LIBRARY OF TIIK University of California. O I KT < ) 1^" T8 Keceived Accession Nq.V/^^ O ^ C/ifs.v /Vo. Southern Railway Company. W. W. FiNLHV, OFFICE OF SECOND VICE-IRE'^IDENT. Second Vice-President. 1300 Pknnsvlvania Avhnuk, Washington. D c, Qctober 14,1898. (J University of Califoi*nia, Berkeley, Cal. Sentleraen: I have pleasure in sending to your address to-day, under sepa- rate cover, a copy of the volume "The Empire of the South." 1 ask you to accept it with my compliments, and trust you will find it of permanent value and interest. Under our supervision, the author of the work has undertaken to reflect in a forceful and at the same time attractive manner, the already vast and growing interests of the Southern States. The book has been kept free from anything which might savor of too laudatory a record of the past, or too roseate a prophecy of the future, and as it is free of advertising features, I hope a place may be found for it in your library. Very truly yours. Second Vice-President. ) \ •v. THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED TO THE PEOPLE OF THE SOUTH BY THE SOUTHERN RAILWAY COMPANY, WHOSE INTERESTS ARE IDENTICAL WITH THOSE OF THE STATES TRAVERSED BY ITS LINES. COPYRIGHT 1898 BY W. A. TURK, GEN'L PASS. AGENT SOUTHERN RAILWAY WASHINGTON, D. C. ^v *l¥t-df OP THB ■CTNIVERSITY ■Sf' CAllFOR«lb- iiiiiSi£'i7i,'u,i?,?°^>:>^o;o M, 1/ \bt^.-j, ■ ■TESTERDAY.TODAY^ffMORROW ^'j'raiHiHII PlllllU™ THE advance of the Empire of the South has been one of the grandest and most note- worthy movements in the industrial and commercial history of the world. It has annulled the force of the adage, "Westward the course of empire takes its way," and has destroyed for all time the theory of political economists that emigration fol- lows isothermal lines. Considered in general, the develop- ment of the South in all avenues of human activity has been coincident and parallel to the growth of the country at large. When, however, this great region is con- sidered by itself, or in connection with individual sections of the United States, a basis of comparison is presented which brings out with startling clearness and in incontrovertible figures the majesty and rapidity of its unparalleled progress. That the record of its growth, and the wholesome and steady development of that portion of the South stretching from the Atlantic on the east to the Mississippi on the west, and bounded on the north by the Ohio and the Potomac rivers, and on the south by the Gulf of Mexico, may be properly set forth, is the raison d'etre of this volume. Taken as a whole, the States included in this area form an empire of a half million square miles. It is four times greater than England, Ireland and Scotland, and more than seven times larger than the combined area of the New England States. Within its borders could be placed sixty-four States the size of Massachusetts, and five hun- dred the size of Rhode Island. It has so generous a supply of natural and material wealth, that, if the bal- ance of the world should be swept out of existence, it could prosper and support itself through the ages to come. Raw materials exist or are successfully grown in every part of the South in such prodigal abundance that transportation from mine and field to factory is a minor item. It has a system of intercommunication and connection with the outside world by water and rail which limits the boundaries of its trade and commerce only as civilization is limited. It has a genial climate and prolific soil, and in all avenues, industrial, com- mercial, agricultural, and intellectual, offers its own citizens, and those who may in the future become such, every advantage and inducement to be found in any portion of the United States. The magnitude of the South's growth can best be told in comparative figures Between 1880 and *i890 the true valuation of real and personal property in the South in- creased from $6,448,000,000 to $9,621,000,000, againof $3,I73,- ooo,ooo, or 51 per cent., while the New England and Middle States combined gained only $3,900,000,000, or an in- crease of but 22 per cent. The per capita wealth of the South increased during the same period 22 per cent., while the increase in New England for the same period w^as but 1.8 per cent. , and in the Middle States but 3 per cent. The value of farm prop- erty in the South in 1880 was $2,314,000,- 000; in 1890 $3,182,000,- 000, a gain of 37 per cent The increase in farm values in all other sections was about 30 per cent.