Im- 
 provement and the Governor had for more than fouryears 
 been pressing this offer upon the attention of American 
 and foreign capitalists, and had been able to obtain no 
 higher offer than 19 cents an acre, or $760,000 for four 
 million acres of Florida's choicest lands. This sum could 
 not be accepted, as it was not sufficient to pay the prin- 
 cipal of the debt, and the charges by which it had been 
 swollen. The Disston contract, as it is now known, was 
 promptly closed in 1880. The preceding forty years had 
 added but 215,016 to Florida's population, and during the 
 preceding fifteen years, or from the close of the war in 
 1865 until the close of 1880, but 132 miles had been added 
 to her railroad system. This melancholy exhibit may be 
 accepted as the epitaph under which the Old South was 
 buried in Florida. 
 
 Let us now turn to the New South to ascertain whether 
 she may enjoy a different career. The Vaas mortgage 
 had no sooner been satisfied than the State government 
 issued patents for the land previously granted to railroad 
 companies, and the companies immediately contracted for 
 the construction of the roads to which the grants were 
 applicable. 
 
 But six years have elapsed since this happy consumma- 
 tion of the emancipation of a magnificent empire and a 
 suffering people from the effects of the misgovernment of
 
 26 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 a former generation, yet Florida is traversed by railroads 
 and lines of steamers from the Alabama and Georgia 
 boundary to Punto Rassa below Fort Myers on the Gulf 
 of Mexico, and but a short distance from the Everglades. 
 Here, one hundred miles farther south than any other 
 American road has been laid, the Florida Southern has its 
 picturesque and, in the winter, inviting terminus. The 
 Jacksonville, Tampa, and Key West, and the South 
 Florida roads give Jacksonville and the North daily 
 connection with Sanford, Kissimmee, Tampa, and thence 
 to Cuba by an admirably managed chain of roads, and a 
 line of steamers that is much praised by voyagers. More 
 than i, 800 miles of railroad were in operation at the 
 close of last year, and the routes of traffic and pleasure 
 travel are extended by daily trips to Jacksonville and 
 Enterprise over the beautiful St. John's, by the De Bary 
 steamers and those of the Florida Railway and Navigation 
 Company from Titusville to Rock Ledge and Melbourne, 
 on the Indian River. While these routes of interesting 
 travel are as well managed as I found them, ennui will not 
 again banish me from Florida. 
 
 Mr. Disston and his associates having been incorporated 
 under the title of the Atlantic and Gulf Canal and Okee- 
 chobee Land Company, contracted to drain the swamp 
 and overflowed lands belonging to the State. New life 
 seemed to animate every citizen of Florida, and activity 
 was everywhere apparent. About the close of the year 
 Sir Charles Reed came to the United States for the pur- 
 pose of selecting fitting sites for colonies of enterprising 
 Englishmen. Mr. Disston, who had from the first seen 
 that to obtain advantage from his vast purchase he must 
 promote settlement, approached Sir Charles, to whom be- 
 fore the close of 1 88 1 he had sold two million acres,
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 1J 
 
 upon which quite a number of flourishing settlements 
 were soon made. Here are some of the immediate results 
 of the change that had taken place. To a total railroad 
 mileage of 548 miles, the construction of the first of which 
 was, as has been shown, provided for by the national 
 government in 1835, there have been added 1,312 miles of 
 road which are now in operation. No census since that of 
 1880 has been taken, but I believe that the population will 
 more than double during the passing decade, and that Flori- 
 da is moving rapidly to prominence among the non-mineral- 
 producing States of the Union. 1 Many of my readers 
 will doubtless refuse to accept this prediction. Let me 
 therefore enumerate to these doubting Thomases some of 
 the things this wonderful State, three, of whose sides are 
 bathed by the waters of the Gulf Stream, and whose en- 
 tire surface is daily fanned by ocean breezes, produces in 
 profusion, and without exhausting labor. In J. G. Knapp's 
 little book entitled " Only One Florida," I find this state- 
 ment of the results of Florida's emancipation : 
 
 " Commerce opened her doors wider than ever before. 
 Steamboats plowed seas and rivers ; railroads were laid 
 through the land. The climate and soil were found more pro- 
 lific for other things than cotton. If oranges took the lead, 
 other things followed close in their wake. Fruits and vegeta- 
 bles from the North grew and matured earlier, often better, 
 than there. Those from the semi-tropical regions of the 
 Mediterranean, from the tropics of Cuba and Mexico, from 
 distant Japan and China, met and mingled, and many of them 
 flourished better than in regions whence they came. Corn, 
 Irish potatoes, onions, cabbages, cauliflowers, melons, cucum- 
 bers, beets, carrots, tomatoes, egg-plants, peas, beans, and 
 strawberries flourished and matured for the markets when the 
 
 1 A State census was taken in 1885, with a result confirming my estimate.
 
 28 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 regions whence they came are wrapped in ice. From the ad- 
 joining States came pecans, grapes, plums, pears, Ogeechee 
 limes and peaches. From the tropics the list is longest, and 
 the kinds are best — oranges, limes, citrons, shaddocks, and 
 grape fruits — improved by the climate and the changes of lo- 
 cation ; but there came also the mangoes, the sweet and sour 
 sops, chiramoyas, and Jamaica apples, guavas, bananas, paw- 
 paws, dates, cocoa-nuts, pineapples, and sapadilloes. Casava, 
 yams, and arrow-roots were added to the Florida list, with tex- 
 tile plants, and flowers innumerable. Experiments are multi- 
 plying new plants, and new varieties come from other regions, 
 until their number exceeds the seedmen's catalogues, and men 
 are surprised at the numbers and variety they already see, and 
 wonder when will Florida's capabilities end. The number is 
 now only equalled by the heterogeneity of the climate and 
 soil." 
 
 Having verified by observation and inquiry this long 
 list of Florida's capabilities, I am prepared to endorse it 
 " correct as far as it goes," but must indicate some of its 
 omissions. Every variety of the mulberry I have ever 
 seen is indigenous to Florida, and invites the women of 
 the State to engage in the gentle and beautiful work of 
 producing raw silk. But I mention the mulberry inci- 
 dentally in passing ; the omissions I meant to note were 
 of great staples, such as the best varieties of sugar-cane 
 grown in Cuba, together with all the varieties of saccha- 
 rine sorghum, rice, tobacco, indigo, and a long list of nu- 
 tritious grasses and fodder plants, which, from the adap- 
 tation of particular species to each of the differing 
 temperatures that prevail between tropical Florida and 
 the southern line of Georgia and Alabama will enable her 
 to maintain in all parts of the State droves of cattle with- 
 out special winter feeding. Justice to Mr. Knapp and
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 29 
 
 his admirable pamphlet requires me to credit him in this 
 connection with this supplemental catalogue of Florida's 
 native resources : 
 
 " The forests of Florida produce a greater variety of orna- 
 mental woods for ceilings, panels, and furniture than can be 
 found in any other State — perhaps all the other States. Be- 
 side full fifty varieties of sub-tropical trees found in no other 
 State, growing on the keys and coasts of the mainland of South 
 Florida, in the woods and forests of the State are found the 
 black walnut, the cherry, the red, white, water, and live oaks, 
 the magnolias, the chinaberry, the sweet and black gums, the 
 cypress, the cedar, the bays and palmettocs, outrivalling in 
 colors and shades the woods of other States ; and, finally, the 
 pines of Florida, as the finest of ornamental wood, excel the 
 brushes and stains of all the painters of the world." 
 
 Early on the morning of the 17th of March I started 
 from Kissimmee City to visit St. Cloud, a large experi- 
 mental farm under the charge of Captain R. E. Rose, the 
 farms of the brothers Lupfer, and others, if time should 
 permit. Our route for several miles was through stretches 
 of black vegetable mould that had been reclaimed by drain- 
 ing East Lake of its overflow. On either side of the 
 broad roads were ditches of sufficient depth to carry off 
 the flow of springs which seemed to abound, and the sur- 
 plus rain which falls during the autumn ; but nowhere did 
 we see a cut deep enough to expose the depth of the soil. 
 The drainage of the immense body of these lands which 
 surrounds East Lake was effected by the construction 
 of what the report of a State commission describes as " a 
 canal to and into Lake Tahopekaliga, the length of which 
 is three and two tenths miles, the width from thirty-three 
 to thirty-six feet, and the depth four to seven feet." The 
 average current through this canal is stated to be one and
 
 30 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 a half miles per hour. St. Cloud, or the Rose farm, as it 
 is popularly called, is on the west bank of East Lake 
 Tahopekaliga, and is intersected by the canal. This farm 
 is no longer an experiment. None of the land it embraces 
 has been under cultivation three years, and most of the 
 crop we saw here and at Lupfer's had been planted in 
 freshly broken sod. Notwithstanding the freshness and 
 probable sourness of the soil, we found on each of these 
 places a demonstration of the fact that all the vegetables 
 and berries that can be grown in Pennsylvania and New 
 Jersey can be produced in Florida with less care and 
 labor. We did not see marketable egg-plants or cauli- 
 flowers, because the extraordinary price which, had been 
 offered by New York commission houses for the February 
 crop of these vegetables had led to the shipment of every 
 marketable one that could be gathered. The beds of sugar- 
 cane, sorghum, and other saccharine plants at St. Cloud are 
 in charge of a gentleman from Louisiana of large experi- 
 ence in sugar growing. Cane had already attained an aver- 
 age height of about a foot, though we were assured that 
 Louisiana planters, fearing frost, do "not care to begin 
 working cane until after St. Patrick's day. It was also 
 said that, owing to the longer season, Florida cane al- 
 ways tasselled, while a stock that tasselled in Louisiana was 
 an exception in a field. In the barnyard we were shown 
 several stacks of rice straw, which is said to be a nutri- 
 tious fodder of which cattle and horses are very fond. 
 We also saw bins full of beautiful rice, which had been 
 reserved as seed for this year's crop. 
 
 Leaving St. Cloud we passed along the north beach of 
 the lake, which is a natural sand road that is said to re- 
 quire no repairing, to the Lupfer's farms. Each of these 
 contains about forty acres, and neither of them has been
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 3 1 
 
 one half cleared of the magnificent cypress trees, some of 
 which had probably for centuries shaded the swamp of 
 which these farms had been part. The Messrs. Lupfer 
 grew up together on a farm in Franklin County, Penn- 
 sylvania. Finding the little homestead too contracted 
 they had emigrated to Kansas, where after a few years 
 the rigor of the climate affected the health of the wife of 
 one of them, when yielding to the advice of their kins- 
 man, Col. McClure, of the Philadelphia Times, who passes 
 part of every winter in the South, they sold their Kansas 
 farms and settled each on forty acres of cypress land on 
 the east bank of East Lake Tahopekaliga. This is but 
 their second year, yet they have accounts from their North- 
 ern agents which show that they have sold a considerable 
 succession of crops at remunerative prices. 
 
 Pointing with enthusiasm to a magnificent cypress that 
 stood in the midst of the cleared land of one of the 
 brothers, I queried as to its probable age. He was con- 
 fident that it was much more than a century old, and 
 thought it probable that it was in its third century. He, 
 too, had admired it and had hoped to save it, but good 
 farming required him to remove it. In reply to an in- 
 quiry concerning the cost of clearing land of a forest of 
 such trees as had covered his fields, he told me that each 
 tree more than paid for its removal, as they could be 
 floated through the canal and lakes to a market in which 
 cypress lumber was in quick demand. Here I raised the 
 question of the pay of farm-laborers, and was surprised to 
 learn that the Messrs. Lupfer had not paid such annual 
 wages in Pennsylvania or Kansas as they were paying in 
 Florida. Their laborers were mostly colored men, and the 
 wages were $1.25 per day, or a dollar with rations, as the 
 men chose. It ma)' not be improper for me to remark in
 
 32 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 passing that the farms of which I have spoken, and others 
 which time did not permit us to visit, are contiguous to 
 the picturesque site laid out for the new town of Runny- 
 mede, in which it is intended that a young orange grove 
 shall be part of every lot offered for sale as a home. On 
 my return to Kissimmee City I addressed a note to Cap- 
 tain Rose, making some inquiries as to the certainty and 
 profits of crops on reclaimed lands, and received the fol- 
 lowing note under the date of the 19th of March : 
 
 " In reply to your inquiries as to the products of the re- 
 claimed lands of the Kissimmee Valley, I take pleasure in in- 
 forming you that sugar-cane planted one year after reclama- 
 tion yielded sugar at the rate of five thousand pounds per 
 acre, by the use of the most primitive apparatus, the test and 
 work having been made under the control of Hon. John M. 
 Bryan and Clay Coleman, Esq. With improved apparatus the 
 yield would have been fully one fourth more. Rice at St. 
 Cloud, in similar land, netted 1,600 bushels from forty acres, 
 after a loss of at least one third, owing to loss incidental to a 
 new enterprise and inexperienced laborers. From two and 
 one fifth acres of fair average ground, which had been re- 
 claimed but one year, I gathered and sacked 148 bushels of 
 rice, being 67.7 bushels per acre. The rice was planted Aug. 
 1st and 15th, cut and harvested December 1st to 10th, much 
 loss occurring from want of proper appliances. Other crops, 
 corn, vegetables, etc., have done well, oats in particular being 
 now ready for harvest (March 19th). The yield is estimated 
 at present at about fifty bushels per acre. Tobacco will be 
 planted soon, and from all former experience it should do as 
 well as in Cuba." 
 
 Taking a steam tug on the 18th of March, I crossed 
 Lake Tahopekaliga to South Port, at which point we en- 
 tered a canal, which is 3.6 miles long, 70 feet wide, and
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 33 
 
 from 5 to 8 feet deep, which runs into Cypress Lake. 
 While passing through this canal I was greatly impressed 
 by the number of fine cattle that were grazing on the 
 natural grasses which soon cover reclaimed land, all of 
 which were in excellent condition. An approaching gust 
 prevented our crossing Cypress Lake, and drove us back- 
 to South Port, which we reached in time to find shelter 
 in the hospitable home of Mr. A. S. Kinsman, who in 
 1883 brought with him from Central New York the expe- 
 rience derived from years of successful farming, his fine 
 stock, and the most approved agricultural implements 
 known to the farmers of the country. We found him in 
 the field with his men, and were greeted by him as though 
 we had been life-long friends. The wind rose to a gale, 
 before which he and his men retired to shelter. During 
 the hours of conversation with which he gratified me 
 Mr. Kinsman more than confirmed the most enthusiastic 
 statements of Captain Rose and the Lupfers as to the 
 profits yielded by early vegetables, and as to Florida's 
 adaptation to the culture of sugar, rice, and high-grade 
 tobacco. In confirmation of what he said about sugar 
 growing, he invited our attention to the fact that the 
 cane planted at South Port, from which his land was di- 
 vided by the drainage canal, by Capt. Rose in 1883, for 
 purely experimental purposes, and which had been neg- 
 lected since its first crop had been gathered, had put 
 forth each year, as it was now doing, what would, if sugar 
 works to consume it existed, be a paying crop of cane. 
 The object with which Capt. Rose had planted this cane, 
 to which my attention had been invited as our steamer 
 entered the canal, was not to ascertain whether it could 
 be grown successfully, but to obtain specimens of Florida 
 cane for exhibition in competition with the displays to be
 
 34 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 made by Louisiana and Mexico at the then contemplated 
 exhibitions at New Orleans and Jacksonville, at both of 
 which the premium was awarded to his crop. 
 
 While at Kissimmee I was a guest at the Tropical 
 Hotel. When in the dining-room one day I heard a gen- 
 tleman, who appeared to be intimate with Egyptian 
 affairs, say that the reclaimed lands of Florida partook 
 of the character of the most productive land of the val- 
 ley of the Nile. Hearing that the author of this state- 
 ment had been sent by the British government on sev- 
 eral missions to Egypt, which required him to investi- 
 gate the condition of laborers and the management of 
 the lands of the valley, I sought to learn more of him. 
 He proved to be Mr. H. Villiers Stuart, of Dromana, 
 County Waterford, who, having been a member of suc- 
 cessive Parliaments, had declined to contest the last elec- 
 tion because he desired to superintend the development 
 of the large bodies of land he had purchased in Orange 
 County, Florida. His duties as a government commis- 
 sioner required him to investigate questions relating to 
 the cost of production and the compensation paid labor- 
 ers in the valley of the Nile. I need hardly add to this 
 statement that I found in Mr. Stuart an educated, intelli- 
 gent, and practical man. Among other information he 
 gave me was that he had purchased both upland and re- 
 claimed lands, and that his son would come over and en- 
 gage with Captain Rose in the management of St. Cloud 
 for from one to three years, preparatory to taking charge 
 of the cultivation of farms which would be respectively 
 devoted to winter vegetables for Northern markets and 
 such staples as rice, sugar, and tobacco. He said that the 
 character of his reclaimed fields was identical with that of 
 the best Nile fields, and added that both required, though
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 35 
 
 in different degrees, an annual overflow, that in Florida 
 being less heavy and more gentle than that required by 
 the Nile ; and that to deepen or widen the drainage canals 
 sufficiently to carry off, as it fell, the apparent excess of 
 autumnal rain, would, in his judgment, inflict great and 
 possibly irreparable injury upon the vast fields already re- 
 claimed, and the immeasurably greater fields yet to be 
 drained. 
 
 With the full and well-considered statements of Mr. 
 Stuart, more than confirming the favorable impressions I 
 had derived from my visits to the farms referred to, I 
 sought a new field of investigation and turned my atten- 
 tion from the Lake country to the natural alluvial fields 
 of Middle and Lower Florida. 
 
 Rock Ledge, on the Indian River, seemed to be a good 
 point from which to make this investigation. The im- 
 mense hotel at Rock Ledge is surrounded, except on its 
 river front, by groves of orange trees, the fruit of which 
 is larger, of richer hue and more delicious flavor than any 
 found in the groves of Louisiana, California, or in Florida 
 elsewhere than in what is known as the Indian River 
 country. Indeed, it appears to be conceded that this sec- 
 tion of country is justly pre-eminent for the excellence of 
 its oranges and all kindred fruits. Here, too, we are in 
 the pineapple and banana country, as well as that of or- 
 chids, resurrection grass, and other wonderful parasites. 
 Joining a party which embraced Senators Morrill and 
 Plumb, with the ladies of their families, I went by boat 
 to the farm of Dr. William Wittfeld at Georgiana. Our 
 steamboat, though but a clever tug, could not land us, 
 but bateaux were ready to carry us to the shore. It was 
 an agreeable surprise to find in the proprietor of this cel- 
 ebrated farm one who had for some years been my con-
 
 / 
 
 2)6 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 stituent, and who had supported me when I resigned the 
 dignity and quiet of judicial life and dedicated my future 
 to political strife, by entering upon what I knew to be a 
 hopeless canvass for Congress in support of Fremont and 
 Dayton on the platform of free thought, free speech, free 
 land, and free men. Dr. Wittfeld is a German, and, like 
 so many of the scholarly young men of that date, partici- 
 pated in the revolution of 1848, and when defeated came 
 a fugitive to this country. His farm includes a consider- 
 able body of land between the Indian and Banana rivers, 
 extending northward from their confluence. Shells and 
 washed pebbles mark the low land along both rivers, but 
 the broad ridge of upland attains an elevation I think of 
 from seventy to one hundred feet. It was on this ridge 
 that for the first time I saw pineapples growing in large 
 beds under careful culture. Dr. Wittfeld, who found evi- 
 dent pleasure in conducting the party to points at which 
 there was any thing that might interest them, assured us 
 that pineapples generously repay the care bestowed upon 
 them, and that bananas, which he cultivates in great num- 
 bers for market, are a profitable crop. After what I have 
 said of oranges and kindred fruits in this region, I need 
 hardly add that they pay well, but may note the fact that 
 on Dr. Wittfeld's farm the trees are not in symmetrical 
 groves, as they are elsewhere, but scattered as if they had 
 been planted without regard to symmetry, but in order to 
 utilize bits of land that without them might be waste. 
 The pleasure with which the Doctor brought to our no- 
 tice orchids and other curious or beautiful parasites that 
 abound on his trees was really refreshing. Having made 
 a tour of the place and entered our names in the book 
 spread upon a table at the door of the cottage in 
 which boarders are accommodated, I asked the Doc-
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 37 
 
 tor whether sugar can be grown successfully on any 
 of his land, to which he replied: "Yes, sir; upon 
 all of it as successfully as in Cuba. I dug up a 
 sugar patch last summer after it had ratooned seven- 
 teen years, without replanting, and had tasselled in the 
 last as well as in the earlier years. That it tasselled 
 proved that each season was long enough to let cane ma- 
 ture, and thus acquire full saccharine strength." " Why 
 did you eradicate what had been so successful?" "Be- 
 cause no sugar factories were established, as they ought 
 to have been, and I had no market for my cane 
 or syrup." Hearing this reply, Senator Morrill said : 
 "Did not frost hurt your cane during all that time?" 
 " No, sir, not once in the seventeen years." " Not in 
 1872?" "No, sir; it touched the joints of the ratoons 
 or sprouts enough to make them unfit for seed, but 
 did not affect the quantity or quality of the syrup they 
 yielded." Interposing, I said to my old friend, who had 
 not only recognized me but brought himself to my mem- 
 ory : " Doctor, I am unwilling to be mistaken on this point ; 
 will I be justified in quoting you as saying that dur- 
 ing the seventeen years you obtained satisfactory crops 
 from one planting, you never replanted any part of it ? " 
 " No," replied the Doctor, " I did not say precisely that. 
 The Senator inquired about the destructive effect of frost, 
 and I said it had never affected the growth of the cane or 
 its yield of saccharine matter, but there are other enemies 
 to cane-fields than frost. Bears are very fond of sugar- 
 cane, as are some other vermin. I more than once had 
 to replant small patches which had been rooted up." 
 
 I naturally lingered with the Doctor for the latest boat 
 to depart for the tug, that I might obtain his opinion on 
 some points which in my opinion are of great economic
 
 38 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 importance at this time. I am at liberty to quote him as 
 entertaining no doubt as to the capability of growing with 
 sugar tobacco equal to the best Cuban leaf, and rice and 
 indigo both of high grade. He is confident that all these 
 commodities will soon be quoted as among Florida's 
 annual staple crops, and that when capital shall erect 
 sugar-houses with improved appliances, and put them in 
 charge of experienced superintendents, Florida farmers 
 will supply them with ample stores of cane richer in sugar 
 than ever was cut in Louisiana. 
 
 As so little is known of the agricultural capacity of 
 Southern Florida, I will, at the risk of being regarded as 
 tedious, adduce the testimony of one more witness whose 
 character and experience are vouched for by R. P. Paddi- 
 son, an accomplished gentleman and the courteous com- 
 mander of the finest boat in the service of the Florida 
 Railway and Navigation Company. City Point Landing, 
 on the west bank of the Indian River, is on the farm of 
 Mr. A. L. Hatch, an old Floridian, who combines with 
 the care of his farm and landing large dealings in general 
 merchandise. As we approached the Point, Captain Pad- 
 dison, in response to my quest for accurate information, 
 invited me to visit Mr. Hatch's farm while the freight 
 waiting on the landing should be taken aboard, and 
 notified the passengers generally that they could go 
 ashore for fifteen minutes. As at Dr. Wittfeld's farm, 
 shells and pebbles covered the surface near the river, so, 
 too, as we ascended the first ridge, we found the soil to be 
 black vegetable loam, quite like the reclaimed land around 
 the lakes. The country to the west appeared to be a suc- 
 cession of valleys and ridges ascending to the westward, 
 both hill and dale being covered thickly with the rich and 
 varied foliage, flowers, and the blossoms and fruits of
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 39 
 
 Lower Florida. Time would not permit an elaborate ex- 
 amination of this farm, but, brief as was our stay, I was 
 able to see that it was very nearly a duplicate of Dr. 
 Wittfeld's. 
 
 What I saw whetted my appetite for more definite 
 information, and on arriving at Jacksonville I addressed a 
 letter of general inquiry to Captain Paddison as to the 
 production of the farm and Mr. Hatch's opinion of the 
 practicability of raising sugar profitably and in commer- 
 cial quantities upon his land. In a few days I received 
 a reply from the Captain saying that he had referred 
 my note to Mr. Hatch in order to secure more accurate 
 information than he was personally able to give. Mr. 
 Hatch's reply is dated City Point, Florida, April 23d, and 
 is as follows : 
 
 " Mr. Kelley's communication to you was handed me last 
 evening. I scarcely know the precise wish of Mr. Kelley in 
 the "matter. If he refers to this place, ' City Point,' I would 
 state that the property consists of fifteen acres of land, on 
 which the steamer wharf, general merchandise store, and post- 
 office, one thousand two hundred orange trees in grove (five 
 hundred of which are bearing), together with bananas and a 
 variety of other fruits, vegetables, etc., etc., is the property of 
 the undersigned. This is the principal shipping point for this 
 section, being central for City Point hammock, which hammock 
 extends some six miles on the river, along which it is almost a 
 continuous orange grove, though most of the trees are under 
 bearing age yet. 
 
 " Sugar-cane would do finely here on the lower lands, but 
 such lands are too valuable now for other products. Vegeta- 
 bles, such as are marketed from here at this time, pay better 
 than cane would. Tomatoes are bringing now $3 to $4 per 
 crate, snap beans $2 to $2.50, cauliflowers $5 to $6 per crate
 
 40 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 of six to eight heads, Irish potatoes $6 to $8 per barrel, egg- 
 plants, $12 to $20 per barrel, cabbage $3 to $4 per barrel. 
 Oranges shipped this month have sold in eastern cities at $6 
 to $7 per box." 
 
 I entered Florida with a keen desire to visit Dade and 
 Monroe counties, which, as they are south of the 27th 
 degree, below which frost is unknown, may be regarded 
 as tropical country. But as most of this immense terri- 
 tory is still " unsurveyed and but partly explored," and 
 the Florida Southern road had been completed but to 
 Punta Gorda, on Charlotte Harbor, three hundred miles 
 from Palatka, its initial point, and the hotel at that place 
 had not yet been fully furnished, the trip involved much 
 possible discomfort ; and as the road will before another 
 season be extended to Punta Rassa, one hundred miles 
 farther south on San Carlos Bay, I surrendered the tickets 
 I had procured and postponed my visit to the gulf coast 
 of Monroe County. To reach the cocoa-nut " walks " and 
 other tropical curiosities of the Atlantic coast of Dade 
 County seemed to involve a still greater measure of 
 fatigue and discomfort. It was with a keen sense of per- 
 sonal disappointment that I came to a realizing sense of 
 the fact that the fatigue and exposure involved in the 
 trip were more than I ought to encounter, for I had for 
 more than a year looked forward with pleasant anticipa- 
 tions to an inspection of the magnificent enterprise of my 
 friend, Mr. Ezra Osborne, of Middletown, New Jersey ? 
 which is destined to supply our own and foreign markets 
 with cocoa-nuts. 
 
 The cocoa-nut palm is a beautiful and lofty tree, grow- 
 ing to a height of from fifty to seventy feet, with a cylin- 
 drical stem, which rarely exceeds a diameter of eighteen 
 inches at the base. It terminates in a crown of waving
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 4 1 
 
 pinnate leaves, among which its heavy fruit, in thick, 
 fibrous husks, hangs in graceful clusters. It is a salt- 
 water tree, and attains its greatest luxuriance and longev- 
 ity along sandy shores and reefs, close to the sea, where 
 the ocean may water its roots. The nut is an important 
 product of almost every tropical land, but is so sensitive 
 to frost that it has never been known to mature north of 
 the 27th degree. Small groves have existed in southern 
 Florida for a number of years. The uses of the cocoa- 
 nut and its husk are numbered by the hundred, the Chi- 
 nese claiming to have a separate use for it for every day 
 in the year. 
 
 Mr. Osborne's plantation, or " walk," is near Lake 
 Worth, to the south of which his strip of cocoa-nut land 
 extends about seventy miles. When the last planting 
 season closed, thirty miles had been planted with care- 
 fully selected nuts, each of which had put forth a healthy 
 sprout before it was set. It is said that cocoa-nut trees 
 should be set twenty feet apart, and that space has been 
 given to each of Mr. Osborne's three hundred and thirty 
 odd thousand seedlings. The year in which the planting 
 of the remaining forty miles of his territory will be com- 
 pleted will depend upon his success in obtaining cargoes 
 of trustworthy seed nuts. Cocoa-nut trees begin to beat- 
 in from six to eight years, and it is possible that Mr. Os- 
 borne may derive seed for his later plantings from his 
 own graceful trees. When it is considered that his 
 " walk " will include from eight hundred thousand to one 
 million trees, and that each matured cocoa-nut tree yields, 
 throughout a century or more, one hundred and fifty to 
 three hundred nuts per annum, or rather in every four- 
 teen months, which time is required to mature a crop, it 
 will be seen that no apprehension need be felt as to the
 
 42 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 ability of Florida to meet the growing demand of the 
 United States for the infinite variety of food, cosmetics, 
 and chemical agents these nuts furnish, or to supply the 
 demand for coir cordage, woven fabrics, mats, etc., into 
 which the husks of the nut are now profitably converted. 
 But Florida should derive millions of dollars annually 
 from the production by her women and children of a fibre 
 as much more precious than that to be derived from the 
 cocoa-nut as it is more delicate. The mulberry is indige- 
 nous to every part of Florida. It is impossible to esti- 
 mate the value of the silk that might be produced by the 
 women and children of Florida, if the mothers of that 
 State would but regard the prayers of that noble band of 
 women who, in the hope of providing gentle and profita- 
 ble employment for their less fortunate countrywomen, 
 organized the " Women's Silk Association of America," 
 whose office is at Philadelphia, and whose president and 
 secretary are Mrs. John Lucas and Mrs. V. C. Haven, 
 both of that city. In the hope of inducing enterprising 
 manufacturers and merchants to organize this delicate 
 industry, the annual profit from" which would soon out- 
 strip the growing income derived from the oranges of 
 Florida, I digress far enough to state that, owing to the 
 diseased or exhausted condition of native food supplies 
 of the silk-producing countries of Western Europe, their 
 manufacturers were at the time of the completion of the 
 Union-Central Pacific road, in 1869, paying $20,000,000 
 annually to China and Japan for a supply of those tiny 
 objects, silk-worm eggs, from which to produce an annual 
 crop of healthy worms. That enormous commerce in this 
 minute commodity, so far as I am informed, still continues 
 in undiminished volume ; but I cannot affirm the fact on 
 official information such as enables me to state that the
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 43 
 
 invoice value of the oriental silk-worm eggs that were 
 carried by our railroads from San Francisco to New York, 
 and shipped thence by transatlantic steamers, prior to the 
 repeal of the duty of ten per cent, imposed on these eggs, 
 was about $20,000,000. I hope it will be noted that I am 
 not speaking of raw, or thrown, or spun silk, but of a by 
 product, the annual commercial value of which is the 
 immense sum I have named. The direct commercial 
 product is silk, raw, spun, thrown, or further advanced, 
 the manipulation of which in all stages seems to belong 
 peculiarly to women and children. 
 
 To earn these enormous values, nature invites the care- 
 ful organization, on commercial principles, of this light 
 and profitable industry in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and 
 other Southern States. Should any words of mine lead 
 to the elaborate organization of this industry I will feel 
 that I have not lived in vain ; for its establishment would 
 impart a new sense of the value of life to the shiftless, 
 listless, hopeless matrons, wives, and daughters travellers 
 see loitering about the mulberry-shaded cabins of old-time 
 Florida, Georgia, and Alabama crackers. The money re- 
 ceived for this silk would be clear profit, as its production 
 and preparation for market would involve the purchase of 
 no machinery. The women and children could them- 
 selves make all the apparatus they need from materials to 
 be found in or about their homes. Cocoons are worth 
 from 80 cents to $1 a pound, and reeled silk, which is 
 known to commerce as raw silk, is worth $5 a pound, and 
 there is no reason why the Southern women of whom I 
 speak, " poor whites or low downs " of former days, may 
 not reel the cocoons they may raise, as Italian peasants 
 reel their cocoons. Our importation of raw silk may be 
 stated at 6,000,000 pounds per year, the market value of
 
 44 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 which is $30,000,000, every dollar of which would, as has 
 just been said, be profit or wages for gentle and interest- 
 ing work performed by women and children, who are really 
 of fine fibre and sterling character, but whose lives are 
 spent in what may be fairly described as semi-barbarous 
 idleness. 
 
 This too-extended paper must come to a close, yet I 
 cannot bring it to a conclusion without some words of 
 warning. As there is an infinite variety of soil and cli- 
 mate in Florida, no man, whether he be a capitalist seek- 
 ing investments, or a poor man seeking relief for himself 
 or a beloved member of his family from the rigors of our 
 Northern climate, should make an investment within the 
 limits of this wonderful State until he has investigated the 
 adaptation of the home or farm in which he proposes to 
 establish his family or to invest his capital, to the purposes 
 to which he proposes to apply it. In addition to such inves- 
 tigation it goes without saying that parties proposing to 
 purchase land should have the title to that which they 
 propose to buy carefully scrutinized and established. In 
 contrast with the necessity for these precautions, travellers 
 may be guided by faith and depend on finding a large, well- 
 lighted and ventilated, and nicely-kept hotel in every town 
 on the rapidly extending railroads and navigable water- 
 courses of the State. In Jacksonville the one commodious 
 hotel I found in 1875, " The National," has been succeeded 
 by more than half a dozen equally well kept and more capa- 
 cious houses, each of which receives enthusiastic com- 
 mendation from departing guests. Of the one in which I 
 and mine sought shelter, " The Windsor," I may say, 
 without meaning to be invidious, we found a home to 
 which we bade adieu with regret. 
 
 Why in view of Florida's immense and infinitely varied
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 4$ 
 
 resources may I not part with my subject in terms of 
 glowing congratulation and assurance to the State and 
 her people that a career of immediate and increasing 
 prosperity awaits her and her rapidly augmenting popula- 
 tion. From the foregoing statements it would seem that 
 I might safely do this ; but as history proverbially re- 
 peats itself I dare not fail to admonish her people that 
 the corridors leading to both houses of Congress are 
 vocal with mutterings of a purpose to enact legislation 
 detrimental to her rice and sugar industries, and of the 
 further purpose to resist the proposed repeal of laws 
 which tax and harass growers of tobacco, which threats 
 are even now casting a sinister shadow athwart what 
 otherwise seems to be her pathway toward agricultural 
 pre-eminence. Dreamy doctrinaires are threatening her 
 people with another application of the Virginia and Ken- 
 tucky resolutions and the free-trade dogmas of Richard 
 Cobden. " Rice," say they, " is a food product, a raw 
 material, and should not be taxed by a customs duty. 
 We must therefore put rice on the free list. Sugar is 
 also a raw material and a food product, and should there- 
 fore also be on the free list. Let us then repeal the duties 
 on rice and sugar." "Tobacco," they add, "is not a food 
 product, but is regarded by all of us who are holier than 
 our brethren as a product so pernicious that we should, as 
 a pious duty, harass by invidious taxation every man who 
 grows the baneful weed." To enforce the suggestion 
 that the duties on sugar and rice should be repealed, it is 
 said that, by the abolition of these duties, the amount of 
 the annual surplus would be sufficiently reduced to justify 
 the retention during peace of the internal taxes, which, 
 under our Constitution, have never been imposed for 
 other than war purposes. That the success of these
 
 46 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 propositions would be disastrous to Florida needs no 
 demonstration. The pretence that the abolition or re- 
 duction of the duties on sugar is necessary to effect a 
 reduction of the annual revenue is false. It is a mere 
 pretext for the destruction of a great industry now just 
 expanding into national proportions. The revenue should 
 be reduced, but it should be done without the destruction 
 of any established or promising industry. The patriotic 
 way to not only diminish but to abolish the revenue de- 
 rived from imported sugar and molasses, would be to pro- 
 duce our own supply, as under guaranteed protective 
 duties we can do from the cane of Louisiana, the cane, 
 sorghum, and casava of Florida, the beet roots of Califor- 
 nia, and the sorghum and corn of the Northwestern 
 States. 
 
 Let us therefore hope that the people of the North, 
 whose resources have been developed and whose indus- 
 tries have been perfected by the health-giving operations 
 of protective tariffs, will stand by the interests of the 
 awakened people of the New South, and secure to them 
 the advantages of that system of duties, which in less 
 than a quarter of a century has transferred the " work- 
 shop of the world " from free-trade England to the pro- 
 tective United States of America.
 
 LETTER III. 
 
 ANNISTON A ROMANCE OF THE NEW SOUTH. 
 
 Washington, D. C, May 19, 1887. 
 
 In the course of my communication to the Manufac- 
 turers Record, which appeared in the issue of the 25th of 
 December last, I ventured the prediction that, though the 
 name of Anniston was hardly recognized by the popular 
 ear, that place would, before two decades should have 
 passed, be one of the most remarkable centres of iron, 
 steel, and kindred industries in those wonderfully endowed 
 States, Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee. 
 
 When I arrived at the Inn, on the last day of March, 
 after the lapse of little more than three months from the 
 publication of my prediction, I found it had been verified, 
 and that Anniston had already attracted to itself the no- 
 tice of the country as, in many respects, the most remark- 
 able centre of the iron industry in the Southern States. 
 But before proceeding to describe what had occurred be- 
 tween the close of December and the beginning of April, 
 you must permit me to borrow from others the authentic 
 story of the conception, organization, and early history of 
 Anniston. I am happy in being the possessor of a memo- 
 rial to the late Gen. Daniel Tyler, prepared from personal 
 and official papers by Donald G. Mitchell, for private cir- 
 culation among the friends of the family. It was my 
 privilege to know Gen. Tyler somewhat intimately while 
 he was on duty near Washington, in the early days of the
 
 48 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 war, and I cherish this memorial, not only as a tribute to 
 one whom I had learned to respect as a citizen and a 
 soldier, but as being in itself replete with information and 
 suggestion. I draw from its pages the following letters, 
 which will, better than I possibly can do, state the princi- 
 ples on which Anniston is founded, and by which the 
 acquisition of its vast stores of materials for future manu- 
 facture was sternly guided. 
 
 January 18, 1879. 
 Hon. J. Little Smith, 
 
 House of Representatives, Montgomery, Ala. 
 
 My Dear Sir : — My son, Mr. Alfred L. Tyler, has desired 
 me to communicate with you, and give you some data as to our 
 operations at Anniston, in Calhoun County, Ala. 
 
 Six years ago last spring we purchased a farm, the average 
 product of which was not over fifteen bags of cotton per an- 
 num, and built on it a furnace, at a cash investment of $200,000, 
 being invited into the State of Alabama by notices given 
 through the papers that manufacturing interests were well 
 protected in the State, and that die iron industry of this section 
 of the United States was probably unequalled by that of any 
 other section. 
 
 We have not been disappointed with our investment, and are 
 satisfied with it ; and we shall probably go on and add to it in 
 the future, for we have come here to stay, and to cast our lot 
 among the people of the State of Alabama. 
 
 When we commenced our operations in Calhoun County we 
 made up our minds that, in order to establish ourselves with a 
 community around us that would be satisfactory, it would be 
 necessary for us to establish schools, churches, etc., and we 
 have done all this. In the public schools of that place we 
 could to-day fit a lad for any college in New England. We 
 have established a colored school second probably to no other 
 of that class in the State of Alabama ; and we have done all
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 49 
 
 we could to invite into our company the best class of labor, 
 white or black, that we could obtain, and to give to their chil- 
 dren such an education as would elevate them, if possible, in 
 their future careers. 
 
 We also made up our minds that, in order to get good labor; 
 it must be paid for liberally ; and, while our neighbors have 
 been paying 50 and 60 cents per day, we have paid 80 cents, 90 
 cents, and $1 per day to our laborers, believing that it was our 
 duty to give them the means of making a comfortable living, 
 in order to exact from them a rigid obedience to the laws. In 
 other words, we give them the means of living comfortably, 
 and therefore they have no excuse for stealing. 
 
 Under the laws of the State, and through the Probate Court, 
 we established a borough some two years ago ; but, owing to 
 some legal difficulties, we find that the organization under the 
 general law does not give us that protection which will enable 
 us to keep out whisky-selling and prevent misdemeanors and 
 crime, and we have therefore applied to the legislature for 
 an act of incorporation, such as the constitution of the State 
 provides for ; and it is this act that I ask you to advocate be- 
 fore the House of Representatives, if you think our cause a 
 good one. We do not ask for any exclusive privileges. All we 
 want is the power to protect our property, to foster education, 
 to keep out whisky-drinking, to sustain good morals, and to 
 introduce into our business a system of honesty and integrity 
 that may be of some little value to the population around us. 
 During the last five years our efforts have added to the produc- 
 tive industries of the State of Alabama over $175,000 annu- 
 ally, and we expect in the future that this production will be 
 very largely increased. 
 
 Under these circumstances, if you think we are entitled to 
 your influence in the legislature, I shall be most happy to ac- 
 knowledge myself under obligations to you for your personal 
 exertions in my behalf. With the greatest respect, 
 
 Your friend and servant, 
 
 Dan. Tyi.er.
 
 50 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 For the present it must suffice to say that the exalted 
 ideal expressed in this appeal for healthful legislation has 
 never been abandoned by those who have controlled 
 affairs at Anniston. From this treasured memorial I 
 draw another letter which tells how accidentally Gen. 
 Tyler's attention was drawn to the worn-out cotton-field 
 on which Anniston stands, as well as the toilsome and 
 thorough reconnoissance the veteran soldier made of the 
 field of his future operations before entering into an en- 
 gagement with obstacles few men of his years would have 
 attempted to vanquish. It is from Mr. Samuel Noble to 
 his present copartner, the General's son, Mr. Alfred L. 
 Tyler. 
 
 Anniston, Ala., February i, 1883. 
 
 My Dear Sir : — The death of the General recalls as vividly 
 as if it were but yesterday my first meeting with him. In the 
 spring of 1872, when you were acting Vice-President of the 
 South Carolina Railroad, I visited you at your office in Charles- 
 ton on business, bearing a letter of introduction from J. M. 
 Selkirk, Superintendent of the Rome (Ga.) Railroad. While 
 at your desk talking to you I noticed an aged gentleman whose 
 whole attention was fixed on the morning paper. Presently 
 he laid it down and went to one corner of your office and con- 
 sulted a map on the wall. A few moments after he came to 
 the desk where you and I were talking, and said to me : 
 " When I was building the Macon & Western Railroad, some 
 thirty years ago, I heard from men who were at work for me 
 of large bodies of iron ore in your part of the State. Do you 
 know any thing about it ? " His earnest manner, and the inter- 
 est he manifested in putting the question impressed me at 
 once. I said to him he could not have questioned me on a 
 subject with which I was more familiar ; that there was hardly 
 an iron property in Georgia or Alabama I did not know. He 
 then said : " When I was a young man I went into the iron
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 5 1 
 
 business in Pennsylvania, and made one of the first attempts 
 to make iron with anthracite coal. I went over to Wales and 
 brought over a founder to run the furnace, as at that time it 
 was not supposed that there was any founder in the United 
 States who could blow an anthracite furnace. We had trouble 
 from the start with the founder, who dictated, and the furnace, 
 which chilled up every time we started. The difficulties we 
 encountered and the disadvantages we contended against were 
 so great that I resolved never to touch or become interested in 
 any iron property that lacked a single advantage — that had not 
 on it every thing in abundance, and accessible for the cheap 
 production of good iron. I have had the iron business burned 
 into me, and have not forgotten my first experience ; but if I 
 can find a property that has on it every thing for making iron 
 without buying any raw material, or bringing any to it, I might 
 be tempted to go into the business again." 
 
 I said I had been in the iron business myself, and then 
 owned a property that combined in itself advantages over 
 every other property I knew. I told him I believed there was 
 no place in the South then accessible to equal it for making 
 good and cheap iron. Nature could hardly have done more 
 for it, and it would be a real pleasure to me, I continued, if he 
 would come to see it, as I was sure it would interest him 
 greatly. Hesitating a moment, he said : " I will try and come 
 up and look at it within the next two weeks." 
 
 1 had but little idea that a man of his age would, on a sec- 
 ond thought, take such a long and uncomfortable journey, and 
 was surprised at his coming to Rome some ten days afterwards 
 for a visit of inspection. At that time there was no railroad 
 station, and only three old, unfinished houses at what is now 
 the town of Anniston. So we stopped at Oxford, two miles 
 below, where we found horses. He rode with me over the 
 country, exploring every hill and valley, gathering information 
 from everybody he met, and from the inmates of every house 
 he passed, about the timber lands, limestone and rock quar-
 
 52 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 ries— their location and extent, and then going to the places 
 indicated and examining them himself. 
 
 Familiar as I thought I was with the whole country, I found 
 while with him how much there was I had not looked into, or 
 thought of investigating. Nothing escaped his observation. 
 In his company I made the most thorough and exhaustive ex- 
 ploration of the country I ever made before or since. I was 
 surprised at his knowledge and practical ideas concerning the 
 requisites for iron manufacture. We rode for three days in 
 succession, returning to the hotel in Oxford after dark, I 
 thoroughly tired out, but the General fresh as ever. He would 
 go down from his room, and with some choice tea — a present 
 from an English sea-captain — make a hot cup for both. At 
 that time the hotel people did not know how tea was " cooked." 
 Sipping our Hyson, we talked over what had been seen during 
 the day, and planned for the next. The General, I knew, was 
 surprised and pleased with the property, although he said but 
 little. After inquiring about the market for and price of iron, 
 and the probable consumption at Rome, he said : " I will go 
 back and bring up Alfred to look at it." 
 
 The rest you know. The visit led to the organization of 
 the Woodstock Iron Company, and shortly after to the foun- 
 dation of the town of Anniston. Then came the building up 
 of a business of such magnitude and prosperity as led to a 
 great increase of wealth and population in this section of the 
 State. 
 
 I never think of my first meeting with the General without 
 being deeply impressed with its beneficial results to this por- 
 tion of the country, a meeting which, at the time, was appar- 
 ently a mere accident. From that time to my last interview 
 with him, in New York, two months before his death, his clear 
 and active mind was always planning and suggesting some- 
 thing for the benefit of Anniston and its people. Plans and 
 suggestions that to us at first seemed impracticable and pre- 
 mature, we found from his clear reasoning and hearty co-oper-
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 53 
 
 ation not only could be carried out but were needed. In 
 acting on his suggestions and plans, we found how wise he 
 was in forethought, and wondered why we had not thought of 
 the plans ourselves. To his earnest exertions and liberality 
 we are indebted for the water-works, the cotton factory, and 
 car works, the promotion of emigration, the successful cultiva- 
 tion of the grasses, the introduction of blooded cattle and 
 improved stock, large and more comfortable dwellings for the 
 workingmen, the building of churches and schools for them, 
 and facilities for the education of their children. He was a 
 grand old man — one of the most generous and unselfish I ever 
 knew, always interested in and planning for the welfare of 
 others, and never so happy as when those he aided profited by 
 his advice and assistance. I hoped he would have lived for 
 years to come, and enjoyed the proud satisfaction of seeing 
 the plans he had so generously and prudently formed for the 
 welfare of the people of the town he had founded grown to 
 perfection. We shall miss him greatly. Who will impress us 
 with the feeling of confidence in every new plan and under- 
 taking that he was wont to give ? To whom shall we look for 
 the sound advice his age, experience, and clear mind alone 
 could impart ? We miss him daily. We will always miss him. 
 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 Samuel Noble. 
 
 During the Avar a furnace had been built at Oxford, 
 south of the present site of Anniston, but contiguous 
 thereto, which had been operated for the Confederate 
 government, and been destroyed by a raiding party under 
 the command of Gen. Croxton, whose brigade had been 
 separated from the command of Gen. Wilson at or near 
 Selma. It was, I think, Mr. Noble's knowledge of this 
 furnace, and the character of iron it had made, which led 
 him to explore the red hills north of Oxford, on which 
 Anniston has been built. Meanwhile, in association with
 
 54 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 his ingenious father, who, though now nearly eighty-four 
 years old, is in the enjoyment of vigorous life, and his 
 five brothers, he had established at Rome, Ga., the man- 
 ufacture of car wheels ; and it was when visiting the office 
 of Mr. Alfred L. Tyler, who was manager of the South 
 Carolina Railroad, in the hope of securing a contract for 
 wheels, that the interview occurred between him and the 
 General which led to the founding of Anniston and the 
 erection of what is known as Furnace No. I, which was 
 completed in April, 1873. With the exception of an 
 occasional stoppage for repairs, the operations of this fur- 
 nace have been continuous since it was first blown in. 
 Even during the protracted depression caused by the 
 panic of 1873, which was so severely felt by the iron trade 
 throughout the country, this furnace was worked to its 
 full capacity, and the demand for its output was so stead- 
 ily in excess of its capacity that the furnace known as 
 Number 2 was built and blown in in 1879. The character 
 of the iron produced was already established, not only as 
 the " best Southern," but as standard car-wheel iron. 
 Said a writer in a Nashville journal near the close of 1881 : 
 
 " The character of this iron was not the child of chance nor 
 the result of an hour's work, but is the result of years of pa- 
 tient experiment. For three years the Woodstock Iron Com- 
 pany kept an expert analytical chemist employed at their fur- 
 naces, and by patience, painstaking, closely observing, and 
 making very extensive experiments in the mixture of ores, they 
 have succeeded in producing a car-wheel iron that for uniform- 
 ity and hardness of chill, tenacity and strength of web when in 
 the wheel, cannot be surpassed by any iron in the country." 
 
 I cannot, however, devote my entire space to the early 
 history of Anniston, for I must tell of its growth and its
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 55 
 
 recent magical expansion. Such explorations as Mr. 
 Noble tells us were made by himself and Gen. Tyler have 
 been continued, and are in progress by expert agents to- 
 day. The Woodstock and the Clifton Iron Companies 
 have thus carefully selected and purchased more than 
 60,000 acres of the best hematite ores of the section, and 
 more than thirty miles of the best fossiliferous iron ore in 
 Alabama. These acquisitions brought them such vast 
 forests of timber fit for use as charcoal that it is believed 
 that Anniston's supply of charcoal timber is inexhaust- 
 ible, inasmuch as the land that is stripped this year will 
 be growing charcoal wood by the time it shall be reached 
 again in turn. 
 
 For the simplification of accounts and the management 
 of details three companies were organized : the Woodstock, 
 of which I have spoken, the Clifton, with its two charcoal 
 furnaces at Ironaton and Jenifer, with the land bought 
 in its name, and the Anniston City Land Company. The 
 Land Company was charged with the title to and care of 
 the town site, the establishment of a town plan, the macad- 
 amization of the streets, the providing for an inexhaust- 
 ible supply of water, and the appliances for so distributing 
 it as to constitute a defence against fire, the lighting by 
 electricity, and in brief the general management of a town 
 as it has recently been confided to a municipal government. 
 These estates were held as proprietary property till late in 
 1883, when town lots were laid out in Anniston and of- 
 fered for sale. This opened the way for the erection of a 
 very solid-looking little town, with its brick bank, post- 
 office, telegraph office, newspaper offices, flouring mill and 
 stores, from which a general supply of household and 
 personal goods could be bought. The population was in 
 December last estimated at from 4,000 to 4,500. Occa-
 
 $6 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 sionally an enthusiast would claim from 4,500 to 5,000 in- 
 habitants. A count carefully made during April estab- 
 lished the fact that there were considerably more than 
 7,000 people then in Anniston ; that there were not 10,000 
 is palpably owing to the lack of materials to be used and 
 the labor to use them in the construction of dwellings 
 and business places. Four thousand mechanics and work- 
 men must be added to the population to operate the new 
 industries already commenced. The official reports to the 
 Treasury Department show that the deposits in the First 
 National Bank, on its organization, were about $60,000. 
 During the month of January they rose to nearly 
 $2,000,000, and were, three weeks ago, as I learned by in- 
 quiry, more than one million. ' The bank has been in 
 operation three years. The legal rate of interest is 8 per 
 cent. Its capital is $100,000 ; its surplus is $150,000, and 
 Mr. D. T. Parker, its president, assured me that it had 
 never lost a "dollar by a discount. 
 
 In December the building in which axles are forged was 
 found to be too small, and its enlargement and an increase 
 of machinery sufficient to add fifty per cent, to its pro- 
 ductive capacity was begun while I was there, and had 
 been completed when I returned. Two furnaces of the 
 most approved construction for the manufacture of coke 
 iron, which will be capable of turning out two thou- 
 sand tons per week, are going up under the superin- 
 tendence of the celebrated firm of Taws & Hartman, of 
 Philadelphia, every dollar of the money for their con- 
 struction and working capital being in hand. On land 
 adjoining these furnaces I found workmen engaged in 
 constructing a pipe works which is expected to consume 
 over 60,000 tons per annum of their product. This work 
 is in charge of Major Anderson, a graduate of West Point
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 57 
 
 and a recent member of the engineer corps of the United 
 States Army, and the location for the furnaces and pipe 
 works has been selected with such prevision that the law 
 of gravitation will be a constant factor in the mechanical 
 operations of both establishments. In other words, an 
 available descent will prevail from the room in which the 
 pig iron is cast to the yard in which the finished pipe will 
 be piled for shipment. 
 
 Three additional brick-yards have been put into opera- 
 tion, but have not been able to supply the current demand 
 for bricks, and their capacity is already being enlarged. A 
 planing mill of fine dimensions and modern appointments, 
 which in April began to send forth its hum early and late, 
 is also behindhand in filling orders. A bloomary for the 
 manufacture of steel from local ores is in process of 
 erection. During my visit Mr. Taylor, the projector of 
 the Sciota fire-brick works and of the great works at or 
 near Cincinnati, having visited Anniston and sent to his 
 Ohio works specimens of brick clay, returned with bricks 
 produced therefrom, secured a site for an establishment 
 at Anniston, equal in capacity to either of his others, and 
 having contracted for the delivery of 3,000,000 fire-bricks 
 within given dates, started for home to bring with him 
 skilled workmen to push his works to completion and to 
 contract for houses framed and ready to be put upon the 
 ground in sufficient number to accommodate the army 
 of men he expects to employ. The commercial signifi- 
 cance of this operation will be realized when it is known 
 that the freight heretofore paid on fire-bricks to Anniston 
 has been $12 per thousand, all of which will be saved to 
 her industries, showing an economy of $36,000 on her first 
 contract for fire-bricks from works to be established in her 
 midst to utilize clay, which abounds within her limits.
 
 5 8 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 The car shops have been the property of Noble Broth- 
 ers, of whom there are six, only four of whom are, I think, 
 interested in these works. Like the car-wheel and axle 
 works they were established in accordance with the origi- 
 nal design of the founders, to sell the product of the 
 furnace as much advanced by manufacture as possible, 
 and when, in 1879, furnace No. 2 had been completed, 
 measures were taken to work part of its iron also into ad- 
 vanced forms. The first idea was to build only platform 
 freight cars, but to build them so well as to establish the 
 character of the firm. This was soon done. Contracts 
 were then offered them for box cars, which they were 
 building in December, and to my surprise when I returned 
 this spring I found them making passenger cars, and 
 learned that their works had been established as a shop 
 for the repair, including upholstering, of the Mann boudoir 
 cars, which are so popular on Southern roads. In response 
 to an expression of surprise, I was told that a great en- 
 largement of the works was probable, as the president of 
 the Alabama Railway Equipment Organization had vis- 
 ited Anniston with some of the heavier capitalists of the 
 company to determine whether it was, as had been sug- 
 gested, a fitting site for their shops. It was also said that 
 if they came to Anniston they would increase their capi- 
 tal to $1,000,000 and take the shops and land appurte- 
 nant thereto, together with the machinery and business of 
 Noble Brothers at an appraised valuation payable in the 
 stock of the company. This point having been favorably de- 
 termined, it was proposed that, in order to secure beyond 
 a peradventure the sympathy of the Woodstock Iron Com- 
 pany and the people of Anniston, they should be required 
 to make a cash subscription of $200,000 to the stock of the 
 organization. This proposition, I am advised by a letter
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 5 9 
 
 received May 18th, has been accepted as the basis of an 
 agreement which secures the establishment at the earliest 
 practicable day of works for the manufacture of locomotives 
 and the construction and repair of freight and passenger 
 cars, with a million and a half of dollars of paid-up capital, 
 whose operations will require an addition of 1,600 to the 
 skilled workmen of Anniston. 
 