^- The total value of farm products in the South in 1880 was $666,000,000, against $1,550,000,000 for the remainder of the country. In 1890 the South produced $773,000,000, a gain of 16 per cent., while the gain of the rest of the country was only 9 per cent. A comparison of these figures discloses the fact that in the South ♦Where figures for 1890 are given it has been impossible to secure authoritative figures of a later date than the last U. S. Census reports. there was a gross revenue of 24.1 per cent, on the capital invested in farm interests, while in all other sections of the country the gross revenue was 13. i per cent. In 1880 the South had $257,244,000 invested in manufacturing. In 1890 she had $657,288,000, a gain of 156 per cent., while the gain of the entire country was about 121 per cent. The value of the manu- factured products of the South in 1880 was $457,454,000. In 1890 it was $917,589,000, a gain of 100 per cent. In 1880 the factory hands alone in the South received $75,917,000 in wages. In 1890 they received 222,118,000. In 1880 the South had invested in cotton manufac- turing $21,976,000; in 1890, $61,- 100,000; and now about $125,- 000,000. In 1880 the South had p $3,500,000 invested in the cotton-seed oil indus- try. It has now more than $30,- 000,000 so invest- ed. The rail- road mileage of the South has been increas- ed since 1880 more than twenty-five thousand miles, at a cost in building new roads and in the improvement of old ones of over $1,000, - r.oo,000. In 1880 the South made 289,816 tons of pig iron. In 1897 it made 1,796,712 tons. In 1880 the value of the product was $7,269,050. In 1897 its estimated value was $26,592,719. In 1880 the South's output of coal was 3,756,144 tons. Last year it was 32,852,630 tons, and has exceeded 25,000,000 each year since 1891. The resources of the national banks of the South increased from $29,337,700 in 1880 to $287,594,604 in 1897, and the amoiint of individual deposits from $69,846,50010 $i6o,- 875,309 in the same period. These figures are exclusive of savings banks, the deposits in which increased proportionately. No section is better adapted to the manu- facturing industry than the South. It has all needed raw materials in the greatest abundance and of the best quality. Its iron-ore fields are practically inexhaustible, and they embrace all varieties of ores, and many of them are of surpassing richness. It has coal enough to last for generations, even with the most prodigal use. It has limestone for reducing its ores, and every facility for making a first-class quality of pig iron as cheaply as can be done in any part of the world. It has also been demonstrated that steel making is quite as easy and equally profit- able as iron production. It has extensive for- ests of timber, with varieties suited to every kind of wood-working industry, and these for- ests in addition produce immense quantities of tar, pitch, turpentine and rosin. In building stones it has granite, marble and sandstone, all of excellent quality and in unlimited quantities, as well as clays for pottery and earthenware, porcelain and brick clays, glass sand, and ocher for paint, etc. Besides its larger industries, many smaller ones are constantly being developed by cheap and rapid transportation. Fish and oysters from the South Atlantic and Gulf States reach ever- increasing markets in the interior. Early fruits and vegetables are sent in enormous quantities as far north as Canada and the Lakes, and tax the capacity of the railroads in their season, formerly the dullest of the year. Dried and canned fruits are shipped by the trainload, and the Florida orange is crossing the ocean to England after run- ning the Mediterranean fruit off this continent in its season. It is within bounds to say that, taking into consideration the extent and variety of material, the possible powers of production from the soil and their values, the mineral and forest wealth, the advantages from climatic condi- tions — temperature, rainfall and length of growing season — the dynamic forces of coal and water power and the advan- tages given by proximity of interde- pendent resources, and by geographical position, the natural foundation of the South is four times as great as that of the North. Or, stated in another way, the Southern area, fully developed, is capable of sustaining, in equal prosperity and in greater comfort, four times as large a population as can be sustained in the Northern area under the same conditions. Much has already been achieved by the South in the creation and accumulation of wealth, and in the appliances for carrying on the work still further. In her towns and cities, her railways and other means has of transportation and the ton- nage they carry; in the value of her farms; in mines in operation and their prod- ucts; in furnaces, mills and factories, and their output; in active capital in the shape of money, credit and or- ganization, in skill in the arts, and in ways and means generally, all considered to- gether, the result of the South's progress been phenomenal. With twenty millions of people, and thirty odd thousand miles of railroad in operation, with cotton and other crops of great value, with mountains of coal and ore, with manufactures now large and rapidly growing, with, an annual production of iron more than twice as great as that of the United States up to 1865, and over one-third the world's production up to i860, a good start has been made. Projected through the center of the half million square miles composing that section of the South east of the Mississippi River is a mountainous region of more than one hundred thousand square miles, extending southwest- wardly seven hundred miles from the Pennsyl- vania line into Alabama and Georgia, and having an average width of one hundred and fifty miles. The northwestern side of this Appalachian region is a continuous, unbroken coal field, embracing forty thousand square miles, and containing forty times the quantity of coal, available to economical mining, which the coal fields of Great Britain held before a pick was struck into the ground. This region is cool and healthy, heavily timbered, and has a soil fairly productive, susceptible of easy improvement, and has the added advantage of a general elevation of two thousand feet above sea level. Along its southeastern side, from end to end, lies a valley strip of almost equal area, with a general eleva- tion of one thousand feet above sea level, fertile, heavily timbered, the most abundantly and beautifully watered region in the world, rich in a broad and contin- uous belt of fos sil ores along its northwestern rim --;>*^ • near the coal fields. At the foot of the mountain ranges, which .• wall it on the • southwestern side, is anoth- : er bordering'^ belt of brown ores, and be- tween them the marbles, limestones, clays, and other min- erals. South- east of the valley there is another strip of almost equal area of very high mountainous country, ranging from two thousand to sixty, five hundred feet above sea level, very heavily timbered, full of water power, and rich in slates, fine clays, the crystalline marbles, mag- netic and specular (Bessemer) ores, copper, talc, mica, corundum, and other minerals. The wealth of iron matches the wealth of coal. Everywhere, from one end of this region to the other, its interdependent resources, lying in parallel strips, are connected by natural channels worn by innumerable interlacing streams. Upon this field has been made the remarkable develop- ment of the South in the past decade, but what has been done has been but the faint scratching ■r'^J! on the outcrop. Around this great mound of wealth piled up in the center of the South, form- ing a natural workshop and a maga- zine of resources twenty times as great as Great Britain's, lies more than half a million square miles of rich, fertile lands. "This mountain region alone can furnish permanent employment, when fully developed, for a population twice as great as that of the United States to-day. Standing alone it has combined wealth of soil, climate, minerals, forests and dynamic forces, to sustain and em- ploy a dense population, incomparably greater than the resources of any other region of like area. Its own powers are increased by the varied resources of the Southern and Central Northern States surrounding it. With a popu- lation as dense as that of Massachusetts it would contain about twenty-eight millions of people. As dense as that of England and Wales, fifty millions. Compared with Belgium, fifty-three millions. With Saxony, fifty-five millions. The relative inferiority of natural foundation in the countries named will suggest itself to every mind. About it, on all sides, is a country need- ing the surplus wealth which such population could produce, and able to give back products needed in exchange. The only limit to the growth of wealth, whether in its amount or the rapidity with which it can be created, is the profitable exchange of surplus products between people employed in different work. Distance is the friction — the lost power — of commerce. The nearer to each other that various resources _i^at^^^ /if i can be worked up for exchange, the smaller the loss. Compact growth is con- centrated work. With the prox- imity of inexhaustible interde- pendent resources which Nature has given to the South, it has the greatest advantage over the Old World countries, hampered by the long haul of food products and raw materials. They will be less and less competitors as Southern foundations are per- fected and industries established. Here, then, is a field for profitable work and investment governed only by the one plain and inflexible law of permanent growth — symmetry. Com- pared with it, in magnitude of advantages any other field in the world is small." AGRICULTURE. The Southland has ever been strong agri- culturally, and even before i860, with only one- third of the population of the United States, it produced more than one-half the farm products of the entire nation. Nature has endowed it with lavish hand in the requisites precedent to successful agrarian development. Its climate is as near perfection as it is possible to attain. Its soil is of such varied constituency that intelli- gent cultivation makes it possible to produce a variety and wealth of