 But the forethought which established a cotton factory 
 in the primitive days of Anniston, in order that there 
 might be the means of independent support for the wid- 
 ows and orphans of the place and surrounding country, 
 still characterizes the influences that control her affairs. 
 Along the line of the Talladega valley running more than 
 sixty miles southward to Sylacauga extend the ore'lands 
 of the Woodstock and Clifton companies, and the forests 
 which are to furnish fuel with which to work the four 
 furnaces now devoted to charcoal iron, and those that may 
 be constructed when a further output of that character 
 of iron shall be required. Anniston, said her projectors, 
 must not depend for transportation of its ore and 
 coal and manufactures upon influences that might 
 be adverse to her interests ; therefore, Messrs. Tyler and 
 Noble, with a few associates, constructed during last year 
 a road through this valley, known as the Anniston and At- 
 lantic road, which was opened to travel on schedule time 
 early in December ; and now the Woodstock Iron Company 
 is constructing a road from Anniston to Gadsden and At- 
 alla, to connect with the Cincinnati Southern, and thus give 
 Anniston direct connection with Cincinnati, Chicago, and 
 the entire Northwest. These additions to the facilities 
 afforded by the Georgia Pacific and the East Tennessee, Vir- 
 ginia and Georgia roads establish Anniston as an inevitable 
 railroad centre ; and to meet the local wants of the roads
 
 60 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 that may compete for her business, plans have been 
 adopted for a capacious union depot to be built near the 
 famous Inn, and to be provided with all the conveniences 
 found in the great stations of New York and Philadelphia. 
 Work on this building will commence as soon as material 
 and workmen can be had, the directors of the Land Com- 
 pany having taken it in charge. In this connection I may 
 properly refer to a striking display of the persistency with 
 which the ideal of General Tyler and Mr. Noble is adhered 
 to, in the fact that an army of men employed by the Land 
 Company are busy grading and laying tracks for a freight 
 and transfer yard on a body of land embracing nearly one 
 hundred acres, in which, without disturbing the quiet of 
 the residence portion of the city, freight trains will be 
 broken up and the cars distributed to the roads by which 
 they are to proceed to their destination. As I sat with 
 Mr. Noble on the broad piazza of his hospitable home, 
 from which we overlooked the city, he spoke of this work, 
 and having reminded me that, though born in England, he 
 passed his childhood and youth and came to manhood in 
 Reading, Pennsylvania, he said : " I can remember the 
 early days of the Reading and Pennsylvania roads. How 
 little forethought their projectors exhibited in failing to 
 provide for the business of the future, and how, in com- 
 mon with all the roads of their day, they have, from this 
 want of forethought and an expenditure of a few thousand 
 dollars at the proper time, been made to pay millions for 
 space for distributing yards for their freight cars and ade- 
 quate station yards in which to make up their passenger 
 trains, and we have determined that we will now, while 
 land is unoccupied and cheap, before it becomes the busi- 
 ness centre of the city, as it will in a few years, dedicate 
 enough to protect the roads that shall enter Anniston
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 6 1 
 
 against the exactions made elsewhere by reason of the 
 enormous outlay of money required to procure such yards 
 in the suburbs of a populous city." 
 
 During the three months to which I have so frequently 
 referred, a municipal charter was obtained, a government 
 chosen and organized, and plans adopted for a capacious 
 but inexpensive town-hall, to be constructed as soon as 
 a contractor could be found in so busy a place. Do my 
 readers ask what, after fourteen years of such noiseless 
 growth, caused Anniston to blaze forth so suddenly and 
 with such lustre? This sudden development is simply 
 the denouement of the romance of Anniston. It is the 
 natural result of the opening to public view of the ap- 
 parently unselfish life which, while aiming at the good of 
 others and the welfare of an enlarging posterity, was re- 
 warding the labors of the founders of Anniston with 
 wealth, the extent of which is disclosed to themselves by 
 the eagerness with which men of energy, skill, and ex- 
 perience in practical affairs crowd into this almost un- 
 known community in undoubting faith that prosperity 
 and happiness cannot fail to crown their enterprise where 
 forecast has made such elaborate provision for the future. 
 
 The properties in the possession of the few men who 
 constituted the Woodstock Iron Company, the Clifton 
 Company, and the Anniston Land Company had become 
 too large for individual management and too valuable 
 and complex to confide to the administration of executors 
 or administrators. Messrs. Noble and Tyler began to be 
 oppressed by a sense of responsibility, while competent 
 men beset them on all sides with proposals for the pur- 
 chase of the property of one or another of these com- 
 panies, or of an interest in all of them. When, on the 
 7th of December last, I left Anniston, it was in company
 
 62 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 with Mr. Noble on his way to New York to consult, as I 
 afterwards learned, the gentlemen who were interested with 
 himself and Mr. Tyler in these immense properties, and to 
 shape a course of action with regard to the future man- 
 agement thereof. The result of this conference between 
 the owners of these estates was a determination to retain 
 the Clifton property, including Ironaton, Jenifer, and the 
 ore, coal, and timber lands that had been acquired in the 
 name of that company, but to capitalize the property of 
 the Woodstock and the Land companies each at three 
 million dollars. Let me not be misunderstood as inti- 
 mating that the proprietors of these properties were 
 willing to part with their entire interest in them at that 
 price. The valuation of the properties was fixed by 
 parties who hoped to purchase them, and was accepted 
 by the owners as a basis on which they would part with 
 one third of the stock of the Woodstock and one half 
 of that cf the Land Company. These conditions were 
 accepted, and on the 22 d of January the transfer was 
 made to the newly organized companies, since when the 
 original holders of the property have owned two thirds, 
 or $2,000,000, of the stock of the Woodstock Iron Com- 
 pany, and one half, or $1,500,000, of the stock of the 
 Anniston City Land Company. By this operation some of 
 the most substantial and astute business men of Alabama 
 and Georgia became stockholders in and officers of one 
 or both of these companies, and the result has been a 
 noteworthy measure of activity in Anniston. If its 
 4,500 population of December last shall not be swollen 
 to 15,000 within the current year, it will be by reason of 
 the impossibility of constructing the industrial establish- 
 ments which are projected, together with homes for those 
 who are to build the works and manage their operations.
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 63 
 
 As no question touching the title to any part of the 
 vast property disposed of could be raised, and there was 
 not a dollar of indebtedness against it, the date of the 
 transfer could be determined as soon as the terms of the 
 sale had been arranged. The transfer was fixed for the 
 22d of January. The Land Company was organized by the 
 selection of Col. J. M. McKleroy, of Eufaula, as president 
 and general manager, Mr. Duncan T. Parker, president of 
 the National Bank, as treasurer, and a board of directors, 
 chosen from among the most substantial business men of 
 Georgia and Alabama. The 22d of January would be 
 Saturday, and the Land Company announced that a public 
 sale would begin on the 24th, at which lots, whether im- 
 proved or unimproved, would be sold as long as there 
 were bidders at prices acceptable to the directors of the 
 company. The sale began in the afternoon of Monday, 
 and was continued on Tuesday, consuming in all five 
 hours and a half, during which period largely more than 
 $400,000 worth of property was sold, the terms being one 
 fourth cash and the balance within certain periods extend- 
 ing through a year. The charter invests the company with 
 the right to buy land for subdivision and sale, and before 
 the 1st of May it had sold $700,000 worth of lots, and in- 
 vested $100,000 in choice property contiguous to its 
 original purchase. 
 
 Most of the lots sold were bought for immediate im- 
 provement, and I had the privilege of examining the 
 plans for a number of handsome residences and business 
 blocks which will be constructed as soon as the required 
 material and labor can be obtained. One of the first 
 buildings erected by General Tyler and Mr. Noble was a 
 flouring mill, on a lot at the corner of Noble and Tenth 
 streets, with a frontage of no feet on Noble street, and
 
 64 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 120 feet on Tenth street. The lot, carrying with it the 
 mill and its machinery, was sold for $12,000 to Mr. Mc- 
 Coy, of Augusta, Ga., who sold it in April as two lots, 
 each of 55 feet front on Noble street, for $30,000. The 
 mill was demolished during my stay in Anniston, and the 
 erection of a four-story brick edifice, with stone and terra- 
 cotta trimmings, had been contracted for. The corner 
 room on the first floor has been leased by a bank, whose 
 business will date from June 1st, and the adjoining room 
 will be occupied by a clothing house known throughout 
 the country side as "The Famous." The other half of 
 the original site will be occupied by three substantial 
 brick stores, and the upper stories of the bank building 
 will be devoted to offices. The fact that so much of the 
 property, whether in that portion of the town seemingly 
 dedicated to residences, or that in which merchants and 
 traders are to congregate, is held for immediate and, in 
 many cases, expensive improvement, is evidence of the 
 good faith of the transfers of property that have taken 
 place, and the faith of capitalists in the future of the city. 
 The abounding evidence one sees of the rapid progress 
 Anniston is making in wealth, productive power, and 
 population naturally excites the question whether, while 
 thus engaged in the pursuit of material prosperity, those 
 who now administer her affairs adhere to the exalted 
 theories that governed the founders of the city. Have 
 they continued to establish schools, churches, and other 
 means of social elevation and refinement ? Do they 
 maintain a colored school of as high a standard as that 
 indicated in General Tyler's letter to Mr. Smith ? Do they 
 employ and pay with even hand, more generously than 
 those around them, laborers, whether white or colored? 
 To him who may propound such questions I reply that no
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 65 
 
 sign of obliviousness to any of those purposes is discern- 
 ible, and that, after a month's searching observation, I 
 adopt the following language found in a published letter 
 dated December 22, 1881, and declare it to be as true 
 now, in the midst of the whirl and the bustle of Anniston's 
 sudden expansion, as it was in the days of her quiet pro- 
 prietary life : 
 
 " While the management is energetic in the prosecution of 
 their business schemes, they seem to want the profit only 
 to beautify their property, and make those dependent upon 
 them feel that they are at home, and that, while good services 
 are required of each and every employe, his good and his 
 comfort are matters of interest to his employer." 
 
 The beautiful building known as the Noble Institute 
 for the education of young ladies is this year to have its 
 counterpart in an institute for young men, and, while ap- 
 propriating ample funds for the construction of the school 
 building, Mr. Noble has also announced his purpose to 
 erect a dormitory in which students may be comfortably 
 and carefully housed. Opposite to Grace Episcopal Church, 
 of which the Nobles and Tylers are stout adherents, has 
 been erected an adequate portion, for the accommodation 
 of the present congregation, of what, when completed in 
 accordance with the part that has been finished, will be a 
 strikingly beautiful Presbyterian church. The Methodists, 
 the Baptists, the Congregationalists, and other denomina- 
 tions have their churches. There is also a hall known as 
 the Opera House, in which dramatic and social entertain- 
 ments are held, and in which during my stay fairs and 
 other entertainments, one in aid of a recently organized 
 rifle company, and others in the service of education, were 
 held, in all of which the best people of the place partici- 
 pated.
 
 66 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 To the west of the famous Inn stands what, in point of 
 location, is the most striking building in Anniston. It is 
 a beautiful little church, upon a hill of iron ore — the high- 
 est ground within the populous limits of the city. The 
 elevated basement wall is of brick. The structure is new; 
 the colors in which the body of the church and its modest 
 but well-proportioned steeple are painted are harmonious 
 and agreeable. The interior of the church has been dec- 
 orated with excellent taste, and a well-toned piano serves 
 as an admirable substitute for an organ. In the basement 
 are three rooms, which are presided over by a married 
 couple, both of whom are graduates of Talladega Col- 
 lege. The west room is a primary school, which I visited, 
 and, while rambling over the hills for exercise, looked into 
 frequently. In the middle room is the grammar school. 
 The walls of this room are almost covered with slate or 
 blackboard, on which exercises prepared by the teachers, 
 or examples wrought by pupils, may constantly be seen. 
 The exercises include the correction of ungrammatical 
 sentences, and, as a printing office is found in the adjoin- 
 ing room to the eastward, specimens of bad proof are 
 posted for correction ; and, as at the college from which 
 the teachers came, the pupils print a small weekly paper. 
 Two male and two female pupils are, in succession, taught 
 the art of type-setting. The principals of the school edit 
 the paper, much of the matter for which is written or 
 selected by the pupils. The church is Congregational, 
 and its site crowns the quarter of Anniston known as 
 Liberia, a designation chosen by the early settlers of the 
 quarter. Elsewhere there is a quarter known as Factory 
 Town, the occupants of which are chiefly engaged in the 
 cotton factory, and over beyond the furnaces on elevated 
 ground to the southwest is Glen Addie, a picturesque set-
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 6 J 
 
 tlcment which contained something more than fifty cot- 
 tages in December, to which nearly one hundred like 
 buildings have since been added. All these buildings, 
 whether in Liberia, Factory Town, or Glen Addie, arc 
 symmetrical, are well-painted, have ground about them 
 for vegetable gardens, in many of which I observed fruit 
 trees, and in almost every one of the spaces around the 
 older buildings such vegetable gardens as I nowhere no- 
 ticed upon a cotton plantation. 
 
 Yes, Anniston is still an ideal industrial centre, and the 
 generous and humane spirit of Daniel Tyler finds practical 
 expression at whatever cost in the daily operations of 
 Samuel Noble and Alfred L. Tyler, who will, I doubt not, 
 strive to infuse his spirit into the life of the Woodstock 
 Iron Company, and the Anniston City Land Company, 
 with which her destiny is inseparably interwoven.
 
 LETTER IV. 
 
 SOUTH PITTSBURG THE ENTREPOT FOR THE SEQUACHEE 
 
 AND TRIBUTARY VALLEYS. 
 
 The Elms, Philadelphia, June i, 1887. 
 
 In perfect confidence that no risk of loss of reputation 
 is thereby incurred, I declare that South Pittsburg, Ten- 
 nessee, will be a prosperous industrial centre, whose trade 
 in coal, coke, iron, and advanced manufactures produced 
 therefrom, with the lower Mississippi, will vie with that 
 of its prototype, Pittsburg, in my own State, and that it 
 will also be the seat of a great local commerce, as it is the 
 predestined entrepot for a number of valleys, each of 
 which is remarkable for salubrity, fertility, and the value 
 of its mineral resources. 
 
 The town is on the western bank of the Tennessee 
 River, about 130 miles south of Nashville, and 34 miles 
 from Chattanooga, at what is known as the " Great Bend." 
 It is located in a cove formed by a curve in the mountain. 
 The river bounds the plot on the east, and a mountain 
 ranging from 1,000 to 1,400 feet high gives the settlement 
 protection from the sun's summer rays long before they 
 cease to pour upon the plains, and protects it against the 
 harsh winds of winter. Though South Pittsburg has a 
 population of but about 1,500, its brief story narrates 
 many vicissitudes. 
 
 I am indebted for the following statement to Mr. James 
 Bowron, a son of the founder of South Pittsburg, who 
 
 68
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW 69 
 
 now fills the position of secretary and treasurer of the 
 Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company : 
 
 " In 1873 the attention of several gentlemen intimately con- 
 nected with the iron trade of the north of England was called 
 to the large possibilities of the American iron trade, and a 
 syndicate was formed representing large wealth and experience. 
 That syndicate bought conditionally a large mass of property 
 in Virginia, where the Hawk's Nest Colliery is now situated, 
 and sent out inspectors to verify the truth of the vendor's rep- 
 resentations. Those inspectors reported that the coal was as 
 stated, but that there was no iron there, and the whole project 
 went to pieces. There was plenty of good ore within reach, 
 but the vendors had misrepresented the thing once, and de- 
 stroyed the confidence of the buyers. 
 
 " Several of the gentlemen, however, continued to look into 
 the subject, as their attention had been favorably attracted to 
 it. The result of their inquiries and negotiations was the con- 
 ditional purchase in 1873 of a large property at Etowah, 
 Georgia ; and the previous experience of sending inspectors 
 to examine was this time varied by the report from them that 
 the property contained the iron represented, but not the coal. 
 
 "At this time Mr. James Bowron was advised to come abroad 
 for the benefit of his health, and his associates in the previous 
 negotiations delegated to him powers to act for them on the 
 spot, and buy some lands that embraced both coal and iron in 
 reasonable contiguity. 
 
 " He came to the United States, and, before taking any posi- 
 tive action, visited nearly every State in the Union, and spent 
 two years making a full examination. The final result of his 
 labors was the purchase of a considerable body of coking coal 
 lands on the Cumberland Mountain, with red ore lands oppo- 
 site, at what is now Inman, with a vast body of brown ore land 
 in East Tennessee, suitable for the operation of charcoal fur- 
 naces.
 
 70 THE OLD SOUTH AMD THE NEW. 
 
 " The site was chosen at South Pittsburg, in reliance on the 
 opening of the Muscle Shoals, and the completion of the Mem- 
 phis and Charleston Railroad to Chattanooga. Unfortunately 
 for the success of the enterprise, Mr. Bowron died suddenly in 
 1877, before the works had commenced operations, or in some 
 cases had advanced far towards completion. His death was 
 followed in 1878 by that of the president of the company, Mr. 
 Whitwell, the well-known metallurgist and inventor, who was 
 killed by an explosion in his works just at the time that nego- 
 tiations for the property of the Tennessee Coal and Railroad 
 Company, passing under the control of the English company, 
 were approaching a head. The deaths of these two heads of 
 the enterprise were followed closely by those of Mr. Pike, of 
 Cork, a Quaker banker, the largest stockholder, and Mr. Jos. 
 Cliffe, the eminent fire-brick manufacturer, one of the leading 
 spirits also. 
 
 " After the loss of so many of their most prominent colleagues 
 the remaining number of the English board lacked courage to 
 carry out the needful expenditure to finish the original plant, 
 and willingly embraced the opportunity afforded them to con- 
 solidate with the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company 
 in 1882." 
 
 Had the English company, as I shall speak of the 
 founders of the place, been spared, there would, I am 
 confident, now be twelve or fifteen thousand prosperous 
 people in South Pittsburg, and a large diversity of em- 
 ployment open to new-comers. Proofs of the forecast 
 and liberality of these gentlemen are everywhere apparent. 
 The two furnaces which stand just beyond the northern 
 boundary of the town site embody every improvement 
 that was available at the time of their construction, and 
 the iron they produce enjoys a national reputation for 
 fluidity and other qualities required for casting the finest 
 and most sharply-cut designs. Cotemporaneously with
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. J\ 
 
 the construction of the furnaces a town plan was adopted, 
 water-works established, streets opened, along several of 
 which capacious water-pipes were laid, and, when the 
 work of grading had been completed, curb was set and 
 arrangements made for the macadamization of the road- 
 bed. These testimonials to their faith in the future of 
 South Pittsburg, and to the fitness of the gentlemen com- 
 posing the company to provide a growing and enterprising 
 community with the means of comfort, health, and in- 
 dustrial prosperity, are everywhere apparent. 
 
 But, since the consolidation of that company with the 
 Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company, little care has 
 been bestowed upon the town of South Pittsburg. " As 
 might be expected, every thing urbane went to decay, and 
 the once sprightly embryo city faded into a dingy village 
 of Sleepy Hollow." The streets were not macadamized ; 
 those running from west to east have been washed into 
 deep gulleys, and in many places the curb-stones that had 
 been carefully set have fallen into the road-bed ; and the 
 town site, as I first saw it in November last, indicated con- 
 tinuing neglect and dilapidation rather than progress tow- 
 ard a notable future. This condition of affairs, when 
 referred to, was ascribed to the fact that " the Tennessee 
 company were iron-makers exclusively, and paid little at- 
 tention to the town of South Pittsburg, expending prac- 
 tically nothing for its improvement." But in 1886 the 
 town site was purchased from the Tennessee company by 
 Mr. William M. Duncan, a banker of Nashville, and in the 
 autumn of that year the South Pittsburg City Company 
 was organized and bought the town site, including 3,000 
 acres, together with a contiguous tract of 700 acres from 
 Dr. Bostick, " and began to reorganize the town." In this 
 work, contrasting the achievements that are visible with
 
 72 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 the career of Anniston, Chattanooga, and Birmingham, 
 with which cities South Pittsburg must take rank, it can- 
 not be said their efforts have been signally successful. In- 
 deed, their results are scarcely perceptible, except in the 
 erection of the very pretty and well managed Inn with its 
 38 chambers, which was hastened to completion in order 
 to accommodate the throng of visitors who were expected 
 to attend the sale of town lots appointed for the 10th of 
 May. The streets have not been repaired or macadamized. 
 Visible breaks mark the curb line on both sides of every 
 street. The number of homes for working people that had 
 been commenced on the 13th of May, when I left, was 
 plainly inadequate to the demand for such buildings that 
 will disclose itself from day to day as the great industrial 
 works, which are nearly completed, employ workmen and 
 start their machinery. In my judgment, they do not 
 use too harsh or significant a phrase who say the supply 
 of such houses is shamefully and mysteriously inadequate, 
 especially as a hundred of them would be not only a con- 
 venience to the heads of the establishments whose success 
 will build up the town, and a means of comfort and health 
 to their employes, but must have been a source of profit 
 to the company upon whose lands they ought to have 
 been built. That the management of so important a 
 financial operation as the development of an admirably 
 located town site should have been confided to an agent, 
 who could fail to perceive that to improve vacant lots for 
 sale or rent at highly remunerative rates of profit would 
 diminish taxes, increase income, and enhance the general 
 value of the town by promoting the comfort of its newly 
 arriving people, is a marvel ; and in my judgment this in- 
 explicable mismanagement justifies the complaints to 
 which I was compelled to listen, during a stay of about
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. jl 
 
 ten days, from almost every man who had recently settled 
 in South Pittsburg. 
 
 " The City Pamphlet," with its " eleven full-page illus- 
 trations, twenty-one pages of descriptive matter," and 
 " exquisitely engraved cover," which had been prodigally 
 distributed, could not be accepted by settlers as an offset 
 to these and other deficiencies, such as the total want of 
 schools, street lamps, and fire apparatus. Indeed, this 
 proposed substitute for the means of common-school in- 
 struction, dwelling-houses, light, and protection from con- 
 flagration was much derided in my hearing, as it included 
 engravings of buildings which were yet invisible, and allu- 
 sions to such imaginary places as " a cottage-bedecked 
 hill-side," etc.; and, as I learned from parties who had 
 cornea great distance for the purpose of effecting a settle- 
 ment in a milder climate than that in which they now live, 
 its exaggerations filled strangers with doubt, and drove 
 some of them away in disgust. In support of this state- 
 ment I refer to a brief personal interview with two gentle- 
 men from Michigan, who arrived at the Inn in order to at- 
 tend the sale, at which they expected to make considerable 
 purchases. The train that was to carry them away had 
 not yet arrived. The station was near the door of the Inn, 
 in front of which they sat. One of them held a copy of 
 " The Pamphlet," which he said had been widely circu- 
 lated in their section of the country. On the " exqui- 
 sitely engraved cover " appeared in large fancy type the 
 words, " South Pittsburg, Tennessee," and views of the 
 front elevation of " The Bank," of which the first story 
 was in progress, and " Morton's Block," for which ground 
 was yet to be broken. It purported to give " a brief 
 sketch of the town's location, history, changes of owner- 
 ship, facilities for manufacturing, resources of the district,
 
 74 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 attractive as the centre of the New South, climate, 
 weather, temperance, schools, churches, hotels, bank, etc., 
 etc." 
 
 I was attracted to their conversation by hearing, as I 
 could not help doing, that the point under discussion was 
 whether the author of the pamphlet believed the Ameri- 
 can people to be fools, or to be so blind as to be unable to 
 detect the absence of the attractions it purported to de- 
 scribe. Feeling that I might do them a kindness, I took 
 the liberty of suggesting that, though it could not be de- 
 nied that the first page of the pamphlet bore a striking re- 
 semblance to a circus bill announcing the " coming of the 
 greatest show on earth," its exaggerations ought not to 
 prejudice them against a place which enjoyed so many 
 real advantages that no mistakes of mere administration 
 could long retard its very profitable development. The 
 response to my suggestion was a query as to where evi- 
 dence could be found of the truth of my assertion. I 
 pointed them to Sequachee Valley, with its agricultural 
 lands, the fertility of which could not be exceeded in 
 either their State or my own, and to the fact that it was 
 inexhaustibly rich in excellent coking coal and valuable 
 varieties of iron ore, the character of which was drawing 
 together establishments such as they saw in process of 
 construction along the line of the railroad. My labor of 
 love was, however, ineffectual. My assurances did not 
 countervail the author's exaggerations, and I was met 
 with the cynical suggestion that as the things advertised, 
 which they could have seen had they existed, were not 
 there, how could I expect them to believe that those 
 which they could not investigate were where and as I said 
 they might be found. " No," said one of them, " deluded 
 by this pamphlet we came here with the purpose of set-
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. ?$ 
 
 tling, but we arc going to follow the example of Mr. Bow- 
 ron, the founder of the settlement, who, this pamphlet 
 tells us, rejected properties in Virginia and Georgia be- 
 cause they were not as they had been advertised." The 
 whistle of the coming train was heard, and the disgusted 
 adventurers departed. 
 
 These unfortunate facts are alluded to because, having 
 undertaken to speak on the subject, I accept it as a duty 
 to assure all who may read these letters that the agricul- 
 tural and mineral resources of South Pittsburg are so 
 great, and her location so admirable, that no such mis- 
 takes as have been permitted to occur since the organiza- 
 tion of the City Company can permanently impair the 
 prospects even of that company, or do more than incon- 
 venience for a brief time parties who may seek the advan- 
 tage of cheap coking coal and iron of the highest quality, 
 especially for foundry purposes, at a natural seat of com- 
 mercial distribution. 
 
 My faith in the prosperous future of South Pittsburg 
 rests solidly on my knowledge of the abounding supplies 
 of materials for widely diversified manufactures, for which 
 she must be the outlet, whether they are to be borne to 
 market by railroad or river. The productions of the Se- 
 quachee and its tributary valleys must all contribute to 
 the growth of South Pittsburg. Nature has given her a 
 monopoly of their trade, and in doing so has invited men 
 of enterprise to convert the materials in which these val- 
 leys abound at this point, where it may be done more 
 cheaply than at places farther from coal, coke, ore of 
 iron and other metals, and the timber and rich agricul- 
 tural productions in the midst of which she is located. 
 Let me, therefore, invoke competent authority to tell my 
 readers where and what the Sequachee Valley is. In May,
 
 76 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 1885, as I find by the transactions of the American Insti- 
 tute of Mining Engineers, Mr. William M. Bowron read 
 to the members of the institute a paper, in which he 
 said : 
 
 " The Sequachee Valley includes portions of the counties of 
 Marion, Sequachee, Bledsoe, and Cumberland. It extends in a 
 general direction parallel with the great valley of East Tennes- 
 see, some 75 miles northward from the Alabama State line. 
 It is separated from the valley of East Tennessee by a moun- 
 tain arm about a dozen miles wide, known as Walden's 
 Ridge." 
 
 Mr. Bowron's paper was prepared for the members of a 
 scientific institute, and abounds in technical phraseology. 
 While therefore testifying my appreciation of his service, 
 in enabling me to state the exact location of the valley, I 
 will submit my views in more popular phraseology. Let 
 me say then, the Sequachee Valley is more than 70 miles 
 long, and of an average width of 4 miles. Its supporting 
 walls are Walden's Ridge and the Cumberland Moun- 
 tains. Along Walden's Ridge to the east are almost con- 
 tinuous deposits of iron ore, and in the mountains on the 
 west deposits of coking coal of superior quality extend 
 throughout the length of the valley. The supply of ore 
 and fuel known to exist in these walls may be said to be 
 inexhaustible. The valley is underlaid with limestone, 
 and is of abounding fertility. Of its lower part I speak 
 from personal observation. 
 
 The shire town of Marion County is Jasper, something 
 more than six miles from South Pittsburg. On our return 
 trip to Jasper over the county road we crossed the swampy 
 lands at the confluence of Battle Creek with the Sequachee. 
 I have stood at the base of the srreat trees in the forests
 
 THE OLD SOU 'I' If AND THE NEW. JJ 
 
 of Washington Territory and on the shores of Puget Sound, 
 almost awe-struck at their size, including height and 
 diameter, and their symmetry, and yet trees equal to the 
 finest of them are seen on these swampy lands tributary 
 to South Pittsburg, and not five miles from excellent sites 
 for furniture factories and other wood-working establish- 
 ments which must some day contribute to her prosperity. 
 Here- 1 found a written chapter of the story of the war, 
 for cut in the bark of these great trees are the initials, and 
 in some instances the full name, with the regiment and 
 company, of the Union soldiers who were on picket duty 
 at the confluence of these sometimes turbulent Tennessee 
 creeks. 
 