crops unequaled anywhere in the world. It invites the farmer, the planter, stockman, dairyman, truck gardener and florist, and offers the promise of a generous reward for the labor bestowed. There need be no elbowing for room in the South. No re- view of what the South has accom- plished in the past and of her pres- ent cond tion in agricul- ture, pure and simple, would be just without taking into se- rious consideration the conditions which have operated against her. For many years wealth and the brawn and mus- cle of Eastern States, as well as a large percentage of the and products, and marketable fruits and vegetables. She has a generous soil, a kindly sun, balmy air and plenteous showers, excellent transportation facilities by water and rail, good homes and nearby outside markets. What else could be needed to make a successful agricultural region. The garden-truck industry, which employs an army of laborers, stretches from the Chesapeake to the Gulf, and has grown to such propor- tions that it affects commerce and transportation, and the Southern States last season, after supplying the home demand, shipped vegetables and small fruits north to the value of over $15,000,000. The fruit-growing industry has been the coiinter- part of truck gardening in rapid develop- ment, and the few isolated vineyards and orchards of a score of years ago have grown into enormous acreage under prof- itable cultivation. The Honorable Charles W. Dabney, formerly Assistant Secretary of Agriculture for the United States, and now President of the Univer- sity of Tennessee, admirably sums up the agricultural advan- tages of the South in its cli- matic aspect. After stating that climate is as much a re- source of any section as its minerals or soil, he adds: " We have in the South- States, owing to the existence of all the important life- zones in broad immigration from foreign shores, have poured into the West, peopled its States and built its towns and cities. Thousands passed her greater oppor- tunities by to fight out a sterner ex- istence in the prairie States. It has only been during a comparatively recent period that the tide of settlement has turned southward. What, therefore, has been accomplished has been mainly the result of the energy of her own people, without the added stim ulus of increased capital and wholesome competition.. But she is fast learning the wisdom of diversified crops. It is true the South produces all the rice and cotton grown in this country, as well as seventy- five per cent, of all the tobacco and ninety-three per cent, of the sugar, and a large proportion of the corn, but she has found out that she can successfully grow wheat and a great variety of other forms of cereals belts running down the east and up the west side of the Allegha- nies, a coun- try capa- ble of producing the greatest variety of agricultural and horticultural products — all those, in fact, belonging to the temperate zone, reaching from apples to oranges, from barley to rice. "The Southern farmer has from sixty to ninety days more in each year in which to work, and during which the sun is working for him, than his Northern countryman. "While this is true, we have a climate of great equability — not subject to the extremes of either heat or cold. Neither hot waves nor blizzards occur so frequently in the Southeastern States as they do in other sections of our coun- try. The rainfall is as abundant as in the most favored lands on the globe, and is well distributed throughout the growing season, giving sufficient moisture to growing crops even in the warmest months when their demands are greatest. Gen- eral droughts are rare, and hot winds are not known." No region in the world offers the large or small farmer better opportunities for a competency than the South, and a study of the statistics of the various States shows the tremendous progress being made in agricultural development. There are thousands of broad acres along the line of the Southern Railway awaiting intelligent development and cul- tivation. As demonstrating this fact the most recent authentic statistics give the following figures showing the population per square mile in the countries of the world, compared to the Southern States : Germany 237 Bavaria 1 89 Prussia 223 Baden 285 Saxony 606 Belgium 541 Netherlands 379 Great Britain and Ire- land 315 Italy 270 Austria-Hungary 171 France iSS Russian Poland 168 Denmark 148 Greece 88 Turkey in Europe 80 Russia in Europe (ex- cept Poland) 52 United States of Amer- 21 9 ica The Southern States The area of the German Empire is 211,108 square miles, a little more than one-fourth as great as that of the South. Its population is 49,421,064. If the South were as densely settled it would have more than 190,000,000 people. Austria- Hungary has an area of 201,591 sqiiare miles, and its population is 41,827,700. With the same number of people to the square mile the South would have 169,000,000. The area of the united kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland is 120,973 square miles, and its population is now more than 38,000,000. If the South were as densely settled it would have 256,000,000 inhabitants. The kingdom of Italy embraces an area of 110,665 square miles, and its population is 29,699,000. If the South had as many people to the square mile its inhabitants would number 219,000,000. The area of the Netherlands is 12,680 square miles; the population is 4,450,870. If the South were as densely populated it would have 287,000,000 people living within its bor- ders. Belgium has an area of 1 1,373 square miles, and its population is 6,030,043. If the South had as many people to the square mile as •>^-_ Belgium its population would be more than 430,000,000. These figures, however, are likely to be changed during the next decade so far as they relate to the South at least, for the march of emigration is making a wide sweep toward milder climates, and men and women are fleeing from regions of half winter half summer to a more equable zone. They are beginning to dis- cover that it is an immense waste of energy and money to spend so large a proportion of their time in the mere effort to keep warm and com- fortable, when they may have that condition for nothing. To the man of limited means no section holds forth such favorable inducements. Lands are low in price and transportation facilities are of the best. All the grain and vegetable THE NANTAHALLA RIVER — LAND OV THE SKY products that will grow in the West grow much more abundantly in the South, and there is a wide range of products that are indigenous to the South that can only be raised there and cannot be transplanted to the higher latitudes. Rates of living are cheaper than in any other section, because of the mild climate, requiring less fuel, and the greater variety of products available for supplying the necessities of the family. Of the families owning farms, the percentage owning subject to incumbrance, the average incumbrance and the average interest charge are shown in the following table for the whole country and for several Southern States: Farms Occupied by their Owners, which ARE Incumbered. Average Average int. Percentage, incumbrance. charge. United States.. . 28. 22 $1,224 $87 Alabama 4.35 609 54 Georgia 3.38 681 57 Kentucky 4.06 i,o6g 71 Mississippi 7.70 6ig 61 Nortli Carolina.. 4.S8 722 57 South Carolina. . 8.00 930 80 Tennessee 3.21 667 41 Virginia 3.16 1,308 79 The logic of the agricultural situation is, therefore, that as a class the Southern farmer has the better end of the financial proposition. The man now living on a rented farm in the overcrowded portions of the North or West has great difificulty in getting a "farm of his own," while if he goes South it is within the power of almost every one to secure a place and be in position to build up and enjoy a home, leaving something for his children to inherit. This is emphasized by the official figures, which show that in the nine seaboard Northern States, with a population of 105 to the square mile, and with 51.81 per cent, of the population urban, there is one pauper for every 559 inhabitants. In the eight seaboard Southern States, with a density of 33, and with 16.03 P^r cent, of the population urban, there is one pauper for every 1,093, The vast movements in industrial and mining operations in the South have to a great extent overshadowed the quieter agri- cultural pursuits, but, nevertheless, tremen- dous strides were made, as will be seen by the following comparative figures : 1880. i8g7. Farms 1,726,480 2,562,127 Acres under crops 54,679,145 93,611,017 Value of all farm products.$6ii,69g,i45 $1,006,476,800 Number of live stock. . . 39,448,360 53,211,613 Value $360,066,883 $516,872,714 It is little understood among emigrants that the South presents advantages far supe- rior to those of the great West. The climate is much better ; the number of towns spring- ing up all over the South bring in their train nearer markets and better prices; the soil and seasons are so admirable that crop failures are rare; the farmer can raise a greater variety of products with the certainty that he can find profitable and convenient markets for them. The small farmer in the South is immensely better situated than one of similar circumstan- ces in the West, and the pos- sibilities in grain-growing in the South were illustrated recently when a South Carolina farmer won the prize offered by the A merican Agriculturist for the largest yield of corn per acre, in competition with the most progressive farmers in every sec- tion of nearly every State in the Union. Th.