 Much of the land of both these valleys near their con- 
 fluence is highly cultivated, and from the modern imple- 
 ments seen in the fields or about the out-houses, and the 
 extent of these buildings, must, I think, be in the hands 
 of Northern farmers, or of men who have studied North- 
 ern methods of farming, and know the value of deep 
 ploughing and of barn-yard manure and clover as fertil- 
 izers. Much of the upland or hill-sides of the part of the 
 Sequachee Valley I visited is under careful cultivation, 
 and abundantly rewards the labor bestowed upon it. Vic- 
 toria is nine miles beyond Jasper, and Inman six miles 
 beyond Victoria, which is in the west wall of the valley, 
 and is a coking station. Inman, on the other hand, is in 
 Walden's Ridge, the eastern wall, and is the source from 
 which ore for the South Pittsburg and some other furnaces 
 is taken. These points are reached by a road owned by the 
 Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company, but which, 
 having been leased by the Nashville, Chattanooga, and St. 
 Louis Company, is extended as occasion requires. The 
 scenery along this road is beautifully picturesque. The
 
 yS THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 coal of the valleys it accommodates makes good coke, 
 and the ore includes beds of fossiliferous and red and 
 brown hematite or limonite. The coal, the ore, and the 
 limestone of these valleys, with the timber which exists 
 in great variety and magnificent profusion along Walden's 
 Ridge and Cumberland Mountain would, were they South 
 Pittsburg's sole supply of raw materials for manufacture, 
 insure her a commanding position ; but the valleys of 
 Battle Creek and the Big and Little Sequachee are, I am 
 assured by those in whose statements I have confidence, 
 almost as rich in minerals, timber, and agricultural elements 
 as the great valley itself. It is the perception of the in- 
 exhaustible value of these resources that has induced a 
 number of experienced men to abandon established loca- 
 tions and stake their fortunes in the erection of more ex- 
 tensive works at South Pittsburg. Among the establish- 
 ments to which I allude are the Perry Stove Company, 
 the buildings of which cover about six of the ten acres 
 acquired by the company along the railroad, and in which 
 the requisite machinery is now being erected. As Mr. John 
 S. Perry, the projector of this company, has for more 
 than thirty years been a manufacturer of stoves at Albany 
 and Sing Sing, I need hardly add that this machinery is of 
 the best quality and of the most recent conception. As 
 an illustration of the fact that there is a New South, a 
 truth which is sometimes disputed by those who too pro- 
 foundly revere the memories of the Old South, and as 
 also illustrative of the difficulties business men who go 
 there must encounter if they require skilled hands, and 
 cannot induce trained workmen to accompany them to a 
 new and distant home, I insert at length the following 
 advertisement, together with a statement of the means 
 by which its circulation was accomplished.
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 79 
 
 500 MEN WANTED! 
 
 STOP AND READ. 
 
 The Perry Stove Manufacturing Co., 
 south pittsburg, tenn., 
 Will open their 
 MAMMOTH STOVE FOUNDRY 
 during the month of June, giving an opportunity to 500 young 
 and middle-aged men and boys from the farm, mill, and 
 shop to learn the trade of 
 Moulders, Mounters, Polishers, Nickel Platers, Car- 
 penters, Pattern Finishers, Etc., Etc. 
 They have engaged 50 of the best mechanics to teach those 
 who want to learn. Early application should be made at the 
 office of the company to secure the opportunity of your life. 
 Liberal wages paid while learning the trade. 
 
 All Wages Paid Every Saturday Night. 
 
 Chas. W. Richards, Manager. 
 
 There is no district or city in the South from which the 
 number of skilled workmen needed in the departments 
 named in this advertisement could be drawn; and, as 
 mechanics who are well employed and contented with 
 their surroundings could hardly be induced by any ordi- 
 nary temptation to go so far from home as pioneers, un- 
 skilled workmen must be employed and trained. Mr. 
 Richards informed me that, by offering special induce- 
 ments, he had succeeded in engaging fifty competent men, 
 who were well known to him, as foremen and teachers. 
 The question that now troubled him was how to get the 
 raw hands for them to teach. There are, in this part of 
 Tennessee, no towns upon the walls of which placards can
 
 8o THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 be posted, nor do any advertising sheets, even in the form 
 of weekly papers, circulate among the mountain woods- 
 men and old-time poor white cotton-growers, from which 
 classes his recruits must be expected. To secure the cir- 
 culation of his advertisement he took advantage of the 
 fact that a circus was making its annual tour of the Se- 
 quachee Valley and surrounding country, and employed a 
 man to meet it at Jasper, accompany it for several days, 
 and distribute handbills containing the advertisement in 
 each town to which it should go. The device was a suc- 
 cess, for before leaving South Pittsburg I saw a number 
 of young men call in person, and was permitted to look 
 over a bundle of letters from others, pleading for the op- 
 portunity to escape from their past unremunerative em- 
 ployment in the service of King Cotton and become 
 skilled hands at stove-making, on the terms proposed by 
 the Perry Company. It is only in a new country that 
 such an advertisement could be required, and that such 
 promises as it holds out would be regarded as a favor by 
 thousands of people. I therefore reiterate the assertion 
 that I introduce this advertisement in proof of the fact 
 that there is a New South, whose poor people are, thanks 
 to a diversification of employments, to be more fortunate, 
 and to enjoy more of the comforts and luxuries of life 
 than those of their class ever enjoyed during the life of 
 the Old South, with its single industry. 
 
 The Perry Stove Works have long had a large trade 
 with the South, for which they have for some years de- 
 rived much of their metal from Tennessee and Alabama, 
 a consequence of which has been that their Southern cus- 
 tomers have paid freight on pig iron from one of these 
 States to Sing Sing or Albany, and on stoves from Albany 
 or Sing Sing to the Southern city in which they might be
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 8 1 
 
 marketed. There will, therefore, probably be a cheapen- 
 ing of stoves to the Southern people, and an increase of 
 profit to the Perry Company by the establishment of this 
 Southern branch of the old-established house. 
 
 A short distance from these works, on the opposite side 
 of the railroads, a site has been selected for an immense 
 planing-mill, the construction of which is proceeding 
 under the superintendence of its experienced proprietor, 
 Mr. C. J. Duncan, who has made the new city his home by 
 establishing his family in rented quarters until, with due de- 
 liberation, they can select a site on which to erect a perma- 
 nent home on their own plan. To the north of this lot are 
 the large buildings of the South Pittsburg Pipe Works, 
 which are drawing rapidly to completion. Their capacity 
 will be about 50,000 tons of pipe per annum. Beyond this, 
 again, are the foundations on which are rising the frame- 
 work of the large buildings of the Sequachee Hoe and Tool 
 Company. This establishment is an emigrant from Iron- 
 ton, O., the energetic proprietor of which, having enjoyed 
 the advantages of the Friends' College at Swarthmore, 
 near Philadelphia, the Law School at Harvard, and finally 
 gone to the bar from the office of the ex-attorney-general 
 of the United States, Wayne McVeagh, has cast his lot 
 with South Pittsburg, as has another young member of the 
 Philadelphia bar, who was recently assistant city-solicitor, 
 my son and namesake, who has identified himself with the 
 Perry Company as stockholder, director, and secretary. 
 The South Pittsburg Brick and Terra-Cotta Company were 
 just completing their first kiln when I left Tennessee. The 
 experienced manager of the concern is confident that he 
 can turn out first-class pressed bricks, and soon advance to 
 the production of general supplies of terra-cotta work. 
 This list embraces only works the location of which has
 
 8.2 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 been determined upon since my visit in November last. 
 I then observed a saw-mill in operation, and heard of a 
 foundry for the casting and manufacture of sad-irons, of 
 which ten or twelve tons are turned out weekly. The 
 machinery of this establishment, which I inspected during 
 my recent visit, is ingenious and interesting. The in- 
 creased demand for iron by the establishments to which I 
 have alluded will consume the production of the two 
 furnaces now in operation and demand the completion of 
 the third one, the construction of which has been promised 
 for months ; and should the place grow as rapidly as its 
 resources and location justify us in believing it will, the 
 gentlemen connected with the Memphis and Charleston 
 road, who are said to have selected a site for two furnaces 
 near their road, cannot push them to completion too 
 soon, if the Sequachee Valley is to furnish the shops of 
 South Pittsburg an adequate supply of iron for conversion 
 into the diversified utilities they are fitted to manufacture. 
 The summit of Lookout Mountain has been made the 
 seat of a luxurious summer settlement. The ascent is 
 made in a few minutes by an " incline," the car on which 
 is propelled by a stationary engine. So attractive has the 
 summit been found by parties from a distance as a place 
 of residence, as well as by the " can't-get-away " business 
 men of Chattanooga during the heated term, that a " zig- 
 zag," after the fashion of the famous Pennsylvania Switch- 
 back road, is projected, and a carriage road has been made 
 by which the mountain is ascended from its southern 
 point. The new settlers of South Pittsburg, though yet 
 but few, are contemplating an " incline " to Lodge's 
 Point, at the summit of the mountain, in the shelter of 
 whose early evening shadow the little town is growing, 
 and several parties have meanwhile contracted for inex-
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 83 
 
 pensive summer cabins, which may be reached by bridle 
 paths in about thirty minutes. The scene from this 
 point, or, indeed, from any part of the elevated plateau, 
 which is broad, is commanding and beautiful. Enough 
 work was done by the English company in the way of 
 planting fruit-trees and flowers within the limit of the 
 town site to leave enduring proof that the location is one 
 admirably adapted to the growth of peaches, pears, apples, 
 apricots, cherries, and other orchard fruits ; and that, as 
 Chicago and other Northern cities draw early strawberries 
 from the western slope of Missionary Ridge, near Chatta- 
 nooga, and grapes from the eastern slope of the ridge, so 
 may the foot-hills and sloping ascents of Lodge's Point be 
 made valuable by the skill of a few Northern market 
 gardeners, who would find their fortunes in settling on the 
 spot before it is appropriated as town lots. 
 
 The sale of city property, which took place on the 10th 
 and iithof May, in accordance with the announcement 
 of the too glowing pamphlet to which I have referred, 
 was attended by but little more than a hundred visitors. 
 It was, beyond all doubt, a bona-fide sale. Many of the 
 purchasers were eager, and had brought with them plans 
 for the improvement of the land they intended to purchase. 
 Eighty dollars a front foot was paid for a number of lots; 
 and I do not remember that any lot in the business por- 
 tion of the town sold for less than fifty dollars a front foot. 
 A young gentleman who had recently settled in South 
 Pittsburg was the hero of an incident which afforded 
 considerable amusement to his messmates, of whom I 
 happened to be one. He had not studied the method of 
 calculating the purchase-money for land in his new home, 
 and finding a lot exposed for sale upon which were two 
 dilapidated old frame buildings — one on the front street,
 
 84 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 and the other an outhouse near the rear, which the auc- 
 tioneer frankly said added little, if any, to the value of the 
 ground (it was the ground that had attracted my young 
 friend), — in response to the auctioneer's cry, " Fifty- 
 nine is bid ; shall I have sixty? " nodded his head appar- 
 ently with great deliberation. The bid bought the lot, 
 and then it was that the purchaser discovered that sixty 
 dollars was not the purchase-money for the lot, but the 
 one-fiftieth thereof. As his bid was sixty dollars per 
 front foot, the total amount was beyond his immediately 
 available means, and he was terrified by the result of his 
 temerity. He turned quickly to friends to know how he 
 could relieve himself from the consequences of his ill-con- 
 sidered act ; but before he could reach those who might 
 have relieved him from his bargain, he was cheered by ap- 
 plications from eager competitors for the two buildings at 
 rates of rent more than equivalent to the interest on the 
 whole purchase-money of his $3,000 lot, with stipulations 
 that the tenants would make needed repairs, so that, had 
 he not announced his mistake, he would have received the 
 congratulations of his friends upon his courage and the 
 excellence of his judgment. I tell this story to illustrate 
 the readiness with which any tenement that will give 
 shelter to a family or cover to people employed in hand 
 labor may be rented ; and as a demonstration to the mana- 
 gers of the South Pittsburg Land Company of the loss they 
 are sustaining by having failed to erect a hundred or more 
 neat cottages for laborers. That the prices paid for the 
 $80,000 worth of land that was bought were not exag- 
 gerated, proof was given in the fact that, after the close of 
 the first day's sale, the two lots opposite the bank build- 
 ing, not yet half a story high, and the handsome stores 
 that Mr. Morton intended to build, after the cellars should
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 85 
 
 be dug, and is, in fact, now building, were purchased at 
 private sale, by a shrewd and experienced business man, a': 
 the rate of $100 per front foot. But while giving publici- 
 ty to this significant incident, I feel bound to say that, in 
 view of existing conditions, I would not have advised the in- 
 vestment. The natural advantages of South Pittsburg are 
 greater than I have attempted to show, but her progress is 
 likely to be retarded by mismanagement on the part of 
 the Land Company. In the absence of any local govern- 
 ment, discontent prevails among the recent settlers who 
 are erecting buildings and setting up machinery, and law- 
 lessness will be provoked when hundreds of wage-earners, 
 for whom no adequate accommodations will have been 
 provided, shall be suddenly gathered together. The con- 
 ditions are such as frequently invoke application of lynch 
 law in improvised towns in the Far West. There is not a 
 school in the place. There is what is called a school- 
 house ; but it is a dangerously dilapidated building, in an 
 out-of-the-way place, and is unapproachable in wet weath- 
 er by children. Two lamps in front of the Inn constitute 
 the entire means of lighting the streets. No adequate or 
 steady supply of water has been provided, and no appa- 
 ratus for the extinguishment of fires exist ; in short, the 
 demand for local home rule is as urgent in South Pitts- 
 burg as it is in Ireland. Investments in town lots may be 
 made with a fair prospect of ultimate profit ; but, for the 
 present, further settlement should not be made by parents 
 of children who are within the age for common school in- 
 struction ; nor by those who would prefer to find their 
 way about the broken streets of an embryo city, in which 
 no government exists, by the aid of gas or electric light, 
 to exposing themselves to bludgeon or bullet by carrying 
 an illuminated lantern through the darkness of moonless
 
 86 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 nights ; nor by those the safety of whose estate requires 
 them to insure buildings, machinery, and stock against 
 conflagration, or who may require a full and steady supply 
 of water for domestic or manufacturing purposes. These 
 warnings refer to grave, but, happily, not insurmountable, 
 obstacles to what would be the magical development of this 
 most favored locality. Sixty days will suffice to remove 
 them all and justify settlement by every condition of peo- 
 ple, from all parts of the country. What is required is 
 the organization of a municipal government under a char- 
 ter that, in addition to authorizing a local magistracy and 
 police, will permit the making of a loan of limited 
 amount, and applicable exclusively to certain defined pur- 
 poses. Gentlemen every way qualified to administer such 
 a government can readily be found among those who are 
 identified with the great industrial establishments of the 
 place. At the risk of seeming to act invidiously by the 
 possible omission of the names of gentlemen of eminent 
 fitness for such duties, J beg leave to thus publicly sug- 
 gest the following names to the managers of the Land 
 Company : 
 
 George E. Downing, president of the pipe works, for- 
 merly of Cleveland, O., and for the five years last past an 
 active business man of Chattanooga. 
 
 Jesse R. Norton, president of the hoe and tool com- 
 pany, a graduate of the Law School of Harvard Uni- 
 versity, and the office of Hon. Wayne McVeagh, who is 
 transferring an established business from Ironton, Ohio. 
 
 Joseph Lodge, superintendent of the furnaces of the 
 Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company, a native of 
 Delaware County, Pa., who has lived in South Pittsburg 
 ten years. 
 
 Charles W. Richards, general manager of the stove
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 87 
 
 works, which he managed for ten years in Sing Sing, 
 N. Y. 
 
 C. J. Morton, proprietor of Morton's Block, builder and 
 contractor, from Paducah, Ky. 
 
 Wm. D. Kelley, Jr., secretary and director of the stove 
 company, who was successful as assistant city-solicitor of 
 Philadelphia. 
 
 R. M. Payne manages the Marion Hotel, keeps a well- 
 supplied country store, and is one of the oldest and most 
 solid residents of South Pittsburg. 
 
 Duncan, Hughes, and Hillman, owners and managers of 
 the large saw- and planing-mill now nearly completed. 
 
 F. D. Arthur, a finely educated lawyer from Sing Sing j 
 N. Y., with a growing practice. 
 
 Dr. William R. Townsend, a long-established and suc- 
 cessful physician, originally from New York. 
 
 D. H. Lawton, proprietor of the City Inn, from Ironton, 
 O., and 
 
 William M. Bowron, chemist and expert, who, with his 
 father, was one of the first settlers of South Pittsburg. 
 
 Such men, the representatives of such interests as these, 
 with their hundreds of employes and their families, can- 
 not long be held in subjection to the caprice of an ir- 
 responsible agent of non-resident proprietors ; and I pre- 
 dict with undoubting confidence that when this wretched 
 mismanagement shall be abandoned, or have been over- 
 thrown, South Pittsburg will forthwith take a prominent 
 place among the remarkable industrial and commercial 
 centres of the New South. It must be so. An unfailing 
 supply of coal, coke, ore, and limestone is at her threshold, 
 and her incipient industries are sufficiently diversified to 
 attract large numbers of skilled artisans. 
 
 Three railroads, the Nashville and Chattanooga, the
 
 88 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 Memphis and Charleston, and the East Tennessee, Vir- 
 ginia, and Georgia, will compete for the carrying trade these 
 industries will create. Nor can railroad companies establish 
 a monopoly of this trade. The Tennessee is a perennial 
 stream ; neither drought nor ice has ever obstructed her 
 surface or impeded or diminished the volume she pours into 
 the sea. The Muscle Shoals alone have impaired her com- 
 rriercial power and value. Under the old-time Southern 
 doctrine that the national government had not the right to 
 improve our obstructed rivers and harbors, the Tennessee 
 could never have become a thoroughfare for national and 
 international commerce. But better doctrines now pre- 
 vail, and the government engineers, who for many years 
 have been engaged in the removal of this obstruction, 
 have announced that, notwithstanding the fact that their 
 work will not be completed this year, the Christmas 
 present they will make their countrymen will be the an- 
 nouncement that steamers towing the longest practicable 
 line of barges from South Pittsburg and above that point 
 may have free and safe course to the ocean. With the 
 handling of the productions of the Sequachee and the 
 tributary valleys, and the commodities her own manifold 
 industries will produce, the mountain-sheltered city of 
 South Pittsburg will not be without some of the commer- 
 cial facilities which seem to belong only to cities near to 
 the sea. 
 
 Postscript, Oct. i, 1887. — To indite and send to the Record the fore- 
 going strictures upon the deplorable mismanagement of their great estate 
 by the South Pittsburg City Company were not pleasant duties, for I count 
 a number of the principal stockholders among my valued friends. But to 
 have omitted any of these criticisms would have been to impair my claim 
 to the character of a veracious chronicler of conditions and events. To 
 the suggestions of injustice elicited by the publication of the letter I made 
 no response, and after four months' consideration of my remarks, and the
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 89 
 
 faithful reading of the successive numbers of the South Pittsburg Standard, 
 a sprightly and vigorous weekly paper, which permits no private enterprise 
 or public improvement to be initiated without bringing it to the attention 
 of its readers, and frequent interchanges of letters with active business 
 men of the place, I am constrained to say that the rapid and substantial 
 growth of the town is taking place in spite of the indifference of the City 
 Company. This growth involves the addition in less than four months of 
 largely more than one hundred per cent, to the population, the construction 
 on Cedar and Elm avenues of a surprising number of single stores, and 
 blocks of stores and offices, most of which are substantial and capacious 
 brick buildings. One of the separate buildings is to be occupied by a sav- 
 ings-bank and trust company. The pipe works and stove works, though 
 the manager of neither of them has been able to obtain workmen enough 
 to put the fires and machinery in any thing like full operation, are scenes of 
 active industry such as had never been witnessed in Marion County. 
 Major Downing is producing fifteen tons of pipe per day, and the stove 
 works more than three tons of stoves. I have direct assurances from each 
 of these establishments that experience has already demonstrated the 
 superior adaptation of the local iron and coke to their uses. But these 
 achievements have not been promoted by the City Company. They are 
 the work of settlers, — of men who, while developing the resources of the 
 valley, and concentrating an energetic population, are taking the requisite 
 preliminary steps to secure a charter and establish at an early day a mu- 
 nicipal government, under which they may enjoy good order and security.
 
 LETTER V. 
 
 THE MINERAL RESOURCES OF THE SOUTH THE RELATION OF 
 
 HER IRON INDUSTRY TO THAT OF THE COUNTRY AT LARGE. 
 
 The Elms, Philadelphia, July i, 1887. 
 This letter will owe its direct application to, and its apt 
 illustration of, the industrial and social condition of the 
 mineral-bearing States of the South to the labor of Mr. 
 James M. Swank, general manager of the American Iron 
 and Steel Association, whose recent annual report is a 
 more masterly grouping, analysis, and summing up of 
 complex details and vast results than I can remember to 
 have seen in any similar paper. To his intelligent and 
 systematic labor my readers will owe the instruction they 
 may derive from the several tabulated statements it will 
 present. In the course of the preliminary remarks to this 
 report the following paragraph appears : 
 
 " An interesting and most gratifying feature of the iron trade 
 of 1886 was the marked advance which was made by the South- 
 ern States in the development of their resources for the man- 
 ufacture of iron and steel. Many new manufacturing enter- 
 prises, based upon ample capital and judiciously located, were 
 undertaken in that year, while other works already established 
 were pushed to their utmost capacity, and in several instances 
 were enlarged and otherwise improved. The production of 
 iron in these States in 1886 was much larger than in any pre- 
 ceding year. It will be larger in 1887 than in 1886, as few of 
 the new works which were undertaken in 1886 were in active 
 
 90
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 9 1 
 
 operation in that year ; most of them, indeed, will not be in 
 operation until the latter part of this year or the early part of 
 next year. Iron- ore mines, coal mines, and limestone quarries 
 are being opened, railroad connections are being made, and 
 contributory enterprises are being established wherever new 
 iron-works have been undertaken. The growth in the South 
 of its iron industry has also imparted a spirit of much-needed 
 enterprise to many other branches of industry in that section 
 which we need not particularize. Altogether the South has 
 experienced in 1886 a new birth ; even its own journals and 
 public men now speak of it as the New South. It gives to-day 
 abundant promise of achieving in the near future those benefi- 
 cent industrial results which have made the North so rich, so 
 prosperous, and so aggressive. The North welcomes its rivalry 
 in every line of industrial endeavor, as it well knows that the 
 South greatly needs the prosperity which diversified industries 
 only can bring." 
 
 This greeting from the iron industry of the North to a 
 promising competitor will be misapprehended by many of 
 both sections of the country. I have heard Southern en- 
 thusiasts predict the speedy transfer to the South of the 
 skill and capital now engaged in producing iron and steel 
 in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and have also heard Northern 
 pessimists query as to the time when the cheaper iron of 
 the New South will begin to close the mines and furnaces 
 of these great iron-producing States. Were I willing to 
 impose upon any of my readers, I could produce partial 
 exhibits which, considered by themselves, would confirm 
 the hopes of the enthusiast or the most dismal apprehen- 
 sions of the pessimist. But I visited the South in order 
 to ascertain and report the true condition of affairs, and 
 therefore convey my thanks to Mr. Swank for the labor 
 and skill by which he has enabled me to present a sum-
 
 92 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 mary of her achievements, and an appreciable indication 
 of the vastness of the field she must conquer before she 
 may aspire to supremacy in the American iron trade. 
 
 The production of an adequate supply of assorted qual- 
 ities of pig iron, with which to supply the demands of the 
 home market, is a preliminary to equality among the pro- 
 ducers of our vast and multiform manufactures of iron and 
 steel. To most dwellers in the vicinity of " booming " 
 towns, the conquering progress of the South toward this 
 consummation will be satisfactorily established by the 
 announcement that her production of pig iron during last 
 year was 61,780 net tons in excess of the average annual 
 production of the entire country during the ten years 
 1854 to 1863 inclusive. This is certainly a very striking 
 fact. But it is, we shall see, more valuable as proof of 
 possible capacity than of comparative achievement. It 
 was in 1854 that the American Iron and Steel Association 
 began to gather and preserve the statistics of the trade. 
 Its record of the production of pig iron for the ten years 
 referred to is as follows : 
 
 Years. Net tons. 
 
 1854 736,218 
 
 1855 784,178 
 
 1856 883,137 
 
 1857 798,157 
 
 1858 ' 7°5,°94 
 
 1859 840,627 
 
 i860 919,770 
 
 1861 731,544 
 
 1862 787,662 
 
 1863 A 947,6o4 
 
 This exhibit shows an annual average production of 
 813,399 net tons of pig iron, against which the South
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 93 
 
 shows 875,179 tons as her production in 1886, being an 
 excess of nearly 62,000 tons. 
 
 The following table, which exhibits the number of tons 
 of pig iron produced by each of the Southern States 
 during 1886, may prove interesting to many persons : 
 
 States. Net tons, 1886. 
 
 Alabama 283,859 
 
 Tennessee 199,166 
 
 Virginia i 5 6 j 2 5° 
 
 West Virginia 98,618 
 
 Kentucky 54,844 
 
 Georgia 46,49° 
 
 Maryland 3°>5° 2 
 
 Texas 3, 2 5° 
 
 North Carolina 2,200 
 
 Total 875,179 
 
 Missouri produced 74,523 net tons of pig iron last year; 
 and it may avert ill-founded criticism upon her omission 
 from this list of Southern States to note the fact that 
 she is not a Southern but is a Western State. She is 
 bounded on the east by Illinois and on the west by Kan- 
 sas, neither of which has ever been grouped with other 
 than Western States. Under the national compromise 
 of 182 1 Missouri became a slave State, but that did not 
 change her geographical position. 
 
 But to determine the statistical value of last year's fig- 
 ures we must subject them to comparison with the contem- 
 porary production of the country. For instance, our total 
 production of pig iron in 1886 was 6,365,328 net tons, which 
 showed an increase of nearly 700 per cent, upon the an- 
 nual average of the decade which closed with 1863. Of 
 this immense total Pennsylvania produced 51.7 per cent.,
 
 94 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 or more than one half, and Ohio 14.2 per cent., her total 
 being 908,094 tons, or 32,915 more tons than were pro- 
 duced in the entire South. 
 
 Mr. Swank says: "It is expected that the production 
 of pig iron in the South in the present year will exceed 
 a million net tons," and General Willard Warner, who 
 has managed the Tecumseh Furnace since just after the 
 close of the war, and whose temperament and tone are 
 conservative, is quoted as authority for an estimate of a 
 million and a half tons. Should General Warner's figures 
 be reached even in 1888 the South will still have to make 
 many more such strides before she will produce enough 
 to supply the demands for finished iron and steel which 
 her new activities have created, or her pro rata measured 
 by the extent of her territory or her population. These 
 conclusions will be resisted by the " boomers " of "paper 
 cities " ; but if the figures cannot be successfully assailed 
 the conclusions are inevitable. 
 
 Nor can the time when the South will produce her own 
 supply of crude iron be predicted. The data upon which 
 to base such a prediction has not been created. Nor, it is 
 proper I should remark in passing, does the event depend, 
 as many believe it does, on the extent, quality, and fortu- 
 nate juxtaposition of her mineral deposits, the ability and 
 energy of her people, or the amount of capital, experi- 
 ence, and enterprise the fame of her resources may draw 
 to her. These are essential elements of the problem ; 
 but when profit may, from any cause, cease to follow the 
 application of capital, energy, experience, and science to 
 the development of her material elements, and their con- 
 version into finished commodities, the new-found pros- 
 perity of the South will come to a speedy end. The 
 hope of profit inspires enterprise and impels labor. Even
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 95 
 
 the curse that declares that our bread shall be earned by 
 the sweat of our face carries with it the promise that he 
 who labors shall not want for bread. He, therefore, is a 
 slave or a fool who toils without the hope of profit. The 
 destruction of the opportunity to realize profit from ven- 
 ture or industry puts an end to enterprise and paralyzes 
 the arm of labor. The revenue policy of the govern- 
 ment, which in industrial matters is well-nigh omnipotent, 
 is, therefore, the factor that is to determine whether the 
 new spirit which is animating and enriching the people 
 of the mining and manufacturing States of the South, 
 and enabling them to compete with the most prosperous 
 and long-established of their Northern competitors, is to 
 live and expand till it shall have quickened every South- 
 ern State, and created profitable uses for all their re- 
 sources by organizing remunerative employments for all 
 their people, or is to vanish as a bright but fleeting vision. 
 This is not the speculative conclusion of a mere dia- 
 lectician ; it is the often-repeated lesson of history, which 
 is said to be philosophy teaching by example. It has 
 just been shown by official figures that the infant iron 
 industries of the South produced more crude iron last 
 year than the whole country had been able to average 
 during a decade which embraced the last nine years of 
 our existence under " tariffs for revenue only," and the 
 first year in which the influence of the protective tariff 
 of 1861 was felt. During the last nine years of the domi- 
 nance of Robert J. Walker's " revenue reform " policy, 
 and of a "tariff for revenue only," the average annual 
 production of pig iron was but 798,488 tons, and made 
 no appreciable increase. In 1863, when the inspiring in- 
 fluence of the protective tariff of 1861 began to be felt, 
 it increased to 947,604 tons ; and last year, under the
 
 96 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 benign influence of a quarter of a century of continuous 
 protective duties, the South alone exceeded the great- 
 est productive capacity the nation had ever exhibited 
 under a low tariff, and the country's annual average of 
 less than 800,000 tons prior to 1863 exceeded 6,000,000 
 tons in 1886. 
 
 These marvellous contrasts should be studied by the 
 people of the mineral-bearing States of the South, to 
 whom they appeal with special significance. But they do 
 not constitute the only admonitory and persuasive utter- 
 ances history has addressed to them on this subject. 
 Under " tariffs for revenue only " and such " tariff re- 
 vision " as was effected by Mr. Polk and his Secretary of 
 the Treasury, Robert J. Walker, for the repetition of 
 which so many Southern editors, orators, and statesmen 
 are laboring with persistent energy, the American people 
 found it impossible to establish the manufacture of steel. 
 They proved time and again, and each time at the cost of 
 hundreds of thousands of dollars, that they could make 
 every grade of steel known to commerce. But under a 
 revenue tariff they were not only prevented from selling 
 their steel at a profit, but were reduced to bankruptcy by 
 foreign conspirators, who combined to supply our market 
 with steel below the price at which we could possibly pro- 
 duce it, and often at less than it cost themselves. The 
 destruction of domestic competition was the means by 
 which the conspirators perpetuated their monopoly of our 
 market, and made the American people reimburse the 
 outlay they had made during their struggle for our 
 commercial enslavement. Thus it was that steel always 
 cost our people more under free trade than it does under 
 protection. A protective tariff has not only permitted 
 domestic production, but has promoted domestic compe-
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 97 
 
 tition, and thus reduced the price demanded for steel by 
 the foreigners who so long monopolized our markets, and 
 made us pay them what profit they pleased to demand. 
 But how is it now, after thirty years of steady protection ? 
 History answers this question with point and emphasis. 
 From page 35 of Mr. Swank's report I obtain the figures 
 which tell the story of the annual march of American en- 
 terprise and labor toward the conquest of the American 
 market for steel. Here they are: 
 
 The following table gives in net tons the production in 
 the United States of all kinds of steel from 1868 to 1886: 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Net Tons 
 
 of 2,000 Pounds. 
 
 
 Years. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Bessemer 
 
 Open hearth 
 
 Crucible 
 
 All other 
 
 Total. 
 
 
 steel ingots. 
 
 steel ingots. 
 
 st'l ingots. 
 
 steel. 
 
 1868 . . . 
 
 8,500 
 
 
 
 21, 
 
 500 
 
 30,000 
 
 1869 
 
 
 
 
 12,000 
 
 1,000 
 
 23, 
 
 300 
 
 36,000 
 
 1870 
 
 
 
 
 42,000 
 
 1,500 
 
 35, 
 
 DOO 
 
 78,500 
 
 1871 
 
 
 
 
 45 .000 
 
 2,000 
 
 37, < 
 
 300 
 
 84,000 
 
 1872 
 
 
 
 
 120,108 
 
 3, 000 
 
 29,260 
 
 7.740 
 
 160,108 
 
 1873 
 
 
 
 
 170,652 
 
 3.500 
 
 34,786 
 
 13. 7*4 
 
 222,652 
 
 1874 
 
 
 
 
 ig^o^ 
 
 7,000 
 
 36,328 
 
 6,353 
 
 241,614 
 
 1875 
 
 
 
 
 375.517 
 
 9,050 
 
 39,40i 
 
 12,607 ' 
 
 436,575 
 
 1876 
 
 
 
 
 525.99 
 
 21,490 
 
 39,382 
 
 10,306 
 
 597,174 
 
 1877 
 
 
 
 
 560,587 
 
 25.031 
 
 40,430 
 
 11,924 
 
 637.972 
 
 1878 
 
 
 
 
 732,226 
 
 36,126 
 
 42,906 
 
 8,556 
 
 819,814 
 
 1879 
 
 
 
 
 928,972 
 
 56,290 
 
 56,780 
 
 5,464 
 
 1,047,506 
 
 1880 
 
 
 
 
 1,203,173 
 
 "2,953 
 
 72,424 
 
 8,465 
 
 i,397,oi5 
 
 1881 
 
 
 
 
 1,539.157 
 
 146,946 
 
 89,762 
 
 3,047 
 
 1,778,912 
 
 1882 
 
 
 
 
 1,696,450 
 
 160,542 
 
 85,089 
 
 3,014 
 
 1,945,095 
 
 1883 
 
 
 
 
 1,654,627 
 
 133.679 
 
 8o,455 
 
 5,598 
 
 1,874.359 
 
 1884 
 
 
 
 
 1.540,595 
 
 131,617 
 
 59,662 
 
 5. "I 
 
 1,736,985 
 
 1885 
 
 
 
 
 1,701,762 
 
 i49.38i 
 
 64,511 
 
 1,696 
 
 i,9 [ 7.35o 
 
 1886 
 
 
 
 
 2,541,493 
 
 245,250 
 
 80,609 
 
 2,651 
 
 2,870,003 
 
 Our total production in 1886 was not only the largest 
 in our history, but it was the largest annual production in
 
 98 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 the history of any country. It is one of the most in- 
 structive facts of American history that our magnificent 
 steel industry has been wholly created within the last 
 thirty years. 
 
 It is a noteworthy fact that the period in which these 
 magnificent illustrations of the creative power of pro- 
 tective tariffs have been achieved has been characterized 
 by a continuous decline in the market price of steel in all 
 its various forms. 
 
 In the course of a published interview, Mr. Secretary 
 Lamar recently spoke very sadly of the condition and 
 prospects of the agricultural sections of the South — the 
 cotton fields apart from railroads, mining, and manufac- 
 tures. A wide range of observation enables me to con- 
 firm his statement, that in these parts of the South " im- 
 provements are not kept up, and there is a general air 
 of poverty, want of thrift, and the allowing of things to 
 go to decay." In reply to the question " To what cause 
 do you attribute it?" he said: " I don't know. If I did 
 not know how little influence legislation actually has 
 upon industry, I should say that the tariff was the chief 
 cause." A fairer-minded man than L. Q. C. Lamar one 
 never meets in intelligent controversy, and this remark 
 shows that in the interview in which it occurred he en- 
 tered a domain of science with the elements of which he 
 is evidently profoundly ignorant. Contenting myself 
 for the present by inviting his attention to the illustrative 
 statements touching the production of iron and steel in 
 this country, just presented, I promise to recur to the 
 substance of his statement in my next letter, in which I 
 propose to speak of visits to Cedartown, Rome, Talladega 
 and other towns, in the vicinity of which I saw worn-out 
 and moribund cotton fields which had been bought, with
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 99 
 
 all improvements upon them, at less than $2 per acre, the 
 atmosphere about which was redolent with the fragrance 
 of blossoms and fruit, the presence of which attested the 
 creative power of man when co-operating with nature, in- 
 stead of persistently defying her methods and striving to 
 constrain her to obey his preconceived theories. If, mean- 
 while, my friend Lamar will do me the favor to read Henry 
 C. Carey's volume entitled, "The Slave Trade, Domestic 
 and Foreign," he will, I believe, find himself almost if not 
 altogether persuaded that no other human agency exercises 
 such potent influence upon industry and the rewards of 
 labor as legislation. 
 
 But well-nigh omnipotent as is revenue legislation in 
 preventing or promoting the development of the natural 
 resources of a country, and the productive capacity of its 
 people, it cannot control local and temporary influences. 
 No human agency can regulate the weather or avert the 
 effects of drouth, excessive rain, or unseasonable frosts, or 
 prevent the ravages of entomological pests which, after 
 affecting localities, disappear as mysteriously as they came ; 
 nor can legislation enable man to grow tropical plants in 
 a frigid climate, or to make iron or steel without adequate 
 supplies of ore, fuel, and limestone in reasonable proximity 
 to each other, and to the furnace in which they are to be 
 used. Nor will the utmost abundance and closest juxta- 
 position of ore, fuel, and fluxes in themselves create or 
 sustain a notable iron industry. These vital elements must 
 be supplemented by adequate supplies of human and ani- 
 mal labor, and such agricultural resources as can meet the 
 wants of the iron workers, whether animal or human. 
 Indeed, it is this dependence of manufactures upon neigh- 
 boring farms for green crops, fruit, eggs, poultry, veal, 
 and lamb, which interests farmers in the widest possible
 
 IOO THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 diversification and localization of manufacturing industries 
 as the only sure means of providing cheap wares and fab- 
 rics for themselves and their dependants, and a neighbor- 
 ing market for such of their productions as are perishable, 
 or will not bear distant transportation. I have in mind 
 facts which are within the knowledge of Southern men, 
 and of interest to many of them, which prove that legis- 
 lation may extirpate profitable industries, and others 
 showing that no measure of protection will compensate 
 for want of judgment in locating, or skill and prudence in 
 managing, establishments involving the employment of 
 capital and labor. 
 
 The people of Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee pro- 
 duce not only iron, but, as all the world knows, are large 
 producers and shippers of cotton, and consequently large 
 consumers of iron cotton ties. While Alabama was but a 
 comparatively small producer of iron, she furnished a very 
 appreciable percentage of the total weight of cotton ties 
 consumed in the country, but now, when she stands forth 
 in the list of iron-producing States, she makes no cotton 
 ties. How is this remarkable change to be accounted for? 
 A protective duty had made their manufacture profitable 
 to ex-Governor Rufus W. Cobb and his associates in the 
 cotton-tie mill at Helena, near the Helena coal mine, on 
 the South and North Alabama Railroad. The business 
 was of advantage to the owners of the coal mine, the ore 
 bed, and the railroad company and their numerous labor- 
 ers, as well as to the owners of the cotton-tie mill and 
 their laborers ; and it was abandoned simply because 
 legislation removed the protective duty without which the 
 production of cotton ties in this country involved loss. 
 To have continued to make ties under the reduced duty 
 would have impoverished the owners of the mill, and their
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 101 
 
 production was consequently abandoned. Again, the 
 people of the Southern States purchase annually many 
 thousand tons of barbed and other fence wire, for which 
 American mills, prior to 1883, furnished the iron or steel 
 rods of which this wire was made. Now we make no 
 iron wire rods. The privilege of supplying the South 
 with these rods and with cotton ties would have been a 
 boon to the people of the whole section. But her repre- 
 sentatives in Congress, with almost perfect unanimity, 
 voted to reduce the duty to a figure which denied profit 
 to American manufacturers, and by this legislation almost 
 extirpated the wire-rod industry also. Of the two articles, 
 cotton ties and wire rods, there were imported during the 
 last fiscal year 164,962 tons, at the invoice price of 
 $4,229,209. In view of these instances, it can hardly be 
 denied that legislation may prejudice and destroy the 
 opportunities and rewards of enterprise and labor. 
 
 But, omnipotent as legislation is within the sphere of 
 human practicabilities, it cannot avert the consequences 
 of such blunders as the erection and equipment of costly 
 furnaces in dependence upon impracticable ore beds or 
 where a supply of available fuel and fluxes cannot be ob- 
 tained at all times and at reasonable cost. In these re- 
 spects " boomers " of towns and town lots near which 
 badly located furnaces have been, or " are to be con- 
 structed." have not only illustrated the fact that the pro- 
 tective system cannot save them from the consequences 
 of their folly, but have inflicted incalculable damage upon 
 the iron and real-estate interests of Tennessee, Alabama, 
 and Georgia. Indeed, the business of " booming " town 
 lots, by constructing or promising to construct furnaces 
 near to them, has been carried to dangerous excess. Con- 
 servative trade journals in the South are outspoken in de-
 
 1 62 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 nunciation of this reckless waste of capital ; and it should 
 be borne in mind that such improvident investments are 
 exceptional, and rather characterize the delirium of land 
 speculation, with which many of the people of the three 
 great iron States are afflicted, than prove that the South 
 is likely to suffer permanently from want of excellent fuel 
 for the production of iron and its advancement to cutlery 
 and surgical instruments. 
 
 The pressing need of the iron trade of the South at this 
 time is, however, not the means of increasing her output 
 of crude iron, but an increase of foundries, forges, and 
 factories to consume the increased quantity of iron she 
 will produce from year to year. 
 
 Writing to me at Anniston on the 1st of April, Mr. 
 Swank urged me to press this consideration upon the 
 attention of those of the people to whom I might have 
 access. " If," said he, " you should speak on this subject 
 before returning home, you would do the South a kind- 
 ness by pressing home to it the truth that the more it 
 builds up manufactures to consume pig iron, the more 
 Southern pig iron will be needed. The South should be 
 self-sustaining in meeting its wants for iron of all kinds ; 
 but what do we see ? It sends its pig iron largely to the 
 North to be sold, and buys from the North a large part of 
 its stoves, wagons, plows, shovels, and other agricultural 
 implements, which are wholly or largely composed of iron 
 in advanced forms." 
 
 I cordially endorse these suggestions ; but whether the 
 increased output of iron in the South comes from increase 
 of forges, foundries, or factories, or shall come chiefly 
 from furnaces for export, it will promote the industrial 
 independence of the nation. The politicians delude the 
 planters and farmers by telling them that our tariff is
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. IO3 
 
 prohibitory, and that by securing a monopoly of our 
 market to our own iron workers it enables them to make 
 undue profits, and thereby impoverish their agricultural 
 countrymen. No plausible statement could be wider of 
 the mark than this. The truth is that all England has 
 just been constrained to record the fact that the iron 
 market of free-trade Britain was, during last year, saved 
 from complete paralysis by the demand for her iron and 
 steel from the protected market of the United States ; 
 the truth being that our duties are not only not pro- 
 hibitory, but, in many instances, such as in the cases of 
 cotton ties and wire rods, have not been found heavy 
 enough to protect established concerns in the midst of 
 coal beds, iron mines, and cotton plantations, in the priv- 
 ilege of supplying plantation requirements. The follow- 
 ing table, which was prepared by Mr. Swank from statis- 
 tics furnished by the United States Bureau of Statistics, 
 proves that under our " prohibitory " tariff we imported 
 in 1886 iron and steel, including iron ore, of the invoiced 
 value of $43,543,216. 
 
 Commodities. Net tons. Values. 
 
 Pig iron 405,180 $5,454,784 
 
 Scrap iron 97> 6 35 l ,°5 6 ,3 8 7 
 
 Scrap steel ",353 i45, 6 49 
 
 Bar iron 3 2 > 6 47 I > 2 5 >45 6 
 
 Iron rails 7 166 
 
 Steel rails 46,571 887,267 
 
 Cotton ties .. 11,561 288,360 
 
 Hoop, band, and scroll iron 128 2 ,949 
 
 Steel bands, sheets, and plates 4,7*9 22 4,879 
 
 Steel ingots, bars, etc 167,257 3,298,707 
 
 Sheet, plate, and taggers' iron 6,852 518,417 
 
 Tinplates 288,761 17,504,976
 
 I04 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 Commodities. Net tons. Values. 
 
 wir e rods 153,401 $3,940,849 
 
 Wire and wire rope 2,689 512,389 
 
 Anvils, axles, and forgings 963 105,072 
 
 Chains 669 70,883 
 
 Cutlery 1,822,511 
 
 Files, file-blanks, rasps, and floats 57,478 
 
 Fire-arms 936,554 
 
 Machinery 1,697,883 
 
 Needles 335>5!4 
 
 Other manufactures of iron and steel 1,518,649 
 
 Total $41,630,779 
 
 * Iron ore 1,164,165 $1,912,437 
 
 The effect of these enormous importations upon the 
 British market is not a question upon which American 
 economists need speculate. The prostrate condition of 
 the market, its long-continued depression, and the ruin- 
 ous prices, the lowest that had been recorded " for thirty- 
 four years," that prevailed during 1886, and the source 
 whence relief came, have been stated by those eminent 
 British authorities, the London Iron, the London Statist-, 
 and the London Economist. 
 
 Says the London Iron, when elaborately reviewing the 
 iron trade of last year : 
 
 "The year just closed upon us may be described as one 
 of hope as regards the iron trade of Great Britain. Cer- 
 tainly anticipation of better things, rather than realization, 
 has been the lot of those connected with it. In 1885 it was 
 thought that the worst had been experienced, and that it 
 would be well-nigh impossible to surpass the desperate con- 
 dition of trade prevalent during that year, but 18S6 has 
 proved that to the deepest depths there is a deeper still. In
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 1 05 
 
 only one direction could a ray of light be discerned, and that 
 was the improvement which the exports of iron and steel 
 began to exhibit. In almost all the other leading phases of 
 the trade the condition of things grew blacker and blacker. 
 Prices went from bad to worse, although there had seemed 
 scarcely any margin for further shrinkage. Whether in pig 
 iron, steel rails, merchant or shipbuilding iron, values contin- 
 ued to decline. At the same time, production, in iron at 
 least, fell off largely, but notwithstanding this stocks of pig 
 iron in the two principal centres of production increased rap- 
 idly. Anticipations had been indulged in towards the close 
 of 1885 that the turn of the year would bring improvement, 
 but these were doomed to disappointment. The opening 
 weeks of 1886 were characterized by much dullness, and the 
 long-continued depression only became intensified. Prices 
 of pig iron broke away, that of Scotch, which was 41 s. at the 
 beginning of the year, touching 38s. A^d. about the middle of 
 February, the lowest figure recorded for thirty-four years. In 
 short, if it had not been for the increased quantities of iron 
 and steel taken by the United States last year, the aggregate 
 of the exports from this country, so far from exhibiting any 
 improvement, would have revealed a loss of close upon 150,000 
 tons for the year." 
 
 The London Statist puts the matter thus : 
 
 " With the single exception of the American trade there has 
 so far been no improvement in the demands for English iron. 
 Other countries have taken less than in previous years." 
 
 And the London Economist says : 
 
 " It is pretty well known that the late revival in the English 
 iron trade was largely, if not exclusively, due to an increased 
 demand from the United States, which set in during the latter 
 part of 1886." 
 
 These national and international statistics and con-
 
 106 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 siderations are neither far-fetched nor wide of the mark 
 in a letter on the iron industry of the South, addressed 
 to the country through a Southern industrial and hard- 
 ware newspaper, as the Manufacttirers Record is. It can 
 certainly do no harm to the Southern people to tell 
 them that last year we imported more than $43,000,000 
 worth of iron, which she could have produced had her 
 material resources been thoroughly developed, and her 
 laboring people been trained in manual dexterity and 
 industrial art. But, if this sweeping proposition be 
 doubted, the most dismal pessimist will not deny that 
 the South may produce her own tools and builders' hard- 
 ware and railway supplies, including rails of iron or steel. 
 Yet in all these respects she is lamentably deficient, as a 
 single illustration will prove : 
 
 "Since 1880 14,336 miles have been added to the railroad 
 mileage of the South. The Southern States east of the Mis- 
 sissippi have only a mile of railroad to 23 square miles of 
 territory, while the Northern States east of that river have a 
 mile of road to each seven miles of area ; to equal that pro- 
 portion the South must build 54,000 miles of new road." 
 
 " But," says my pessimistic friend, "your assertion that 
 the South can ever make her own steel rails from native 
 ores is mere swagger. The assertion that she can do so is 
 denied by many and credited by but few experienced 
 metallurgists." " Nor," adds he, " is her supply of mineral 
 fuel believed to be adequate in quantity or quality to 
 create and maintain a great iron and steel industry." 
 Happily for the country, the gloomy forebodings of my 
 interlocutor are the result of his dyspeptic condition, and 
 not of an investigation of the mineral resources of the 
 South. In my letter of the 15th of last December, I
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW, lOf 
 
 alluded somewhat elaborately to the South Tredegar 
 Bessemer Nail Works, of Chattanooga, and said " it is re- 
 markable for the perfection of the nails it produces." The 
 pig iron it converts is made from the Cranberry ore of 
 North Carolina ; the fuel used is coke made from Ten- 
 nessee coal; and its laborers are, and I made special note 
 of the fact, young negroes who had had no previous 
 mechanical training. The capacity of every department 
 of these works has just been doubled. And since the 7th 
 of May, on which date the Roane Iron Company, of 
 Chattanooga, completed its Bessemer plant and nail mill, 
 that company has drawn from North Carolina and Ten- 
 nessee the ore, fluxes, and fuel from which it has daily 
 made 250 tons of first-class Bessemer rails. Through the 
 courtesy of Mr. Swank I am able to present an authentic 
 statement of the progress of these works, from a recent 
 letter of the accomplished and energetic president of the 
 company, Capt. H. S. Chamberlain, who says: 
 
 " The Roane Iron Company built two 8-ton open hearth 
 furnaces in 1878, and in December, 1878, we made our first 
 steel rails. No Bessemer ores had at that time been developed 
 in the South, and pig iron and crop ends were brought 
 principally from England, although small quantities of pig 
 iron and rail ends were purchased from time to time in the 
 East. These furnaces continued making steel for rails until 
 January, 1883, when, on account of the depression in the 
 steel-rail trade, they were closed down, and have not since 
 been operated. The development of the Cranberry ores in 
 North Carolina giving us a cheap Bessemer ore of the highest 
 quality (phosphorus being only from 0.009 to °- OI 3 P er 
 cent.) led our company to begin the construction of a Besse- 
 mer plant in the fall of 1886. The plant as finished consists 
 of one 5-ton converter, but every thing has been built with a
 
 108 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 view to erecting a second vessel should it be deemed advisable. 
 On May 7th, at 5.37 p.m., the vessel was turned up with a 
 charge of 7,800 pounds of metal, and at 5.57 the first steel 
 was poured. Three ingots were made, which were rolled into 
 ten 56-pound rails of full length and superior quality. The 
 iron used was made at our furnaces at Rockwood, Term., 
 from Cranberry ore." 
 
 But the Cranberry mines are not the only local source 
 of supply on which Southern steel makers must depend. 
 It is, I believe, not doubted that large deposits of man- 
 ganese and magnetic ores have been found near Carters- 
 ville, Ga. 
 
 A recent incident in the story of Anniston has its place 
 in this discussion. As long as they controlled the Wood- 
 stock and Clifton companies, and confined their operations 
 to the production of charcoal iron, the question of mineral 
 fuel was one of minor importance to Messrs. Noble & 
 Tyler. But when they entertained the proposal to capital- 
 ize the Anniston City and Woodstock properties, and de- 
 termined to open their accumulated resources to the 
 enterprise of the country, the question of an exhaustless 
 supply of coking coal assumed importance. They already 
 owned many thousand acres of coal, the coking qualities 
 of which had not been proven, and the quantity of which, 
 though large, was not equal to the probable demands of 
 Anniston's future shops. In accordance with their policy 
 of anticipating possible necessities, they employed experts 
 to examine the coal fields within available distance. 
 Specimens of coal from all these fields were collected, and 
 contemporaneously with the announcement that prelimi- 
 nary work had been commenced on the two great coke 
 furnaces of the newly organized Woodstock Company, the 
 fact was made public that Messrs. Noble & Tyler had
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. IO9 
 
 invested $550,000 in the purchase, for the exclusive use 
 of the people of Anniston, of the property of the Cahaba 
 Coal Company, and proposed to nearly double the invest- 
 ment in the work of sinking slopes and shafts sufficient to 
 increase the output from 15,000 tons per month to 60,000 
 tons, and the immediate construction of 500 coke ovens. 
 That those who are skilled in such matters may form an 
 opinion of the quality of this Alabama coal, I submit two 
 analyses of it, which I obtained when in Anniston in 
 April. They represent a car load which had been coked 
 for 50 hours in the Woodstock ovens, and are as follows : 
 
 No. 1. No. 2. 
 
 Volatile hydro-earbons 4-5°8 4-3 2 4 
 
 Fixed carbon 87.607 86.923 
 
 Sulphur Q-745 °-^73 
 
 Ash 7. 140 8.080 
 
 But if for the present there should seem to be in this 
 section of our country, so affluent in diverse mineral re- 
 sources, a lack of certain qualities of ore or fuel, it would 
 prove nothing. The country has not been scientifically 
 explored. Indeed, a good geological reconnoissance of 
 Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee has not been made. 
 Nor will the iron-producing South depend exclusively 
 upon these States, or those contiguous to them, for her 
 future supply of ores and fuel. 
 
 The construction of the first Pacific railroad and of the 
 Suez Canal revolutionized the commercial geography of 
 the world, and the completion of the roads now in process 
 of construction, by which the iron mines and coal measures 
 of Colorado are to be connected with Galveston, will 
 modify essentially the commercial relations of the Gulf 
 States. Galveston will then be as near to Denver and
 
 IIO THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 Pueblo as New York is to Chicago. The magnificent 
 Bessemer rail-mill, nail-works, etc., of the Colorado Coal 
 and Iron Company, at Pueblo, depend on local ores, coal, 
 and coke, the exhaustless stores of which they can share 
 with the people of the Appalachian hills. As remarkable 
 an increase of possibilities is also imminent in another 
 direction. The statesmen of Arkansas have not yet per- 
 mitted themselves to be persuaded that any political or 
 economic progress has been made since 1798, and one of 
 them, Mr. J. Poindexter Dunn, during the last session of 
 Congress, closed a philippic against the developing influ- 
 ence of the protective system with an elaborate, eloquent, 
 and original peroration, with the identical thoughts, illus- 
 trations of fact, and felicitous choice of words that had 
 been used in defence of free trade by Mr. Poulett Thom- 
 son, an English statesman, more than 57 years before. 
 But the world moves, and the spirit of the New South 
 will some day penetrate Arkansas and possess her people; 
 for a slight extension to the west of the Memphis and 
 Charleston road, which must soon be made, will open to 
 the furnaces of Nashville, Chattanooga, Birmingham, 
 Anniston, and South Pittsburg inexhaustible supplies of 
 magnetic ore as rich in Bessemer-steel-producing qualities 
 as that of the mines of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minne- 
 sota, from which Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, 
 and West Virginia now draw part of their ores. In view 
 of these facts, may I not answer the questions : Can the 
 South ever make steel, and where can she obtain a supply 
 of fuel ? by denouncing them as the vaporing of inanity. 
 
 But in my judgment the future of the South depends 
 largely upon a higher question than that of material sup- 
 plies. A trained and courageous or ambitious man is 
 largely the master of his environments. The South is
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AN J) THE NEW. Ill 
 
 blessed with an abundant supply of hardy, docile, and 
 faithful laborers, many of whom, as recent educational 
 efforts have shown, are endowed with more than average 
 intellectual gifts. It cannot, however, be said that they 
 are generally educated, or that any of them have the 
 trained hands and eyes which are as essential to the 
 skilled artisan as they are to the artist. The pre-eminent 
 want of the industrial South is the training of the hands 
 and eyes of its laborers to co-operative action, which is 
 often successfully imparted in infancy in the kindergarten, 
 and their training to familiarity with mechanical imple- 
 ments and their uses, and in industrial art, as is done at 
 the Cooper Institute, New York ; the Spring Garden Insti- 
 tute, Girard College, and the Industrial Art School, Phil- 
 adelphia ; in the Manual Training schools of Chicago and 
 St. Louis ; and in hundreds of institutions throughout 
 New England and the manufacturing towns of the West. 
 It is fortunate for the South that the expertness and pro- 
 ductive power of labor do not depend on the race, color, 
 or previous condition of servitude of the laborer or artisan.
 
 LETTER VI. 
 
 COTTON-GROWING AND AGRICULTURE CONTRASTED. 
 
 The Elms, Philadelphia, August i, 1887. 
 
 In all ages and countries nations whose people have 
 devoted themselves exclusively to agriculture have been 
 liable to the horrors of famine. This proposition is one 
 of universal application, and is as demonstrably true of 
 our country, in the closing years of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, as it was of Egypt in the days of the Pharaohs. 
 
 Among the brave and determined leaders whom Grant 
 paroled at Appomattox was Gen. Wm. T. WofTord, of 
 Georgia. His home was at Cartersville, in the fertile and 
 everywhere beautiful valley of the Etowah, to which, 
 when the terms of his parole relieved him from duty on 
 the staff of Gen. Lee, he immediately returned. The 
 valley, robed as it was in the bloom of spring, seemed to 
 him more beautiful than ever ; but it was with the charm 
 of outline and of verdure mingled with Flora's daintiest 
 and most brilliant coloring, and not the beauty which 
 springs from the promise of future plenty and comfort. 
 Broad acres that would reward labor an hundred-fold, the 
 conditions of nature which promote abundant crops, and 
 thousands of willing laborers were there, but the conjunc- 
 tion of happy circumstances was not complete ; indeed it 
 was fatally defective, for, though the season for planting 
 had come, seeds from which food might be grown were 
 wanting, and their fields were the people's only resource.
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. I 1 3 
 
 A day at home served to show the great-hearted and 
 keen-eyed soldier the path of duty ; it was to hasten to 
 the country's capital, and, with the courage of one who 
 had never faltered on the field, present to the representa- 
 tives of the people, who had approved the terms of parole 
 which left him in possession of his horse and sword, the 
 necessitous condition of the millions whom they had been 
 unable to subdue until their last resources had been 
 exhausted. 
 