& Manufacturers' Record, of Baltimore, has shown that the South's population-supporting power has scarcely been trenched upon. Accord- ing to the figures, it is possible for the Southern States alone to support a population of upward of 88,000,000 of souls, basing the estimate upon conditions existing in Pennsylvania to-day. The latest census statistics, however, show that not one of the Southern States, with the excep- tion of Maryland, is populated to the extent of one-fifth of the density of Massachusetts or Rhode Island. Under the circumstances, it will at once be perceived that the fear of over- crowding the South is groundless. The South can stand an immense tide of immigration and yet its power of absorp- tion will remain compar- atively unimpaired. The farmer will participate most largely in the pros- business. Nearly every portion of the South- land is well watered and produces nutritious grasses in abundance. Certain sections, as in Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky and Georgia, have long been famous for the quality of the cattle and horses produced, but as a whole the stock-raising interests of the South are still undeveloped and offer the greatest opportunity for capital and enterprise. MANUFACTURING. The manufacturing interests of the South are by no means confined to iron, steel and cotton, although these are entitled to first rank. The practi- cally unlimited water power of the hundreds of streams affords a wealth of opportunities for suc- cessful establishments. The great altitude of the mountain regions above the lower perity that will follow. Already he is finding out the value of the "intensive system" of farming, which by high manuring produces more on a single acre than he formerly got from four, and he has also begun to feel the beneficial effects of the great indus- trial population which he is called upon to sup- ply with the products of his farm. As that class increases in numbers the demands made for farm products will increase accordingly, and thus prosperity of the one will react upon the other, and the whole section will be benefited. All the advantages which make in favor of agriculture in the South apply with equal force to its allied industry, the dairy and stock-raising lands, both to the east and west, develops an almost unlim- ited natural power, which may be used either direct or transmitted, as is now done success- fully at many places along the Southern Rail- way, by electricity. Along the James, Rappa- hannock and Dan Rivers in Virginia; the Cape Fear, Catawba, Broad, Yadkin and Santee in the' Carolinas; the Savannah and other rivers in Georgia; the Chattahoochee, Coosa, Talla- poosa and others in Alabama; the Tennessee, Holston, Cumberland, Pigeon and other rivers in Tennessee; the Kentucky and others in Kentucky, and many other streams, there are hundreds of undeveloped sites for the utilization of this enormous power. No other section of the countr)' has such a wealth of opportunities for varied manufacturing at the minimum of cost. Labor is cheap and strikes un- known, power may be had at nominal cost, and raw materials exist in prodigal abundance almost at the door of the factory. To enumerate the variety of products manufactured in the .South would be to make a list covering nearly all the needs and uses of mankind, but the great increase in value of manufactured products from $315,924,794 in 1880 to $760,425,300 in 1897 tells an eloquent story of progress. With raw materials close at hand, and the additional advantages of cheap power and competent labor, with a ready home market and unexcelled transportation offered by the Southern Rail- way to the centers of wholesale foreign and domestic trade, there is no doubt but that the South is admirably adapted to compete suc- cessfully with any section of the country. COTTON. Cotton has been the great staple of the South for a hundred years, and such it will doubtless continue to be through the coming century. This is simply saying that the causes for cotton's leadership in the nineteenth century will be operative in the twentieth. As these causes are climate and civilization, to doubt their continu- ance would be like placing a time limit on the law of gravitation. Climate produces the supply of cotton; civilization creates the demand; together they constitute the factors of the leading ele- ment of Southern prosperity. The cotton production of the South for the year ending August 31, 1897, as estimated by Mr. Henry G. Hester, Secre- tary of the New Orleans Cotton Exchange, was 8,757.964 bales, and the value of the crop $321,- 924,834. Forthe past six years the commercial crop has been as follows : Bales. Value. ■9."35, 379 $338,826,712 .6,700,365 234,765,512 1891-92. 1892-93. 1893-94. 1S94-95. 1895-96. 