 As soon as he had adopted this resolution, Gen. Wof- 
 ford hastened to Washington, where it was my privilege 
 to meet him immediately after his arrival, and to co- 
 operate with him in the noble work to which he had 
 devoted himself. Happily my annual quota of seeds had 
 not yet been drawn upon, and to order it from the Agri- 
 cultural Department to my rooms and invite the General 
 to avail himself of the premises for his workshop or 
 head-quarters was the work of but a moment. During the 
 next day a paper assigning the quota of seeds belonging 
 to the signers was circulated among members, and before 
 the adjournment of the House the vegetable seeds to 
 which many Northern constituencies were entitled had 
 been transferred to the order of Gen. Wofford, who 
 undertook to broaden his distribution beyond the range 
 of his military connections and personal sympathies. 
 
 Upon the suggestion of friends he also saw the Presi- 
 dent, the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Interior, 
 and the Commissioner of Agriculture. His presentation 
 of the condition of the people whom he had assumed to 
 represent, made it apparent that the necessity for immedi- 
 ate relief was too urgent and general to be met by indi- 
 vidual action. 
 
 Accounts forwarded to the War Department by district
 
 114 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 commanders confirmed Gen. Wofford's most deplorable 
 statements, and invited the immediate action of Congress 
 in behalf of our suffering countrymen. Unwarranted re- 
 sponsibilities were cheerfully assumed by the chiefs of 
 the War and Interior Departments and the Commissioner 
 of Agriculture while appropriate legislation could be 
 matured. Among the agencies for systematic relief that 
 were provided by Congress was the Bureau of Refugees 
 and Freedmen, the law establishing which ignored distinc- 
 tions of race or color, and provided for the distribution 
 among the necessitous not only of seeds-, but of the means 
 of current subsistence. 
 
 My intercourse with Gen. Wofford during the weeks he 
 remained in Washington was as frank and cordial as 
 mutual respect and common endeavor in a cause in which 
 both were heartily interested could make it. I was con- 
 scious of a keen desire for information as to the industrial 
 condition of the South, and especially as to its agriculture ; 
 and well do I remember the surprise with which I learned 
 that its farmers never availed themselves of the invigor- 
 ating and otherwise profitable practice of rotating crops, 
 but devoted themselves to cotton-growing, and resorted 
 to the use of imported or chemically manufactured fer- 
 tilizers when able to pay for them. It was while por- 
 traying the fatal influence of the one-crop system that I 
 alluded to the great value of clover in promoting a supply 
 of barn-yard manure, and in the elements which the plant 
 itself imparts to the soil when, after having yielded crops 
 of hay, it is ploughed under. The response to these sug- 
 gestions was that clover had not been believed to be 
 among the possible crops of Georgia. I recur at this 
 time to the conversation of that evening, because of the 
 intense surprise with which I listened to Gen. Wofford's
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 11$ 
 
 statement, and because he then expressed the hope that 
 the discovery of a small bag of clover seed among the 
 effects of a fugitive from Northeastern Virginia might 
 lead to the general cultivation in his part of the State of 
 that beneficent grass, though the belief that it could not 
 be grown in Georgia had been universal. 
 
 Under the influence of a series of experimental plant- 
 ings by the Virginia farmer of seed from his accidental 
 sack this false belief was, the General said, yielding to the 
 power of demonstration, as every such planting was fol- 
 lowed by an abundant crop. Though I had heard much 
 of the artless and exhausting culture of the cotton lands 
 of the Gulf States and of the lowlands generally of the 
 South, I would not have believed, on testimony that could 
 be questioned, that the same fatal improvidence had char- 
 acterized the recent methods of the farmers of the once 
 famous wheat-growing valleys of Upper Georgia. I could 
 not, however, question the statements of my informant; 
 and rapidly accumulating evidence forced upon me the 
 conviction that, though the people of the South were so 
 devoted to planting interests as to be unwilling to permit 
 the establishment among them of work-shops, foundries,, 
 mining camps, furnaces, forges, factories, and the commer- 
 cial, professional, and social accessories of such establish- 
 ments, they were in no just sense of the word agriculturists, 
 and each day furnished abounding proof that they knew 
 nothing of " the art or science of cultivating the earth " ; 
 that they were not cultivators of the fields, and did not 
 practise " husbandry with frugality and thrift." They 
 grew cotton in some sections, sugar in others, tobacco, 
 rice, and hemp each in other sections, but they did not 
 raise their own household supplies, or make and gather 
 domestic fertilizers with which to invigorate their fam- 
 ished fields.
 
 Il6 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 Since the war cotton seed has by various processes of 
 manufacture become almost as profitable as the crop of 
 lint, one of its products being an absolute refutation of 
 the theory that successful cotton-growing must impoverish 
 the soil. I allude to cotton-seed cake, the residuum from 
 which the oil has been pressed, which is a nutritious food 
 for cattle and horses, and an element of inestimable value 
 in barn-yard manure. But in the days of which I write 
 the cotton seed not required for planting was loosely 
 scattered over the fields as a cheap fertilizer. In no part 
 of the cotton-growing South in which I have travelled 
 have I been able to discover evidence that fields from 
 which crops were expected had received from their hus- 
 bandmen the sustenance and care that a wife might ex- 
 pect from even a shiftless husband, or the provident care 
 that the law exacts from a ship's husband. Some of the 
 impressions made upon me on this point by the terrible 
 effects of the destructive methods of the so-called agricul- 
 turists of the South during my trip in the spring of 1867, 
 just twenty years before my recent visit, were recorded 
 by a reporter of the Philadelphia Inquirer, and may be 
 found in a volume published by Henry Carey Baird in 
 1872.' 
 
 On that trip I left Cincinnati en route to New Orleans, 
 crossed parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, and 
 Louisiana, and returned by way of Alabama, Georgia, 
 South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia. On the 
 evening following my return thousands of my fellow-citi- 
 zens came to my house with music and banners to con- 
 gratulate me on my safe return, and, as indicating the 
 controlling impressions made upon me, I present the 
 
 1 "Speeches, Addresses, and Letters on Industrial and Financial Ques- 
 tions," by William D. Kelley, pp. 175-8.
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. lly 
 
 following extracts from the impromptu remarks addressed 
 to them as I found them reported in the Inquirer : 
 
 " I saw during my trip a country upon which the Almighty 
 has with most lavish hand bestowed His richest material gifts. 
 It is gorged with every mineral. I have scarcely been in a State 
 that does not abound in coal, iron, copper, and lead, and have 
 travelled over a region of country richly underlaid with gold- 
 bearing quartz. Let me speak specially of North Carolina, 
 because, as is equally true of Virginia, poverty has driven 
 hundreds of thousands of her native citizens into exile. My 
 friends, North Carolina is the most beautiful and richest por- 
 tion of God's earth upon which my vision or feet have ever rested. 
 You know that she produces cotton, rice, indigo, tar, pitch, tur- 
 pentine, and superior timber. You know that her soil and cli- 
 mate are adapted to the cereals, wheat, corn, rye, buckwheat, 
 and oats, but you probably do not know that that State, long 
 known as the Rip Van Winkle of the Union, from which more 
 than fifty thousand free white people have fled to the two 
 States of Indiana and Illinois, is the land of wine and honey, 
 the apple and peach, the fig and pomegranate, all of which I 
 saw prospering in open field and under the most artless cul- 
 ture. Its native vines made the fortune of Longworth, who 
 carried cuttings thence. The wine-producing vineyards of 
 Western Pennsylvania, and around the borders and on the 
 islands of Lake Erie, and those scattered through Missouri, 
 are from cuttings taken from the native vines of North Carolina 
 — the Catawba, the Lincoln, the Isabella, and, richer than all, 
 the Scuppernong, of which, as it has not yet been successfully 
 transplanted, Eastern North Carolina has the monopoly. 
 There it grows spontaneously as a weed. 
 
 " The woods and hill-sides teem with the richest honey- 
 bearing flowers, and the bees invite you to put up a rude box, 
 that they may reward your kindness with the sweetest treasure. 
 There is not a vegetable we produce that will not thrive in
 
 Il8 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 North Carolina ; and as I travelled through this native wealth 
 and beauty I saw how sin had driven man out of Paradise, for 
 never had I seen such poverty as I found in North Carolina, 
 save in South Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi, where people 
 are starving in the midst of nature's richest bounties. 
 
 " You cannot comprehend and credit this statement. I tell 
 you it is true. I could not credit it myself. It was long 
 before observation enabled me fully to comprehend it. Go 
 with me to Mississippi. I will take you to Hernando. Once 
 Hernando was an important railroad town and station. There 
 are scattered around it a few large old mansions, abandoned 
 and going to ruin. It was once the centre of a great cotton- 
 growing region, but now, as far as the eye could range from 
 the platform of the car, we saw nothing but sedge grass, a 
 surface weed, or the red subsoil washed and cut by countless 
 gullies, till under the bright sun it looked like myriad flames 
 of red fire blazing up from the earth. 
 
 " The owners of that once rich land had planted it each 
 successive year with cotton, till they extracted from it every 
 agricultural element, and those fibrous roots with which nature 
 mats the soil and protects it from washing. In response to a 
 question as to the extent of the desolation we beheld, a fellow- 
 traveller, a Mississippian, said : ' It is pretty wide. There is 
 not a plantation within miles of the station on which a family 
 could make a living ' ; and he added, ' the soil was always 
 light, and when the rain began to wash it, it made quick work 
 of it.' Skillful culture would not only have saved that wide 
 region from desolation, but added to its wealth-producing 
 power. 
 
 " What would we in Pennsylvania, with our manifold diversi- 
 fication of pursuits, think if the owner of a farm of one hun- 
 dred acres should apply to the government for rations to 
 support his family ? Yet it is not a novel or unnatural sight at 
 the South. Lieutenant-Colonel J. R. Edie, of the 8th Infantry- 
 is Post Commandant at Salisbury, N. C, and administers the
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. U9 
 
 affairs of the Bureau of Refugees and Freedmen within his 
 command. I recognized in him not only a gallant son of 
 Pennsylvania, but an old personal friend. It happened to be 
 ration day, which occurs, I believe, once a fortnight, and with 
 my companions I gladly accepted his invitation to his office, 
 that we might observe the character and necessities of the 
 applicants. They must have numbered hundreds, a large pre- 
 ponderance of whom were whites. Many of them had walked 
 more than fifteen miles to procure a little corn and bacon. 
 
 " As one lean, pale woman advanced and gave her name, the 
 Colonel said : ' You have been here before, and I think you 
 own land.' 'Yes, sir,' said she, 'I own a little.' 'How 
 much ? ' asked he. ' About a hundred acres.' ' How much 
 of it is cleared ? ' ' The butt end of it.' ' Well, then, why 
 did you not plant it ? ' ' All that is cleared is planted.' 
 ' What, then, brings you for rations ? ' ' Want, Colonel ; I 
 must have something for the children to eat till the corn ripens. 
 I can't make it ripen till the season comes.' (A voice — 
 ' They are too lazy to work.') No, my friend, they are not 
 too lazy to work. They are willing to work. ■ They need 
 guidance and instruction. I told them in my public addresses 
 that in their primitive way they work harder than we. (' They 
 are too lazy to work.') No, my friend, I understand them 
 better than you. You would deem it hard work to walk fifteen 
 or twenty miles for a few pecks of corn and pounds of bacon, 
 and carry them on your shoulder to your distant home. 
 
 " The woman of whom I was speaking was not probably a 
 lazy woman. She knew nothing of our agricultural implements 
 or methods, but was doubtless regarded by her neighbors as an 
 adept in Southern agriculture. Like her neighbors, whose 
 lands would not produce cotton, or who did not own laborers 
 to cultivate and pick it, she had planted her exhausted acres 
 with corn, and when that single crop failed the country was 
 famine-stricken, as Ireland was when rot assailed the potato. 
 Yet we had eaten, the day before, at Concord, but thirty miles
 
 120 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 distant, at the hospitable table of Mr. McDonald, an old Penn- 
 sylvanian, but long a citizen of North Carolina, a variety of 
 delicious vegetables, among which were potatoes as mealy as 
 can be grown on our virgin hill-sides. 
 
 " The people of whom I speak had been taught to believe that 
 cotton was the one thing to the production of which the South 
 should devote herself, and that corn as food for ' mules and 
 niggers ' might, with propriety, be raised when cotton could 
 not. A former Southern leader said to me : ' We bought nig- 
 gers and mules to raise cotton, and raised cotton to buy nig- 
 gers and mules,' and I good-humoredly replied : ' Yes, and your 
 continuous culture of cotton having eaten up your land, your 
 negroes and mules were about to eat you when you began the 
 war.' Thus it came that destitution and despair brood over 
 the sunny South, while its unequalled water-power runs to 
 waste, and its widely diffused and inexhaustible mines of gold, 
 silver, copper, lead, iron, etc., and coal to work them, lie un- 
 disturbed where nature deposited them. There are in North 
 Carolina, as the census shows, 47,000 white adults who cannot 
 read, and in Virginia 74,000." 
 
 But it may be asked, why recur to these painful memo- 
 ries of twenty years ago ? and suggested that they do 
 not tell the story of the Old South and her methods, but 
 portray the horrible results of years of fratricidal war. 
 Such question or suggestion would involve a vital miscon- 
 ception of the facts. The poverty that made such drafts 
 on my sympathies was not of recent origin ; it had existed 
 before the war, and was an inevitable consequence of 
 methods of farming which could not fail to impoverish 
 the people, as they involved a systematic and persistent 
 exhaustion of the lands from which alone they could draw 
 supplies. That the absence of agricultural implements 
 and the prevalence of exhaustive methods of raising crops
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 121 
 
 were the causes to which I then ascribed the wretchedness 
 of the Southern farmers, is shown by the following passage 
 from the address above referred to. 
 
 " What are required to regenerate the South are subsoil 
 ploughs, phosphates, agricultural implements generally, a large 
 increase of horses, mules, and horned cattle, a steadily increas- 
 ing supply of steam-engines and machinery, and such manu- 
 facturing machinery as can be moved by water-power. These, 
 with a comparatively small amount of cash capital and a few 
 earnest men to teach others their use and value, would in a few 
 years make the South bloom like a garden, and develop a popu- 
 lation as loyal as was that of any Northern State during the 
 war. - The interests of Northern capitalists require them to 
 supply these potent agents at the earliest practicable day. " ' 
 
 But apart from the New South, by which I mean the 
 country around the region of the rapidly developing iron 
 industries, and of such manufacturing towns as Augusta 
 and Macon, and the commercial centres created by the 
 expansion of the Southern railroad systems, the same 
 wretched poverty prevails among the Southern people 
 now, twenty-two years after the close of the war, and in 
 spite of the efforts then made by the government and the 
 people of the North to mitigate the woes they were en- 
 during, whether they had been caused by the war, or 
 were, as I assert, the result of fatally vicious economic 
 and agricultural theories. Yes the poverty and ignorance 
 that characterized the " poor whites," " the low downs," 
 " the clay eaters," and " the crackers " of the old South 
 still prevail over vast stretches of the best agricultural and 
 the richest mineral States of the marvellously endowed 
 South. Though prepared to adduce volumes of pregnant 
 
 1 Idem, page 182.
 
 122 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 proof of the truth of this statement, I decline responsi- 
 bility for it, as I make it here under the sanction of the 
 name of my friend, Hon. L. Q. C. Lamar, the present 
 Secretary of the Interior. Mr. Lamar recently favored a 
 reporter of the Hartford Times with an interview on the 
 industrial condition of the South, which was published 
 with his consent. The statements of Mr. Lamar on 
 the points I am considering are so accordant with my own 
 observations, and so illustrative of the soundness of my 
 politico-economic theories, that I give a portion of the 
 interview verbatim as I found it in the paper referred to : 
 
 "The apparent prosperity of the South," said Secretary 
 Lamar, " is to be found only in the cities, and not all of them 
 share it. Atlanta, Chattanooga, Nashville, Knoxville, Bir- 
 mingham, and other cities that are the centres of mineral de- 
 velopment already made or anticipated are growing rapidly in 
 population and apparently in wealth. Towns, also, that are 
 situated upon the new railroads that have been built during 
 the past few years are larger and more thriving than they were, 
 but their growth has been largely at the expense of less fortu- 
 nate towns that have either stood still or have actually deteri- 
 orated. This circumstance, I think, is likely to give an 
 erroneous impression to the stranger passing through the 
 South on the railways. He sees the towns at the various sta- 
 tions apparently thriving, the centres of new commercial 
 enterprises, and he naturally concludes that the South is 
 making very rapid progress ; but he does n't know that the 
 man who has opened a new store at one of these places has 
 probably removed there from some town distant from the rail- 
 road where he closed up his former business, or the man who 
 is building a new house is possibly a farmer who has become 
 discouraged in the vain effort to make a living planting cotton, 
 and has sold out and come to town hoping to do better, or,
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 1 23 
 
 perhaps,, to have better opportunities for the education of his 
 children. 
 
 " I am inclined to think, also, that the present prosperity of 
 the cities which are the centres of industry in the mineral 
 region, or whose growth has been stimulated by their proximity 
 to or interest in it, is, to a great extent, speculative, based in 
 some measure, at least, upon anticipated developments rather 
 than upon those already made. Of course, I know that a 
 good deal of capilal has been invested there, and that much of 
 it has gone from the North, and that many Northern people 
 are settling there, and I don't wish to be»understood as doubt- 
 ing the future prosperity of the region. I only say that the 
 returns have not yet been realized. I ought to say that I have 
 very little personal knowledge of the affairs of those sections 
 of the South of which I have been speaking. The ' boom ' 
 has come since I have been there to remain long at a time, and 
 my opinions are formed from what I have read in the newspa- 
 pers and heard from persons who have been there. I think 
 you will find, too, that such cities as Charleston, Savannah, 
 Mobile, and New Orleans are now showing evidences of pros- 
 perity. Let us see," said he, taking down a compendium of 
 the last census, " how much these cities increased in population 
 between 1870 and 1S80. Charleston gained in population in that 
 decade 1,028, or at the rate of about \\ per cent. ; Savannah, 
 gained 1,474, or ahout 5! per cent. ; Mobile actually lost 2,902 
 in population, and New Orleans gained 24,672, or about 13 per 
 cent. If you remember that the average increase of popula- 
 tion throughout the whole country during the same ten years 
 averaged 30 per cent., you will see that there is nothing en- 
 couraging in these reports." 
 
 " How do you account for the apparent stagnation in what were 
 formerly the great commercial centres of the South ? " I asked. 
 
 " By the depression of the planting interest, of which I have 
 already spoken," was the reply. " They are dependent upon 
 the agriculture of the country for their trade."
 
 124 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 " Have n't the crops been good ? " 
 
 " Yes ; that of last year was the largest ever made, with one 
 or two exceptions. But the crop to-day is not proportionally 
 as great as it was before the war. It must be remembered that 
 the population of the South increased nearly 50 per cent, be- 
 tween i860 and 1880. As agriculture is almost our only in- 
 dustry, and as cotton is our principal product, if we only held 
 our own we ought in 1880 to have marketed 50 per cent, more 
 cotton than we did before the war. But the truth is that the 
 large crop of last year was only 25 per cent, greater than that 
 of i860. In other words, our population increased during that 
 twenty years just twice as fast as our ability to feed and clothe 
 it. You would n't look for prosperity under such circum- 
 stances, and you will not think it strange that the cities which 
 are dependent upon agriculture for their trade should lan- 
 guish." 
 
 "I have not been South in several years," I said ; "are 
 there outward signs in the country of this depression of which 
 you speak ? " 
 
 " Yes, especially when one goes away from the railroads. 
 Improvements are not kept up, and there is a general air of 
 poverty, want of thrift, and the allowing of things to go to 
 decay." 
 
 " To what cause do you attribute it ? " 
 
 " I don't know. Probably it is due to a variety of causes. 
 If I did not know how little influence legislation actually has 
 upon industry I should say that the tariff was the chief cause ; 
 but I don't know that it is." 
 
 " The price of cotton averaged very low last year," I said ; 
 " has that had any thing to do with it ? " 
 
 " Of course that cut down the income from the crop of last 
 year ; but the depression I speak of did not begin recently, 
 and the price of cotton has been good as a rule. 
 
 " One cause is probably the wearing out of our lands. You 
 know that all agricultural lands produce less and less except
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 125 
 
 they are constantly renewed by fertilizers, and our people are 
 too poor to buy those. The increased aggregate crop is due 
 to increased acreage, but we have not been able to increase the 
 former in the same proportion that we have increased the lat- 
 ter and the amount of labor expended. We work over more 
 ground and more hands are employed, but it costs more to 
 make a b,ale of cotton now than it formerly did. 
 
 " Another reason, I think, why we do not raise as much 
 cotton to an acre as we formerly did, is that we don't get what 
 we call as good a ' stand ' as we used to. The importance of 
 this is not likely to be appreciated by one who has never lived 
 where cotton is raised. If there are many long, vacant spaces 
 in the rows of cotton plants, they may grow very thrifty, and 
 the field, as one looks over it, may appear to bear a great crop, 
 and yet, when the cotton comes to be picked, it will turn out 
 light. Now, in order to secure a good 'stand,' that is, to have 
 the ground all occupied, the closest care and attention are 
 necessary at a certain critical period. In former times, when 
 the planter had complete control of the labor, he could enforce 
 this care and attention as he cannot do now. The cotton lands 
 of the South are now mostly rented to the negroes, and if the 
 owner retains an interest in the crop, he has no voice in the 
 manner in which it shall be worked. If he should interfere, 
 the negroes would resent it and leave. There is a great deal 
 of careless farming in the South." 
 
 On the receipt of this remarkable deliverance, which 
 is fraught with facts corroborative of my own economic 
 views, and of protectionist doctrine as expounded by 
 Henry Clay, Frederick List, Stephen Colwell, Henry C. 
 Carey, Wm. Elder, John L. Hayes, James M. Swank, and 
 most French and German economists, I mailed it to a 
 correspondent whom I have for years regarded as more 
 precisely familiar with the details and scope of Southern 
 production and trade than any man in that section of
 
 126 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 whom I have knowledge. I submit the following from 
 my friend's reply, which was dated July 16th : 
 
 " I wish to say a word relative to the increase of cotton cul- 
 tivation as a measure of prosperity suggested by the statement 
 in Secretary Lamar's interview, that the population of the 
 cotton States had increased 50 per cent, between i860 and 
 1880, and that cotton had only increased 25 per cent.* 
 
 " The statement that such increase as 25 per cent, occurred 
 between 1859 and 1S79 is substantially correct, though the crop 
 of i860 was large compared with preceding crops. It is also 
 true that in the past seven years the increase has been 14 per 
 cent., but it does not follow that the crop should increase with 
 the population. It is the consumption of the world, and not 
 the increase of population in the Southern States, that dictates 
 the size of the cotton crop. And here is cause for serious 
 reflection, for the population of the South has already ad- 
 vanced far beyond the ability of the cotton industry to sup- 
 port it. Not counting Virginia, ten cotton States contain 
 a population of 11,477,681. The value of the cotton crop 
 marketed in 1880, 2,771,797,156 pounds, at 11.5 cents per 
 pound, was $318,756,673, or $27.77 f° r each individual of the 
 population. 
 
 '"As agriculture is almost our only industry, and as cotton 
 is our principal product,' and as the value of this production 
 in 1S80 was only $27.77 per head, it follows that consumption 
 cannot be very lavish or accumulation very rapid upon an 
 average allowance of about $139 per family. This presents in 
 a nutshell the question of agricultural prosperity in the South. 
 There is nothing mysterious in it ; there is no oppression in 
 it ; the only trouble is, there is not money enough in it. There 
 must be more work and more production to make more money 
 — production in diversified agriculture, in mining, and manu- 
 facturing. 
 
 " The prevalent ' depression,' ' which did not begin re- 
 cently,' the wearing out of arable lands, the lack of money to
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. \2~j 
 
 buy fertilizers, the general ' want of capital,' are all results of 
 one cause — the enforced idleness of large numbers of people, 
 white and black ; enforced by limitations of custom, the dis- 
 abilities of primitive industrial training, the inability to strike 
 out on untried lines of effort. 'No capital' is the great 
 stumbling-block, but money will be abundant anywhere 
 with persistent labor behind it. The South is languishing 
 under bondage to an industrial fallacy, the munificence and 
 sufficiency of cotton as the sole source of rural prosperity, 
 and would grow poorer and poorer by longer submitting to 
 such vassalage. 
 
 "As a matter of fact, however, the cotton States have al- 
 readv more wealth than at any former period ; more results 
 of 'dried labor,' more factories and workshops, more rail- 
 roads and public improvements, better houses and more fur- 
 niture, as a result of the local efforts for diversification ; it 
 has less debt for advances on crops, fewer mortgages on farm 
 property, and less dependence on the West for corn and ba- 
 con, and on the East for cotton goods. At the same time, it 
 has more incorporated capital and more available money for 
 investment. The feeling of depression is a reaction from the 
 unrest of the industrial awakening, and while it is real enough, 
 it is slowly disappearing. 
 
 " The South has marvellous advantages, and persistent and 
 plucky men for leaders in the industrial movement, and can get 
 special skill and money from outside, and rapidly develop skill 
 in the body of its native labor. It has been too deep in the 
 cotton rut to get easily out of it to make a beginning, but once 
 fairly out, industrial development can only be delayed by 
 extraneous and unnecessary causes." 
 
 In 1 884 there came from the press of the American 
 News Company an invaluable little volume entitled 
 " Farm and Factory ; Aids to Agriculture from Other 
 Industries," which, with its instructive statistical appen-
 
 128 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 dices, embraces but one hundred and twenty-eight pages, 
 and is sold at twenty-five cents per copy. Not to refer to 
 this brochure of Mr. J. R. Dodge, the statistician of our 
 Agricultural Department, would be to withhold from Mr. 
 Lamar an easy reference to precise and ample statistics 
 which elucidate problems that are giving him anxiety, 
 and from his fellow-citizens a crowded magazine of facts 
 confirming the justice of their confidence in the belief 
 that riches and prosperity will be found throughout the 
 South when mineral and manufacturing development 
 shall have constrained her farmers to diversify their crops 
 and look to their flocks, herds, barn-yards, and the rota- 
 tion of crops for fertilizers that will give vitality and mar- 
 ket value to their moribund cotton fields. It is also due 
 to the author that I should thus publicly acknowledge in 
 advance my indebtedness to him for statements I may be 
 tempted to quote without special acknowledgment. 
 
 An acre of farm land in Connecticut, whose manufac- 
 tures are so widely diversified that but eighteen in every 
 hundred of her people were in 1880 getting their living by 
 labor on the land, is shown by the census of that year to 
 be worth $49.34, while an acre of better farm land in Ala- 
 bama, 77 per cent of whose people were engaged in agri- 
 culture, was worth but $4.19. 
 
 In New Jersey, to whose fields the myriads of non- 
 agricultural laborers of Philadelphia and New York look 
 for many of their table supplies, and the average value of 
 whose farm land was $65.16 per acre, but 15 per cent, of 
 the people Avere employed in agriculture. The following 
 is one of several comparative statements which were 
 carefully compiled by Mr. Dodge from the report of the 
 census of 1880, which together prove the existence of, and 
 account for, an appalling difference in the value of farm
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 129 
 
 land in manufacturing and non-manufacturing States. A 
 represents the number of acres in farms, B the value of 
 farms, C value per acre, D per cent, of workers in agri- 
 culture : 
 
 " States. 
 
 A 
 
 B 
 
 C 
 
 D 
 
 Georgia . 
 
 26,043,282 
 
 $111,910,540 
 
 $4.30 
 
 72 
 
 North Carolina 
 
 22,363,55s 
 
 I35.793.602 
 
 6.07 
 
 75 
 
 South Carolina 
 
 I3.457.6i3 
 
 68,677,482 
 
 5.10 
 
 75 
 
 Alabama 
 
 18,855.334 
 
 78,954,648 
 
 4.19 
 
 77 
 
 Mississippi 
 
 15,855,462 
 
 92,844,915 
 
 5-86. 
 
 82 
 
 Arkansas 
 
 12,061,547 
 
 74,249,655 
 $562,430,842 
 
 6.16 
 $5.18 
 
 83 
 
 "Total . 
 
 . 108,636,796 
 
 77 
 
 " The story of lands without buyers and farms at nominal 
 valuations in 1880 is simply told thus : Georgia has 6 per 
 cent, in manufactures ; North Carolina has 7 per cent, in 
 manufactures ; South Carolina has 5 per cent, in manufac- 
 tures ; Alabama has 5 per cent, in manufactures ; Mississippi 
 has 3 per cent, in manufactures ; Arkansas has 4 per cent, in 
 manufactures." 
 
 But, leaving those who desire to know more of Mr. 
 Dodge's statistics to study them in his little volume, I 
 recur to my personal observations. During my first visit 
 to Anniston I observed the arrival each morning of num- 
 bers of wagons, most of which were freighted with a 
 bale or two bales of cotton, but upon a small number of 
 which were three bales. The teams that drew these 
 vehicles were motley and sometimes grotesque, being a 
 mule, an ox, a horse, a bull, a cow, or a combination of 
 any two of these animals. The driver was in each instance 
 a man who had with him a woman, and was sometimes 
 accompanied by two or three women. My attention hav- 
 ing been attracted hy these daily processions, which moved 
 with much solemnity, I learned that they were made up
 
 I30 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 of farmers who were accompanied by wife or daughter, or 
 by wife and daughter, or probably, in the instances in 
 which there were three women in the party, by wife and 
 daughter and a daughter-in-law who had her home with her 
 husband's family. The object of the mission in each case 
 was the sale of the one cash-producing crop raised by the 
 family from the farm on which they lived, and the " laying 
 in " of the producer's annual supply of store goods. The 
 pilgrimage was not expensive, as each of the parties 
 brought its own supplies, and long open sheds lined one 
 side of a lot adjoining what in courtesy might be called 
 the cotton exchange, into which the wagons were driven, 
 and in which they might remain a reasonable time with- 
 out charge. 
 
 To sell the cotton was a simple operation. The price 
 is fixed and known, and the scales are notoriously honest. 
 It is therefore a mere question of weight and computation. 
 The price in December last of such cotton as these 
 people had produced was eight cents per pound, and the 
 bales were expected to average about 500 pounds. Here we 
 have the elements from which we may calculate the an- 
 nual commercial value to the State and country of these 
 families of poor white Southern farmers, whose allegiance 
 to King Cotton is still, by reason of the hard conditions 
 by which they are environed, as subservient as it was when 
 his sceptre swayed the affairs of the Union. 
 
 The first business of the day was to dispose of the 
 crop and to receive its value in cash. While this operation 
 went on teams throngsd the avenue to the cotton market, 
 and when it closed, they were to be found blocking the 
 broad roadway of Noble street, in front of the stores that 
 line its sides for a couple of blocks. Of course these 
 humble, honest, and orderly people, for such they are,
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 131 
 
 though constituting a typical and very numerous class of 
 cotton planters, do not represent the owners of the great 
 plantations, the exclusive production of cotton on which, 
 by the artless and wasteful methods of the past, is consum- 
 ing the life and substance of their owners, who, in the hal- 
 cyon days of the New South, will probably be regarded as 
 having constituted one of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes' 
 provisional races. 
 
 It was my privilege to find among the guests of the Inn 
 Mr. Matthew Add)-, of Cincinnati, whose technical and 
 historical library of works on iron and cognate topics is 
 known to mining and mechanical engineers and metallur- 
 gists throughout the country. In charge of Messrs. Samuel 
 and George Noble, a party, including among others Mr. 
 Addy and Mr. Randall, the newly installed and brilliant 
 editor of the Hot Blast, we left the station of the Anniston 
 and Atlantic Railroad to examine an immense deposit of 
 brown hematite ore which is among the reserve resources 
 of the Clifton Iron Company. Farmers were busy plant- 
 ing or preparing to plant their fields. Noticing, with an 
 expression of surprise, the smallness of the mule and the 
 lightness of the plough with which a man was scratching 
 the surface of a field, I was told that if I interrogated the 
 farmer on the point I would hear that a heavier plough 
 would lessen the probability of getting a crop, and that as 
 a small mule consumed less food than a large one, and 
 could do the work required as well as a larger one, good 
 farming required the use of the one that would consume 
 the least food. My incredulity evidently found silent 
 expression, for Mr. George Noble, who is something of a 
 wag, appealed to the other members of the party for con- 
 firmation of his statement. While seeming to assent, I 
 resolved to test bv future observation what seemed to be
 
 132 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 so incredible a story. The valley through which the 
 Anniston and Atlantic Railroad runs is more than sixty 
 miles long, and is known in parts asChinnabee, Talladega, 
 and Sylacauga valleys, and the hills along the south side 
 constitute for about sixty miles an almost unbroken line 
 of immense deposits of iron ore. On the north side much 
 of the land is under cultivation, but, so far as that morn- 
 ing's observation went, not on the light-plough and little- 
 mule theory. On the contrary, the fine horses and teams 
 of noble oxen, between which the several kinds of work 
 in progress were divided, would challenge admiration if 
 seen on the best farms of Lancaster county, Pennsylvania. 
 They were on the land of Mr. Hugh McElderry, with 
 whom I was soon to become pleasantly acquainted, and a 
 brief letter from whom will shortly tell my readers some- 
 thing about the details and results of farming in Chinna- 
 bee valley. The adjoining farm was also under high 
 cultivation. A curiously illustrative story attaches to 
 this property ; it was part of the estate of the owner of 
 the heavily wooded hill, to inspect whose vast stores of 
 hematite ore was the especial object of our excursion. 
 The mineral lands were " too rough and rocky " for culti- 
 vation, and to make cotton so far from navigable water, 
 on which it could be floated to market on a flat-boat, and 
 in the absence of a railroad, would no longer pay, and the 
 whole estate was therefore sold at low figures to the 
 Clifton Iron Company, from which the vendor now finds 
 large annual profit in leasing the non-mineral-bearing 
 portion of his estate at a rental which gives the company 
 a good rate of interest on the entire purchase-money. 
 Nor does the good man pine over the existing state of 
 affairs, as he now clears annually from his leased but well 
 cultivated farm more than he ever made off his whole
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 133 
 
 estate before the Anniston and Atlantic Railroad had 
 been laid through the valley, and the growing non-agri- 
 cultural population of Ironaton and Jenifer, the Clifton 
 Company's furnace towns, and the rapidly augmenting 
 population of Anniston and its suburbs, Oxford and 
 Oxanna, gave him, as they now do, a quick and remuner- 
 ative market for all the secondary products of the farm. 
 The following note from Mr. McElderry may be accepted 
 as speaking generally for his neighbor, Mr. Jones, as well as 
 in detail for its author : 
 
 McElderry, Ala., May 31, 1887. 
 
 Hon. Wm. D. Kelley : 
 
 My Dear Sir : — Your favor of the 27th just to hand. I 
 take pleasure in answering your questions so far as is in my 
 power. 
 
 My place is located in Chinnabee valley, Talladega county, 
 Ala. It was the dwelling-place and now is the resting-place 
 of Chinnabee Chief, the friendly Indian who succeeded in 
 doing much service to the whites during the Creek war of 
 181 2-14. My place consists of 1,280 acres, and is divided as 
 follows : 600 acres in cultivation and 680 in fine timber. 
 
 Of the land in cultivation I have 220 acres in cotton, 190 
 in corn, 120 in wheat and oats, 10 in rye, 10 in truck patches, 
 and 50 in clover, orchard, and blue grass. 
 
 My woodland furnishes native pasturage for cattle and 
 mule colts from May to December. I raise my own hog meat, 
 and have Jersey cows and mule colts for sale. For manure I 
 depend on ground cotton seed, acid phosphate, and stable 
 manure mixed. This compost surpasses any guano. 
 
 The Anniston and Atlantic Railroad traverses Chinnabee val- 
 ley a distance of five miles and Talladega valley a distance of 
 twenty miles. Under the influence of drainage, deep turning, 
 and thorough but shallow cultivation, these lands are showing 
 marked improvement in production. So great has been this
 
 134 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 improvement that the Talladega county farmers last year 
 took the highest premium for the best display at the State 
 Fair. These valleys will produce almost any kind of truck or 
 staple crop, and under the beneficent effects of a home market 
 will inevitably make their owners rich. Indeed, already there 
 are many fresh signs of prosperity. My wish for you is a long 
 life and much happiness. Hugh McElderry. 
 
 I have been asked whether I was kindly received by the 
 people generally of the cities and towns I visited, and if 
 I always felt free to express my opinions as pointedly 
 and unqualifiedly as I habitually express them to my con- 
 stituents. Now, when entering upon an account of visits 
 to communities to which I was personally a stranger, 
 though many of their members had known me by reputa- 
 tion, and had at one time held in abhorrence my opinions 
 on political and economic questions, seems to be an ap- 
 propriate time to say that, when speaking to audiences 
 made up of people of every shade of opinion, at Chatta- 
 nooga, Birmingham, and Anniston during my first trip, 
 and at Rome, Georgia, and Talladega, Alabama, more 
 recently, and in social intercourse at Cedartown, Georgia, 
 Rome, Talladega, and other places, I expressed, without 
 rebuke or harsh criticism, my convictions as unreserved- 
 ly as I could have done to my most sympathetic friend. 
 This fact may possibly be corroborated by some of my 
 future statements. 
 
 Capt. A. G. West, a whilom constituent of mine, is 
 practically the founder of Cedartown as it is, though a 
 small settlement may have been effected before his ad- 
 vent. His account of the purchase of a site for the 
 Cherokee furnace and large bodies of ore and timber land, 
 which are within the limits of or contiguous to Cedar- 
 town, recalls the story of the sale and subsequent occu-
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 1 35 
 
 pancy as a tenant of part of the Jones estate at Chin- 
 nabee. The breaking out of the war found Capt. West 
 in the employ of a great corporation at Richmond, Vir- 
 ginia. A few weeks later he was in charge of a depart- 
 ment of Colt's famous rifle and pistol works, at Hartford, 
 Connecticut. After the war had closed he moved to 
 Philadelphia and connected himself with one of the great 
 manufacturing establishments of the fifteenth ward. 
 While here he was moved to aid in developing the 
 mineral region of the South, and became part owner and 
 manager of the famous Shelby mines and furnaces. Hav- 
 ing received a satisfactory offer for his interest at Shelby 
 he sold it, and as a result of much personal exploration 
 determined to settle in Georgia, on the elevated plateau 
 that is drained by the Big Cedar Creek, if he could pro- 
 cure adequate bodies of ore and timber land at satis- 
 factory prices. The successful accomplishment of such 
 an enterprise at that time could be effected only by secur- 
 ing an optional right to take within a fixed time the prop- 
 erty described at a fixed price in " the option." The 
 tract which determined Capt. West's location, and which 
 must be had as a preliminary purchase, was a large one, 
 the arable acres of which surrounded immense ore hills,, 
 from which moss-grown boulders of iron ore protruded. 
 While negotiating the purchase the Captain admitted the 
 native fertility and value of the level land, but called at- 
 tention to the size, number, and broken surface of the 
 hills. " Yes," said the owner, " the hills are big and 
 rough, and you can't make crops on them, but I took 
 that into account when I set the price on the farm. If 
 all the land had been fit for farming it would have taken 
 a good deal more money to pay for it." The purchase 
 was promptly concluded, as the price demanded was in 
 reality little more than nominal.
 
 136 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 It is not often that Pennsylvanians hear of farms selling 
 at rates reduced per acre by reason of the presence upon 
 them of practically inexhaustible deposits of high-grade 
 iron ore, yet I heard of many well authenticated cases of 
 the kind in Alabama and Georgia. But it is due to the 
 New South to say that repetitions of this kind of folly are 
 not likely to occur frequently in its rapidly expanding 
 limits. 
 
 Having selected sites for a first-class furnace for the 
 production of charcoal iron, for ovens for the making of 
 the charcoal, for a flouring mill and elevator on the banks 
 of Cedar Creek, to be run by the power of the 
 
 " Sleepy pool above the dam, 
 The pool beneath it never still," 
 
 and for a capacious and imposing building for offices, a 
 country store, and other purposes, and the dedication of 
 land for several wide thoroughfares on lines in harmony 
 with an existing town plan, Capt. West prepared for the 
 improvement and cultivation of his newly acquired pos- 
 sessions. His report of the effect his preparatory meas- 
 ures produced upon the former owner of the land and his 
 cotton-growing neighbors confirmed the prevalence in the 
 vicinity of Cedartown of the light-plough and small-mule 
 theory, and would have seemed ludicrous had it not been 
 so sad. His heavy chilled ploughs, and subsoil ploughs 
 with which to follow them, and all other needed instru- 
 mentalities, each of modern construction, together with 
 large oxen and horses, alarmed his so-called agricultural 
 neighbors. 
 
 Friendly whispers came from the man whose capital 
 had diminished annually in spite of the labor he and his 
 family had bestowed upon the farm which poverty had 
 at length compelled him to sell, that such heavy teams
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 1 37 
 
 and ploughs would be worse than out of place on that 
 land ; that to disturb the soil to a greater depth than four 
 inches would be dangerous, and the use of such heavy 
 ploughs, and of subsoil ploughs after them, would be 
 ruinous. Owners of contiguous farms were more out- 
 spoken and demonstrative. They not only advised the 
 new-comer, who, though they did not know it, held op- 
 tions upon the farms of several of them, to confine his 
 attention to iron-making until observation should convince 
 him that such deep ploughing as he proposed would more 
 than impair— would actually destroy — the fertility of the 
 soil, or reduce it to such a condition that it could recover 
 but by " a fallow " of twenty or thirty years' duration. 
 Happily for Capt. West he had been an inquiring ob- 
 server of the agricultural methods of Connecticut and 
 Pennsylvania, and believed that his personal interests 
 and his duty to the well-meaning, honest, but ignorant 
 people among whom he was casting his lot required him 
 to make the earliest practicable demonstration of the 
 boundless stores of wealth their shallow ploughing had 
 hoarded in the exhausted cotton fields of Georgia. Hav- 
 ing put his draft animals and heavy implements into skill- 
 ful hands, he set matters in motion with the view to proving 
 the capacity of the fields as they were when he bought 
 them to yield without fresh fertilizing remunerative crops 
 of wheat, corn, oats, potatoes, clover, and other grasses. 
 His first year's wheat crop was at the rate of twenty- 
 six bushels to the acre, and the other crops did about as 
 well. Believing that no farm should be devoted to cot- 
 ton exclusively, and that agriculture, like manufactures, 
 should be as widely diversified as practicable, he occa- 
 sionally plants for cotton a field in which clover has just 
 been turned under, in order to show old-time planters
 
 138 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 who visit Cedartown how perfect " a stand " the plant 
 makes on land which, though it has not for many years 
 tasted an imported fertilizer, has been fattened by turn- 
 ing back upon it its own nutritious green crop. 
 
 Cedartown is the county town of Polk county, in the 
 northwestern part of Georgia, a short distance from the 
 Alabama line. In the days of which I have written it had 
 no railroad connections. It is now the point at which the 
 East and West road, by which Gainesville, Georgia, and 
 Birmingham, Alabama, are connected, and the Rome and 
 Carrollton roads cross, and has easy connections with 
 immense deposits of red and brown hematite ore and 
 manganese, with at least one available deposit of mag- 
 netic ore at Cartersville, and with vast quarries of many 
 varieties of marble and of slate of equal quality with that 
 derived from the quarries of the Lehigh Valley, Pennsyl- 
 vania. I shall always regret that I had appropriated but 
 one day to this interesting point of study, and that other 
 engagements prevented an extension of the time. It was 
 about the middle of April, and the capacious and elegant 
 home of our host was shaded by flowering trees, whose 
 blossoms breathed delicious odors, among which I need 
 hardly say were fine specimens of the stately magnolia. 
 
 In the evening our charming hostess, Mrs. West, threw 
 open the spacious ground-floor of the mansion, and thus en- 
 abled us to meet in pleasant social intercourse many of the 
 ladies and gentlemen of the vicinity. The eager desire of 
 these energetic, hopeful, and courteous people to hear the 
 arguments by which the man, whom they had till recently 
 regarded as the chief apostle of a system of oppressive 
 sectional taxation, which had reduced the Southern peo- 
 ple to the condition of hewers of wood and drawers of 
 water for the " princely monopolists " of the North, would
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 1 39 
 
 attempt to legitimate his opinions, imparted to the occa- 
 sion the character of a scientific conversation rather than 
 that of a social reception. Nor was their interest lessened 
 by my assurance that I advocated the maintenance of a 
 highly protective tariff in the hope of enabling and in- 
 ducing the people of the South to compete with Pennsyl- 
 vania in the production of all her mineral specialties, by 
 availing themselves of the vast riches that existed in their 
 coal and ore beds ; and, by the diversification of their 
 crops, to so reduce the annual crop of cotton as to make 
 the North pay more for its material for cotton cloth. 
 That the protective system was susceptible of such a gloss 
 appeared to be a revelation to some of my hearers. Yet, 
 when I propounded the question, would not the survivors 
 get better prices for their cotton, and have more favorable 
 prospects for higher prices next year, if the men who are 
 to raise one-fifth of this year's crop should be found dead 
 in the morning, and their grief-stricken families should 
 simultaneously discover that the fields on which their 
 share of the cotton crop was to have grown had been 
 stricken with temporary, but for the season absolute, bar- 
 renness, the proposition was assented to, because every 
 one present had grieved over the fact that the exclusive 
 devotion of the South to cotton growing had so increased 
 the quantity produced as to have reduced the price in 
 local markets for a succession of years to a point that had 
 not repaid the cost of production. 
 
 Two at least, and I think more of my interlocutors, not- 
 withstanding the improved condition and increasing intel- 
 ligence of the masses of the people, sorrowed keenly over 
 the departure of the slave-owning, cotton-growing, patri- 
 archal days of the South ; yet even they would have told 
 my friend Lamar that, had the production of cotton in-
 
 I40 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 creased pari passu with the increase of population, as he 
 thinks it should have done, it would have not merely- 
 overwhelmed the market but have reduced to destitution 
 every cotton planter in the South. That the diversifi- 
 cation of the crops and of the employments of the people 
 are a pre-requisite to the prosperity of that section of the 
 country was universally admitted. Nor were any of my 
 auditors shocked or offended by the statement that my 
 observation of cotton movements at Anniston had con- 
 vinced me that one young negro, having abandoned 
 plantation life and gone to work in a furnace, foundry, 
 mine, or other non-agricultural employment, was worth 
 more commercially to the city or State than were three 
 of the cotton-growing families whose productions con- 
 sisted of from one to five bales of cotton, a little corn for 
 domestic use, and a few "razor-back" pigs, whether his 
 value were measured by the value of his labor to others 
 as shown by his wages, or by the amount he was able to 
 spend in the purchase of the productions of the labor of 
 other men. 
 
 These wholesome truths had been demonstrated to 
 every resident of the vicinity by Capt. West in managing 
 his farm and the business of the Cherokee furnace. His 
 example and friendly offices, even to the extent of the 
 loan of implements, had promoted a diversification of 
 crops and the better fencing and cultivation of fields. As 
 we had closed our inspection of the furnace a number of 
 wagons were discharging the last load of ore they would 
 bring that day. Supposing that they were the property 
 of the company and were in charge of a corps of steadily 
 employed teamsters, I congratulated Capt. West on the 
 size and condition of his animals, and was told that they 
 were the property of the drivers, most of whom made
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 141 
 
 more money by hauling " rocks " from the " rough hills " 
 on their farms at a fixed price per ton than they had ever 
 been able to make by growing cotton. " Every one of 
 them," said the Captain, " raises wheat, corn, oats, clover, 
 and fodder plants adapted to the climate, and knows that 
 the way to fertilize his land is to care well for his stock 
 and apply the accumulations of the barn-yard to his fields." 
 By such practical means, in managing the affairs of a 
 single furnace, has my friend and former constituent 
 revolutionized the agricultural methods and improved the 
 pecuniary and social condition of the people of a wide 
 vicinage, which is remarkable for its beauty and its wealth 
 of agricultural and mineral elements. 
 
 Next morning a number of gentlemen proposed a ride, 
 in the course of which we should visit some of the open- 
 ings of ore made on their own farms by the thrifty 
 teamsters of whom I have just spoken. One of these 
 openings proved to be into a veritable mountain of brown 
 hematite ore. Yet, abundant and accessible as is the sup- 
 ply of ore, I heard no talk of booming Cedartown by 
 promising more furnaces. The reported population of 
 the town is 3,000, including the bar and county officers, 
 and the desire of all its citizens with whom I conversed 
 appeared to be to build up the town by making it a seat 
 of minor industries, such as would bring together a pros- 
 perous population of mechanics and artisans. This aim 
 is practical. If it be attained, additional furnaces will 
 rise in response to demands for their output for consump- 
 tion in the foundries and factories of a prosperous town. 
 By an irrevocable law, the value per acre of adjacent 
 farms will increase with the number of mechanics and 
 non-agricultural laborers employed in the town. Of course 
 this law applies only to wage-earning laborers, and not to
 
 I4 2 THE OLD SOUTH -AND THE NEW. 
 
 convicts leased by the State, of whom, I am sorry to say, 
 about ioo are employed by the Cherokee Furnace Com- 
 pany. The leasing of its convicts by a State is a barba- 
 rism against which humanity revolts, and for the preven- 
 tion of which honest laborers should everywhere combine. 
 
 On the evening of April 21st I addressed as many of 
 the citizens of Talladega as could be accommodated in 
 the county court-room on the means of developing the 
 resources of the South. My visit to Talladega and the 
 heartiness of my reception by her citizens were surprises 
 to me. I had never to my knowledge met one of her 
 people except at the social board nine days before, when 
 citizens of Anniston and its vicinity marked the seventy- 
 third anniversary of my birth by a reception and banquet 
 at the Inn. The invitation to visit Talladega came from 
 the leading men of the city, and was presented and en- 
 forced by Capt. Thos. F. Plowman, chairman of the 
 Democratic Committee of Talladega county. Many of 
 my Anniston friends supported Capt. Plowman's appeal, 
 and though I had declined several complimentary invita- 
 tions of the kind I was persuaded to accept this one. 
 
 The party consisted of Mr. George Noble, Mr. J. D. 
 Kase, of Danville, Pa., and myself. Carriages awaited us 
 at the Talladega station, and we were driven around the 
 ■ city and its environs before proceeding to our respective 
 quarters. The natural beauty of the location is very 
 great ; the evidence of wealth, taste, and liberality shown 
 in public buildings and private residences, through the 
 beautiful grounds of some of which we were driven, do 
 much to heighten its beauty. While at tea I was told 
 that my audience would be made up entirely of partisan 
 Democrats. But after entering the building I learned 
 that I would speak to one very intelligent Republican,
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 1 43 
 
 the colored janitor of the building. For the edification 
 of those who are eager to know how such an audience 
 would treat my opinions, I may say with truth that I 
 never expressed myself with more freedom, and can add 
 that my Republican auditor described the temper of the 
 occasion by saying that " he did n't know whether Judge 
 Kclley had got the Democrats or the Democrats had got 
 the Judge ; but there was no difference between them 
 when he was done speaking." 
 
 At the station I had been put in charge of the mayor 
 of the city, Wm. H. Skaggs. This gentleman, who has 
 been mayor since April, 1885, and who is president of a 
 bank and a leading spirit in every local enterprise, is by 
 common consent credited with having created ample 
 water-works, a volunteer fire department of rare efficiency, 
 and with the establishment of common schools, is now 
 just about twenty-seven years of age. Of the school 
 buildings which owe their existence to his efforts I saw 
 but one. It is two stories high, 90 feet deep, and 70 feet 
 wide, and will in its eight rooms accommodate 480 schol- 
 ars. He disclaimed the desire for an artificial boom for 
 the city, which is the county-seat and the commercial cen- 
 tre of an agricultural population that is rapidly increasing 
 in numbers, intelligence, and prosperity, and referred to 
 guano as the curse of the South, to which she owed much 
 of the poverty of her people and the exhaustion of her 
 soil. 
 
 He sees that, located as the city is, in the great brown 
 hematite fields of the Talladega valley, in which are the 
 Ironaton and Jenifer charcoal furnaces of the Clifton 
 Company, that the natural development of the country 
 will force her into the position of an iron-working centre ; 
 but his present endeavor is to secure the establishment of
 
 144 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 such secondary industries as are required to supply the 
 wants of a prosperous farming community and thus cre- 
 ate a market for the incidental but most profitable pro- 
 ductions of suburban farms. This interview with Mayor 
 Skaggs was most opportune, as it enabled me to illustrate 
 my argument by reference to local incidents or to the ex- 
 perience of some of my auditors. It being apparent that 
 the speaker and his audience were in sympathy, I held the 
 floor about two hours, and was gratified by the frequency 
 with which I heard subsequent expressions of regret that 
 I had not spoken longer. 
 
 I was introduced to the meeting by John B. Knox, 
 Esq., whom I had more than once heard described as the 
 ablest lawyer in Northern Alabama. Soon after the 
 meeting closed I left with Mr. Knox, to whose office we 
 repaired, where we were joined by nearly a score of gen- 
 tlemen, and in the enjoyment of some of the good things 
 of this world passed nearly two hours in animated conver- 
 sation. Mr. Knox is still a young man, and among the 
 many surprises I encountered in Alabama was the finding 
 of so extensive and well-chosen a law library as his in the 
 possession of any one of my professional brethren. 
 
 As I must leave about noon the next day, an early 
 breakfast awaited a number of gentlemen who proposed 
 to accompany me to the State institutions for the blind 
 and mute, which occupy a magnificent site in the same en- 
 closure. In the latter institution I found in a young con- 
 stituent, Miss Mary Brown, of West Philadelphia, the 
 honored chief of the department of oral instruction, by 
 which those who have never heard a sound are taught to 
 converse freely. The legislature at its last session ap- 
 propriated means for establishing separate buildings for 
 the blind in order that both classes of unfortunates may
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 145 
 
 be more fully provided for. We also visited Talladega 
 College, in the class-rooms of which we found 321 pupils, 
 representing the best elements of the colored population 
 of eight States and twenty-four of the counties of Ala- 
 bama. This institution is a primary school, a normal 
 school, and a Congregational theological seminary. As 
 neither time nor space will permit me to say what I would 
 like to say of this college, its pupils, and management, I 
 present the following historical sketch taken from its sev- 
 enteenth annual catalogue : 
 
 " The American Missionary Association began a school in 
 Talladega twenty years ago. In 1867 a large and stately 
 building erected for college use, 1852-3, was purchased, with 
 several acres of land, and a primary school opened that autumn 
 with more than one hundred pupils in attendance. The build- 
 ing is called Swayne Hall, in honor of General Wager Swayne 
 of the Freedmen's Bureau, by whom the purchase was made. 
 In 1868 a church was organized, and in 1869 the corner-stone 
 of a girls' hall, accommodating also the boarding department 
 was laid, and the building named after Rev. L. Foster, of Blue 
 Island, 111., a principal donor. In 1873, by the gift of Mr. 
 R. R. Graves, of Morristown, N. J., a two-story wooden house 
 and six acres of valuable land were secured for the theological 
 department. Winsted farm, of 160 acres, less than a mile from 
 the college buildings, was bought in 1877, mainly by Connec- 
 ticut donors. Stone Hall, for the use of young men, built in 
 1881, is the gift of Mrs. Valeria G. Stone, of Maiden, Mass- 
 The same year the other brick halls, Swayne and Foster, were 
 thoroughly repaired, a new house was built for the president, 
 and the following year two other houses, one the gift of Mr. 
 Seth Wadhams, of Chicago, were secured, and are occupied by 
 instructors. In 1883, by the contribution of J. N. Cassedy, of 
 Thiels, N. Y., a two-story school-house was erected for primary 
 and intermediate pupils. In 18S4, through aid from the John
 
 I46 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 F. Slater Fund, a commodious shop was built, so that now, be- 
 sides two school buildings, a hall for young women, another 
 for young men, and four dwellings for teachers, the college 
 has in lands, barns, and shops valuable appliances for teaching 
 industry. The college is Christian and evangelical, though 
 not sectarian. It is not a ' reform school,' and none but the 
 worthy are tolerated. It aims at thoroughness, and seeks to 
 cultivate the hand, the head, and the heart." 
 
 The population of Talladega county is about 25,000, 
 exclusive of the city, which has from 4,000 to 5,000. Her 
 railroad connections traverse great fields of hematite ore, 
 and it is claimed that deposits of magnetic ore, red 
 hematite, and of manganese are easily accessible. It was 
 this county that sent from one of its quarries as its con- 
 tribution to the Washington Monument a block which 
 was refused, " as it was evidently choice Italian marble," 
 and it may truly be said to abound in marble of almost 
 every color and character. Gold mines are also worked 
 on Talladega creek by Messrs. J. B. Woodward and F. A. 
 Gernoh. But immense as is the mineral wealth of Ala- 
 bama, her forests and farming lands will prove to be her 
 chief source of wealth. Speaking for the county, the 
 editor of Our Mountain Home says : 
 
 " But agriculture is one of our chief industries. Its produc- 
 tions take a broad range since we are almost under the tropics, 
 and possess all the soils, black, dark, red, gray, white, and 
 sandy, and every elevation between 500 and 3,000 feet above 
 the level of the sea. Cotton, corn, oats, rye, wheat, sugar- 
 cane, the millets, the vines — peas, beans, Irish and sweet po- 
 tatoes, melons, pumpkins, etc. Clover and the grasses form 
 the principal crops. Rice, barley, broom-corn, tobacco, hemp, 
 flax, and indigo are also grown successfully. Orchard, garden, 
 and wild fruits are bountiful and luscious.
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE HEW. 1 47 
 
 " Almost every tropical flower flourishes here in the open air 
 during at least six months of the year in all their native beauty. 
 The margins of the streams in spring are lined with blossom- 
 ing and fragrant trees. Our forests in the warm weather are 
 variegated with a thousand different hues. The species are 
 indigenous ; wild flowers are innumerable. 
 