1896-97, • 7,549,817 .9,901,251 ■7,137.346 *8,757,964 283,118,137 297,037,530 294,093,347 321,924,834 * The crop grown in 1807 (mar- keted in 18Q7-98) is estiniaied at 11,- 000,000 bales. The total production for these six years has been 49, 102, 1 1 2 bales, and the value has reached the stupendous aggregate of $1,819,768,072. This does not include the value of the cotton seed, which as at present utilized adds $35,000,000 annually to the resources of the South, The growing number of cotton-seed oil mills, which increased from twenty-five in 1870 to almost three hundred in 1897, is every year changing a constantly enlarging proportion of this potential value into actual value. To every bale of 500 pounds there are generally about 800 pounds of seed, and a ton of this seed yields about thirty- five gallons of oil, valued at forty to fifty cents per. gallon. This part of the industry has sprung into existence only in the past ten years, but it is already an enormous business. In 1889 the export of cotton-seed oil amounted to 6, 250,000 gallons, and in the next year it reached 14,324,000 gallons. In 1896 over 1,200,000 tons of cotton seed were crushed and about 42,060,000 gallons of oil were obtained. Besides furnishing oil, the cotton seed, after it has been crushed, supplies the cattle with good food in the form of meal and cake, which is claimed to be only a little less nourishing than corn. Of the world's cotton four-fifths is produced in the Southern States. For the year ending June 30, 1897, they exported 6,176,365 bales, having a value of $230,890,971. Their produc- tive capacity is limited only by demand, and the latter is dependent on the progress of civiliza- tion. Every sav- age won to the ways of light means another consumer of cot- ton. To be sure, his immediate wants are slight, very likely but a sack with holes in it for head and arms. But he marks the beginning of a line of shirt wearers. His descendants will want six apiece with starched bosoms. So the demand for cotton grows with enlightenment the world over. Edward Atkinson has estimated that it would require a crop of fifty million bales to raise the world's standard of consumption to the present standard of the principal nations. At the present rate of increase in the world's con- sumption there will be by 1920 a demand on the South for sixteen million bales annually, nearly double her present production. At the existing per capita production — about three hundred pounds — the cotton States will require a popu- lation of 26,600,000 to supply the demand of 1920. This means that the South must add eleven million to her population in the next twenty years in order to produce the raw cotton that the world will need. It will be interesting to look for a moment from what the coming years ask the South to do, to what the past years have actually seen her do. In the past will be found an earnest for the future. During the thirty-two years preceding 1897 the South produced cotton aggregating in value $8,999,403,391. How vast this sum is can be best shown by comparison. The world's production of gold for five hundred years, from 1380 to 1880, was $7,240,000,000, which is $1,759,403,391 less than the value of cotton the South produced in thirty-two years. How like a romance these figures read! What a story they tell of material progress and development ! The voyage for the golden fleece seems more probable; but fact is ever stranger than fiction. In producing this vast aggregate of value the South has barely indicated what she is capable of doing. The United States Depart- ment of Agriculture is authority for the state- ment that, so far as climatic conditions and soil are concerned, there is no limit to the amount of cotton that can be produced by the South until the annual crop is at least ten times what it is at present. If progress be continued in the way of more careful farming, as it doubt- less will be, having proved highly profitable, even this estimate will not bound the limit of production. As to the cost of raising cotton, and the many economies experience has taught, much will be found in the succeeding chapters devoted to the various States. In what has thus far been said, cotton has been considered only as a raw material, but when it leaves the field it has only begun its beneficent mission in the world. From the gin it goes to the railway, the factory, the store, the consumer. Besides the army of cotton pickers, the new crop gives employment to thousands of sailors, captains of steamers and trading vessels, merchants and their clerks, truckmen in the city, and lightermen and long- shoremen, and many others. It is estimated that before the cot- ton reaches the cotton factories it has given employ- ment to nearly 300,000 people in Europe and this country, and that it costs from fifty to sixty millions to harvest a crop. Until recent years the South has con- tented herself with the production of the raw material. Now she is paying much heed to its manufacture. She has learned that the fabrication of raw materials close to the place of pro- duction helps to create that variety in industry which makes a country populous and rich. But the South has not been alone in her learning; the Northern cotton manufac- turer has learned that a factory near a cotton field, where he can have cheap coal, cheap labor, and cheap cotton, as he can have in the South, means a