 " Old methods of farming are rapidly receding in favor of new 
 modes and appliances. The acreage per horse is being re- 
 duced, new implements introduced and several farms in the 
 county are cultivated like gardens. The great advantage of 
 this style over the old are soon apparent in increased yields 
 and superior quality of the crops gathered. 
 
 " Orchard or garden fruits are constantly improved or sup- 
 planted by those especially adapted to this climate and each 
 particular soil. The best varieties can scarcely be obtained 
 from a foreign nursery since the ones suited to one section 
 are entirely unsuited to another which is under different influ- 
 ences. 
 
 " The complete revolution of the farming systems is working 
 a corresponding revolution in other directions. More atten- 
 tion is paid every year to stock raising and the grasses. Fine 
 breeds and grades of horses, cattle, and poultry are frequently 
 seen. Excellent pastures and fields of millet, clover, and the 
 grasses are getting to be prominent features of the plantations 
 of our large farmers." 
 
 Thus Talladega enforces the lesson taught by Cedar- 
 town — that the prosperity of the South does not depend 
 on her monopoly of cotton growing or her wondrous min- 
 eral deposits, but on the harmonious development of these 
 deposits with all forms of manufacturing industry, and 
 the skillful cultivation of the manifold varieties of crops 
 with which her land responds remuneratively to the labor 
 of intelligent farmers. 
 
 But the experience of Rome, Georgia, enforces the
 
 148 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 same controlling truth with still greater emphasis. It 
 was in compliance with an invitation from the Board of 
 Trade of Rome to visit that city and address her people 
 in the Opera House that I passed the last three days of 
 April in that most picturesque and thriving city. The 
 determining fact in inducing me to accept this invitation, 
 after having declined so many others, was that it em- 
 braced my friend and host, Mr. Samuel Noble, who about 
 seventeen years before, when depressed by a series of 
 local discouragements, had abandoned his interests in the 
 foundry and machine-shop of Noble & Sons, and with 
 General Daniel Tyler gone forth to establish iron works, 
 and, as events have proven, to found in the then scarcely 
 broken forests of , Northwestern Alabama a city, the un- 
 paralleled prosperity of whose people enhances the gran- 
 deur of the monument to each other, whose foundations 
 they then laid. 
 
 Unhappily, the condition of Mr. Noble's health pre- 
 vented him from accompanying me, as he had expected 
 to do. The country around Rome is beautifully undu- 
 lating, and the three rivers, the Etowah, the Oostanaula, 
 and the Coosa, which is formed by the confluence of the 
 others, flow through bottoms so far below the city level, 
 and at many points so broad and finely wooded with a 
 variety of stately trees, as to greatly increase the pic- 
 turesqueness of the situation. Though my invitation had 
 come from the Board of Trade, I was personally the guest 
 of Mr. T. F. Howell, whose former business, that of cot- 
 ton factor, had required him to make frequent visits to 
 important manufacturing towns in Pennsylvania, New 
 York, and New England. He is still a young man, but 
 is an active participant in all public or corporate move- 
 ments for the advancement of the interests of his city and
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. \A$ 
 
 State. The three days I passed under his roof showed 
 me that the doors of his city home are always open to his 
 fellow-citizens, many of whom called during my first even- 
 ing. Among these were two gentlemen of lineage, both 
 of whom are thoroughly well-bred, but evidently regard 
 the New South as airintrusive upstart, who can add noth- 
 ing to the glory or real prosperity of the historic South. 
 I mention this fact because the evening was spent in ani- 
 mated conversation, and having come early these gentle- 
 men were among the last to leave. We were not far from 
 the home of General Wofford, whose name invoked ex- 
 pressions of respect from all who spoke of him, and I 
 thought it not inappropriate to refer here, in the Etowah 
 valley, to his statement of the recent and accidental addi- 
 tion of clover to Georgia's crops. One of these gentlemen 
 thought he had seen fields of clover before the war, but 
 his appeal for corroboration led to the confirmation of 
 General Wofford's statement. So, too, when I referred 
 to the wretched poverty of the " one gallows farmers," 
 whose year's work results in but one or two $40 bales 
 of cotton, and to the grotesque establishments by which 
 I had, during the preceding November, seen them bring 
 their crop to market, the same gentleman was sure some 
 evil-disposed person had been practicing upon my cre- 
 dulity. It was, he said, impossible that such people 
 could grow any considerable portion of the South's mag- 
 nificent crop of cotton. My response was definite but 
 courteous and free from emphasis. My eyes had been 
 my witnesses, and they were not given to such gross 
 deception; and though such poverty-stricken people 
 could not produce a large percentage of the entire crop, 
 they were numerically a very appreciable percentage of 
 the whole number of cotton growers. On the points thus
 
 15° THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 raised the judgment of the company appeared to be that 
 the unfortunate class of farmers to whom I had referred 
 are not frequently found in the immediate vicinity of 
 cities, in which growing industries enable men to find 
 employment at regular wages, but that in the cotton- 
 raising sections of the country, away from such seats of 
 industrial activity, they are a considerable percentage of 
 the total number of cotton growers. 
 
 At the appointed hour on the next evening the Opera 
 House was well filled with an audience representative of 
 Rome's best citizens, among whom I was pleased to see 
 a number of ladies. As Mr. Noble could not appear 
 among his former townsmen as had been expected, the 
 whole evening was before me, and I was not at a loss for 
 topics that would bear elucidation. After paying a just 
 tribute to my friend Noble, who had gone from their 
 midst to found a city more perfect in its primitive ap- 
 pointments, and in arrangements for expansion by the ex- 
 tension of its original plan, than Penn's city on the Dela- 
 ware had been, I passed to the consideration of industrial 
 questions, by remarking that days spent in unremuner- 
 ative labor were a waste of'human life with all its capa- 
 bilities and aspirations. This,. I said, was the lot of all 
 people whose government failed to secure a wide diversi- 
 fication of employments, by making it the interest of 
 each citizen to strive for profit in the production, from 
 native materials, of that which would satisfy the current 
 wants or gratify the laudable desires of some of his coun- 
 trymen. This had been the inevitable lot of all the 
 producing classes of the cotton States until the dawn of 
 the New South. The census taken in June, 1880, had 
 ascertained the fact that of the producers of Georgia at 
 that date 72 per cent, were engaged in the same pursuit —
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. I^t 
 
 agriculture, which then meant the growing of cotton, and 
 that yj per cent, of those of Alabama were engaged in 
 the same pursuit. As all were employed in producing the 
 same commodity, there was no opportunity for the profit- 
 able exchange of services between the people of these 
 States. But more deplorable, if possible, than this, was, 
 in my judgment, the fact that the crop to which all these 
 people were devoting their land and labor was fibrous", 
 was largely intended for export to foreign markets, and, 
 as it was not consumed as food by man or beast, could 
 make no return to the land, the vital elements of which 
 were absorbed in its growth. I heard no dissent among 
 my auditors from the conclusion that such communities 
 must forego many of the commonest conveniences of 
 civilized life, and sink into ever-deepening shadows of 
 poverty. My reader will see that from such premises a 
 wide range of argument and illustration might be ad- 
 duced, and will not be surprised to hear that I detained 
 my audience more than two hours. 
 
 Thus much for my first impressions of social life in 
 Rome, and the freedom of discussion her citizens toler- 
 ate in the consideration of grave questions. But what of 
 the city itself ? Rome, Georgia, is a very prosperous city 
 of from 10,000 to 12,000 inhabitants. Its location, on 
 the banks of three rivers, and yet among the hills of a 
 rolling country, is phenomenally picturesque. Broad 
 street, on which its stores and banks, the offices of its in- 
 surance, telegraph, express, and other companies are 
 found, and on which the heavy teams belonging to clover- 
 and grain-growing farmers are seen in numbers, is wide 
 and level, though streets not far distant are quite hilly 
 The present ambition of her citizens is to localize within 
 her limits as many mechanical industries as possible,
 
 152 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 especially such as give employment anH exceptionally 
 high wages to numbers of skilled workmen. On the 
 morning after my arrival Mr. Howell excused himself 
 from accompanying me, as he had some days before fixed 
 an important conference for nine o'clock. When we met 
 for early dinner I learned from him that the conference 
 had resulted in a contract for the transfer to Rome of all 
 the shops of one of the most extensive iron bridge-build- 
 ing companies of the Northwest. The new site appears 
 to be specially appropriate, as the county was then build- 
 ing bridges across the Etowah, at the foot of Howard and 
 Broad streets, to connect South and East Rome, and the 
 South is famous for the number, length, and tortuosity 
 of its rivers. 
 
 Speaking of railroads in this connection I may use the 
 old proverb that " all roads lead to Rome," for I know of 
 no minor city that is connected with so many local centres 
 of trade by means of so many great through lines of road ; 
 and her low-pressure steamboats, of which I saw several, 
 traverse nearly eight hundred miles of river. These boats 
 carry large quantities of many kinds of freight. Rome is 
 an historic cotton market and maintains her two com- 
 presses, one of which, an 80-inch Morse press, is capable 
 of compressing sixty bales per hour; she has a furniture 
 company, a chair company, and supplies several celebrated 
 plough and tool works and carriage factories with white 
 oak and other woods. Her thirteen jobbing houses han- 
 dled over $5,000,000 worth of goods last year, and the 
 business of her retail houses amounted to more than 
 $4,500,000. 
 
 The rates of insurance at Rome, Talladega, and Annis- 
 ton are proverbially low. This is said to be due to the 
 excellence of their respective water-works and consequent
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. I 53 
 
 simplicity of the apparatus relied upon by their volunteer 
 fire departments. Indeed, I heard it said at each place 
 that the saving in insurance rates, and the security given 
 to property by the supply of water and the force with 
 which it is driven from the fire-plug, dispenses with the 
 use of fire-engines, and more than defrays the cost of the 
 works and the hose and reels of the fire department. The 
 pumping capacity of Rome's works is four times the cur- 
 rent demand. She has seven miles of mains, 420 services, 
 73 city fire-plugs, and 7 private ones. The immunity thus 
 guaranteed to life and property is evidently one of the 
 causes of the prosperity and rapid growth of these cities. 
 It is said that the loss by fire in Rome during the last ten 
 years has been less than $500 per year. 
 
 A prominent feature among the industries of Rome 
 is a tannery of large dimensions and more than national 
 repute. The hides it tans are selected by the agents 
 of a Connecticut house in our Eastern markets and 
 shipped to Rome. When tanned they are shipped to 
 New Haven or Hartford to be made into the best qual- 
 ity of leather belting, for which there is a quick demand 
 on both sides of the Atlantic. Another, which is already 
 conferring inestimable local benefits, is the nursery and 
 fruit farm of Mr. G. H. Miller, recently of Ohio. It in- 
 cludes 125 acres, and crowns one of the most beautiful 
 hills in the suburbs of the city. Writing of this enterprise, 
 in April, Mr. Miller said : 
 
 " We are confident that we can grow stock here cheaper than 
 in the North. We can grow r here in two years stock that will 
 require three years in the shorter seasons of the North. We 
 selected this point because it is an intermediate climate, and 
 stock grown here is not likely to suffer much from the blizzards 
 of the North or hot weather nearer the Gulf. The soil is well
 
 154 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 adapted to the purpose. We are planting this year 300,000 
 fruit trees, 50,000 grape-vines, and 200,000 peach and plum 
 trees, besides ornamental shrubbery. We are also engaged in 
 fruit growing out on the hill-sides. We have put in thirty 
 acres in fruit trees this spring, and will make it one hundred 
 acres. We have ten acres in strawberries, and are now ship- 
 ping to New York." 
 
 The morning of Saturday was delicious, and under the 
 guidance of an intelligent friend I loitered through a num- 
 ber of stores on Broad street, and chatted with their 
 managers. In this busy part of the city are the rooms of 
 the Rome Land and Improvement Company, in which 
 are finely displayed specimens of the minerals found on 
 the roads and rivers upon which Rome's commerce is car- 
 ried, and a wonderful display it is of ores, and coals, and 
 cokes, of clays and stones, of woods, useful or beautiful, 
 and of minerals, including corundum. 
 
 In charge of a committee of bright and energetic men, 
 with Mr. James Noble, the venerable father of my Annis- 
 ton friend, as my immediate companion, I left this geo- 
 logical and mineralogical museum and visited several ob- 
 jects of interest, including Shorter College for young 
 women, the fine buildings of which surmount an eminence 
 from which a magnificent panorama is seen, and which 
 makes these buildings conspicuous from all quarters of 
 the city. We also inspected the water-works, of which 
 my venerable companion was the inventor and projector, 
 and which, including engines, boilers, etc., from the works 
 of Noble Brothers, at Rome, have been duplicated at 
 Anniston. 
 
 In the afternoon we visited the stock and dairy farm of 
 my host, Mr. Howell. It is in the midst of gently rolling 
 fields,_and having been made up by selected purchases
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 1 55 
 
 from three old-time cotton farms, is nearly all cleared 
 land. To supply this deficiency well-located groves have 
 been set out, and are thriving. It is watered by a spring, 
 from which flow sixty gallons per second of water of 
 crystalline purity. A summer home of ample dimensions 
 but simple construction, the elaborate vegetable and fruit 
 garden to which is the nearest part of the curtilage, 
 crowns a gently sloping eminence, at the foot of which 
 are grouped, at such distance apart as to prevent inter- 
 ference and make inspection easy, the barn, stalls, carriage 
 and wagon houses, poultry walks, and such like appur- 
 tenances as are to be seen on the most fully appointed 
 farms in Pennsylvania. The stock upon this beautiful 
 Georgia estate is all choice ; but Mr. Howell's pride is 
 evidently his Jersey herd, several head of which he im- 
 ported directly. It must not be supposed that this is an 
 isolated farm. It is not. It is surrounded by a number, 
 every one of which is an illustration of the magnificent re- 
 sults that certainly follow the practice on Georgia land of 
 the science and art of agriculture. It has been by the 
 conversion of worn-out cotton fields into such farms that 
 Rome has been compensated for the loss of one half of 
 her annual receipts of cotton. Dairy farming, fruit, vege- 
 table, and truck raising in the vicinity of towns like Rome 
 and Talladega, to say nothing of cities of such magnitude 
 and rapid growth as Chattanooga and Birmingham, pay so 
 much better than cotton, that land-owners, to use the 
 words of one of them, " cannot afford to fool away time 
 by growing cotton at eight cents a pound." 
 
 I have said that the experience of Rome emphasized 
 this lesson of the value to farmers of diverse non-agricul- 
 tural industries more emphatically than that of either 
 Talladega or Cedartown, and I propose to prove the as- 
 sertion. In spite of the mechanical genius with which
 
 156 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 Mr. Noble and his six sons were gifted, of their energy, 
 industry, and unity of purpose, and the just celebrity 
 their achievements had given to the workshops of the 
 city, the cotton trade was the overshadowing factor in 
 the business of Rome. It was the one marketable crop of 
 the surrounding country ; it bought in the North food 
 for the laborers who tended the spindles and looms of her 
 factory ; it furnished freight for her boats, whether they 
 came from up or down the river, and for her railroads ; 
 it gave business, profit, and prestige to her bankers and 
 factors, and, as " the borrower is ever the slave of the 
 lender," made them masters of the proud owners of 
 slaves, to whom they made annual advances with which 
 to provide plantation supplies ; it paid rent for those vast 
 sheds that from disuse are now falling into decay, and re- 
 quired for its service the expenditure of the capital in- 
 vested in two great cotton compresses, the records of the 
 business of which afforded detailed proof that Rome's an- 
 nual receipts of cotton were greater than those of any 
 other city of the same size. Yet so prosperous have the 
 methods of the New South made her people, that I did 
 not hear a murmur when reference was made to the fact 
 that in the last seven years these receipts have declined 
 fifty per cent. Here are the figures which show the fall- 
 ing off as furnished by Mr. T. L. Robinson, a recognized 
 authority on questions relating to the cotton trade : 
 
 Bales. 
 
 1880-81 110,000 
 
 1881-82 83,000 
 
 1882-83 84,000 
 
 1883-84 79,000 
 
 1884-85 63,000 
 
 1885-86 68,000 
 
 1886-87 55>°°°
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 1 57 
 
 The increase in the population and prosperity of Nash- 
 ville, Chattanooga, Birmingham, Anniston, South Pitts- 
 burg, Cedartown, Talladega, and Rome has not been 
 fortuitous ; nor was the actual loss of population sustain- 
 ed by Mobile, the inappreciable rate of increase of Charles- 
 ton, and the little more than nominal growth of Savannah 
 and New Orleans during the last decade accidental. All 
 these phenomena occurred in obedience to laws which, 
 though less prompt in action, are as absolute as the law of 
 gravitation. This truth is admirably illustrated by a table 
 showing the number of persons engaged in manufac- 
 turing and mining in fifty principal cities, in June, 1880 
 when the tenth census was taken, together with the pro- 
 portion in each class of occupation. This table may be 
 studied on page 122 of Farm and Factory. Charleston and 
 New Orleans, two of the four cities cited by Mr. Lamar, 
 are embraced in the list. The former had but 25 per cent, 
 and the latter but 24 per cent, engaged in manufacturing 
 and mining, and the average for the 50 cities was 43 per 
 cent. I have made vigorous but unavailing efforts to 
 ascertain what percentage of the people of Mobile and 
 Savannah, the other two, were then engaged in these speci- 
 fied employments, but from the immutability of the law 
 we are considering it is safe to conclude that not more 
 than 15 per cent, of their people were engaged in manu- 
 facturing' or mining- when the tenth census was taken. 
 
 With this paper I close my letters on the South. She 
 is in a transitional state. It is idle to dispute or deny the 
 assertion, for the stranger within her borders cannot fail 
 to discover that he moves in the midst of two communi- 
 ties: one of which, animated by hope, is full of impulse, 
 enterprise, and energy, while the other, though the eyes
 
 158 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 of its members, like those of their more hopeful brethren, 
 are in their foreheads, look only to the past for inspiration 
 and guidance. These constitute the superannuated South 
 which is fading from the earth, and will soon live, not in 
 habit and custom, but in tradition alone. The " historic 
 glories," which will forever illuminate the history of the 
 South, belong to a past era in which her statesmen lived 
 upon their farms, were thorough-bred agriculturists, and 
 gave their estates the benefit of all that was known of the 
 science and art of agriculture. As political philosophers 
 they led the vanguard of the world. In their wilderness 
 homes they idealized governments which were responsive 
 to the highest aspirations of the patriots and philosophers 
 of their time. When, therefore, Virginia's Washington, 
 in obedience to the call of an insurgent Congress aban- 
 doned the personal care of his fields, his implements, his 
 stock, and of his account-books, journals, and correspond- 
 ence in which his efforts for their improvement are regis- 
 tered, to command an army of undisciplined devotees to 
 chartered freedom, Lafayette, Steuben, and Kosciusko 
 sent, in their names thundering down the ages, proof that 
 the war for the independence of the agricultural colonies 
 of America represented the best hopes and aspirations of 
 France, Germany, and Poland. But this occurred in a dis- 
 tinct though not a remote epoch — the era which Wash- 
 ington, Jefferson, Madison, Marshall, and Henry illustrated, 
 and through which the State of Virginia derived the proud 
 distinction of being called the mother of States and of 
 Presidents. It preceded the invention of the cotton gin 
 and the establishment of the factory system, the baneful 
 influence of which it was that induced the people of the 
 South to substitute cotton growing for agriculture and to 
 look to other regions for supplies of live stock and pro- 
 visions. 

 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 159 
 
 Incalculable as was the infinitely diversified natural 
 wealth of the South, and commanding as was her voice 
 in the councils of the civilized world, she could not resist 
 or modify the disastrous influence of this misguided pol- 
 icy. It constrained her to maintain peculiar institutions, 
 under which labor should be impelled by other stimulants 
 than the hope of profit, of intellectual improvement, or 
 of social advancement, and the isolation of her States 
 and degradation of the great body of her people were un- 
 avoidable consequences of this policy. While other States 
 and countries were perfecting and extending their educa- 
 tional systems, and many of them making attendance at 
 school compulsory, she prohibited by degrading penal 
 sanctions the imparting of a knowledge of the rudiments 
 of the English language to millions of her laboring people, 
 and her inadequately endowed institutions of learning 
 were maintained for the benefit of the wealthy few, while 
 the millions of her poor native white citizens sunk into 
 the dangerous mass of servile illiteracy that surrounded 
 them. Tides of invaluable immigrants surged around 
 her borders, peopling States whose political power she 
 dreaded but could not counteract, as the immigrants 
 shrunk from competition or contact with the ignorance 
 and unrequited labor she maintained throughout her bor- 
 ders. In these hard but self-imposed conditions are found 
 the only philosophic reply to the question put to Mr. 
 Lamar : " How do you account for the apparent stagna- 
 tion in what were formerly the great commercial centres 
 of the South ?" For while she was darkening the minds 
 of her laborers and protecting her borders from innova- 
 tions of every kind, science, art, invention, exploration, 
 and adventure were more busy and persistent than ever 
 before, and the people of other States and countries wel-
 
 l6o THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. 
 
 corned all their triumphs as new sources of intelligence, 
 wealth, and power. 
 
 The terrible results of the mistaken policy of the cotton- 
 growing South are visible in every direction. Not only 
 did the population of Mobile and many other Southern 
 cities and towns decline during the last census decade, 
 and Charleston, Savannah, and other places make but in- 
 appreciable increase, but all non-agricultural employments 
 seem to have been paralyzed or prohibited. I have in 
 memory a striking illustration of this truth. I have for 
 many years been a member of the Committee on Ways 
 and Means of the- National House of Representatives. 
 During the last Congress among my agreeable associates 
 on that committee were one from each of the following 
 five Southern States : Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Ten- 
 nessee and Texas. As the Ways and Means is the com- 
 mittee which more than any other considers the laws 
 that deal most directly and most potently with the pro- 
 ductive industries of the people, and as Mr. Speaker 
 Carlisle had not only selected these gentlemen for this 
 committee, but given them when acting together a con- 
 trolling voice in its councils, I had the curiosity to study 
 the relation of their respective districts to the nation's in- 
 dustries. Among other tests I applied was to ascertain 
 from the report of the census the percentage found in 
 these districts of the total amount of capital and labor 
 employed in non-agricultural industries. The total 
 amount of capital employed in the United States in 
 June, 1880, was $2,790,272,606, and the number of 
 laborers was 2,738,895. The amount of capital em- 
 ployed in the five representative Southern districts, 
 from which the controlling influence in the Commit- 
 tee of Ways and Means was drawn, was $9,090,559, or
 
 THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW. l6l 
 
 an average for each district of less than one-fifteenth of 
 one per cent, of the whole amount, and of laborers the 
 number found was 8,702, averaging to each district a 
 smaller part of one-fifteenth of one per cent. each. When 
 something more than a year ago I worked out this result 
 from the census returns I was incredulous, and doubted 
 the methods I had pursued or the accuracy of my work. 
 I therefore, without mentioning to him my labors and my 
 doubts, handed the official volume containing the ele- 
 ments of the calculation to a statistical expert to make 
 the calculation for me, which he did, and confirmed the 
 accuracy of my work, showing that the five districts com- 
 bined used less than one-third of one per cent, of the total 
 capital employed in manufactures, and a slightly smaller 
 percentage of one-third of one per cent, of the number of 
 non-agricultural laborers of the country. There are just 
 five Congressional districts in the city of Philadelphia, and 
 it occurred to me to compare the capital and labor em- 
 ployed by these five representative Southern districts with 
 those of the five contiguous Philadelphia districts. The 
 result was that I found the latter employed $187,148,859 
 capital and 185,527 operatives, from which it appeared 
 that the five Southern districts employed 4.8 per cent, of 
 Philadelphia's capital and 4.7 per cent, of the number of 
 laborers in the industrial establishments of her five dis- 
 tricts. May we not, without the fear of wounding any 
 just susceptibilities, in view of these hard conditions, re- 
 joice audibly over the fact that the gloom and paralysis 
 which have so long overshadowed her no longer pervade 
 the richly endowed, beautiful, and once commanding 
 South. 
 
 Wealth and honor are in the pathway of the New South. 
 Her impulses are those which are impelling the advance
 
 1 62 THE OLD SOUTH AXD THE NEW. 
 
 of civilization, the progress of wealth and refinement 
 throughout Christendom; and as her resources, including 
 geographical position and climate, are greater and more 
 diversified than those in the possession of any other people 
 of equal numbers, she must at no distant day break from 
 the thraldom of a misguided past, and resume her once 
 proud position in the van of civilization's advancing 
 column. She is the coming El Dorado of American ad- 
 venture. May the Almighty speed and guide her onward 
 progress.
 
 My Winter Garden, by Kingsley. 
 
 Work, by Ruskin. 
 
 On a Certain Condescension in Foi 
 
 eigners, by Lowell. 
 On History, by Carlyle. 
 History, by Macaulay. 
 The Science of History, by Froude. 
 Race and Language, by Freeman. 
 Kin Beyond the Sea, by Gladstone. 
 Private Judgment, by Newman. 
 An Apology for Plain Speaking, b 
 
 Stephen. 
 
 PROSE MASTERPIECES FROM MODERN ESSA1 
 
 ISTS : comprising single specimen essays from Irving, Leigh Hunt, Lam 
 
 De Quincey, Landor, Sydney Smith, Thackeray, Emerson, Arnold, Morle 
 
 Helps, Kingsley, Ruskin, Lowell, Carlyle, Macaulay, Froude, Freema 
 
 Gladstone, Newman, Leslie Stephen. These essays have been selecU 
 
 with reference to presenting specimens of the method of thought and l! 
 
 literary style of their several writers, and also for the purpose of puttii 
 
 into convenient shape for direct comparison the treatment given by sue 
 
 writers to similar subjects. 
 
 The Mutability of Literature, by 
 
 Irving. 
 The World of Books, by Hunt. 
 Imperfect Sympathies, by Lamb. 
 Conversation, by De Quincey. 
 Petition of the Thugs, by Landor. 
 Benefits of Parliament, by Landor. 
 Fallacies, ' Smith. 
 N T n. Nisi B'^.um, by Thackeray. 
 Compensation, by Emerson. 
 Sweetness and Light, by Arnold. 
 Popular Culture, by Morley. 
 Art of Living with Others, by Helps. 
 
 3 vols., i6mo, bevelled boards, with frontispieces on steel, gilt 
 top. in box, each ......... $i 2 
 
 The set in extra cloth, with cloth box . . . . . 45 
 
 The same in Russia-leather binding and case, round corners, 
 red edges ........... 10 o< 
 
 The same, large paper edition, with portraits, cloth extra, 
 gilt top, rough edges . . . . . . . . - y 
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. By Charles Lamb. "The Tempi 
 Edition.." Handsomely printed on laid paper from new type, with etching 
 by James D. Smillie, F. S. Church, R. Swain Gifford, and Charles A. Piatt 
 Octavo, cloth extra. $3 oc 
 
 The same, Islington Edition, 250 copies only, with proof impression ot 
 etchings on satin. Quarto, fiumbered, printed upon pure linen paper ; cloth, 
 uncut . •■ $10 o< 
 
 AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS ; A MANUAL OF SUG 
 GESTIONS FOR BEGINNERS IN LITERATURE : compris- 
 ing a description of publishing methods and arrangements, directions for the 
 preparation of MSS. for the press, explanations of the details of book-manu- 
 facturing, with instructions for proof-reading, and specimens of typography, 
 the text of the United States Copyright Law and information concerning 
 International Copyrights, together with general hints for authors. Octavo, 
 cloth extra $1 00 
 
 " Full of valuable information for authors and writers. * * * A most instructive 
 * * * and excellent manual." — //ar/er's Monthly (Easy Chair;. 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, PUBLISHERS, 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON. .^ (TORJMU 
 
 LES
 
 APR 
 
 
 Jtt 
 
 WAY 
 
 IftlJRl 
 
 R 
 
 RE 
 
 NO 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 
 JAN , g 
 
 
 MA> 
 
 DATE SEN 
 
 APR 2 2 1994 
 
 r 
 
 .,„ DUE 3 MONIES PROM 
 JUL DATE RECEIVED 
 
 Mi hwt 
 
 aom-l, '41(1122) 
 
 ,? ' 
 
 IfWoflft