decrease in the cost of produc- tion and an increase in profits. This knowledge has resulted in the cotton factories of the South increasing from almost nothing forty years ago to 482 to-day, with 3,851,991 spindles, and representing an investment of $125,000,000. Seventy per cent, of these humming spindles that are transforming the South into a mighty industrial center are in the immediate territory traversed by the Southern Railway and its branches, as are 66,561 of the 90,168 looms of the South. That there is no danger of overdoing the cotton manufacturing business of the South may be seen from the fact that there are in the world about 85,000,000 spindles, representing an investment of about $2,000,000,000, and of this vast industry the United States has a little more than one-fifth in capital invested, or more than $400,- 000,000, and only about one -fifth of the total number of spindles, or 17,300,- 000, notwithstand- ing the fact that the South produces eighty per cent, of the world's cotton crop. It is a note- worthy fact that while the spindles at work in the United States have increased from 10,- 679,000 in 1880 to 17,300,000 in 1897, the spindles in the South have in- creased from 584,- 000 to 3,851,991 in the same period. For one hundred years the South has been raising the cotton, shipping it to New England and to Europe, and permitting the manu- facturers to grow rich by turning it into the finished product. As shown, there is practically no limit to the power available for mill purposes, and there is no limit to the cotton available, and as New England can employ 1 4,000,000 spindles, the continent of Europe 27,000,000 and England 45,000,000, there is noreason why the mills in the South should not continue to multiply for many years to come. Of all the vast wealth of material with which the South has been so abundantly blessed there is no other element, not even iron, equal to cotton in its possibili- ties of wealth creation for this section. The $300,000,000 a year which the cotton crop brings to the South would be trebled if it could be man- ufactured at home. , 4' The consumption for 1897 of the 482 Southern cotton mills was 1,042,671 bales, an increase of '37>97° bales over the preceding year. This was double the consumption of Southern mills in 1890, the consumption of Northern mills remaining almost stationary. While the in- crease in the number of spindles in Southern mills from 667,000 in 1880 to nearly 4,000,000 in 1897 was taking place, the increase in the rest of the country was from 9,986,000 to 13,000,000, the gain in the South being about five hundred per cent, and in the whole country outside of the South about thirty per cent. In 1880 the South had one-fifteenth of the number of spindles in the country; now it has nearly one- fourth of the number. Nothing could illustrate in a more striking way the shift that is being made in the seat of American cotton manufac- ture from North to South than do these deeply significant comparisons. As Secretary Hester of the New Orleans Cotton Exchange says in his 1897 report: " The inevitable result of the sharp competition between the North and South will be the certain and steady removal of the cotton manufacturing industry nearer to the source of production of the raw material, as it is but natural that cotton mills should be erected near cotton fields as flour mills are built in wheat- producing sections.' It is an economic struggle, with the odds in favor of the South, and the superiority of capital with the North. The final outcome is certain. The natural protection of location must in the end triumph over the con- stant drain necessary to maintain competition under less favorable conditions. This, in fact, is a truism, and the statement is made in no sectional spirit, but as a self-evident proposition. " In the very center of the Northern mill industry. Fall River, Mass., Mr. Joseph Healey, a far-sighted New England manufacturer, said recently that in the item of labor cost alone the South had an advantage of twenty- five to forty per cent, over New England. A recent report made by a committee of the Ark- wright Club of Boston upon the conditions of Southern competition in cotton manufacturing, and the best practical mode of meeting it, says: " The vSoutherner finds that with the advantage he possesses he can make these goods at a cost which will allow him to undersell our mills and still leave him a margin of profit which is suffi- cient to induce the investment of capital. And now, what are these advantages ? First, that cotton is conveniently near and that freight on it can be saved; second, that water power is abundant if you care to utilize it, and that coal is cheap if you prefer to run by steam; third, that labor is abundant and cheap and not in- clined to organize against the employers; fourth, that the enactment of restrictive labor laws is not liable to trouble manufacturers for many years. " And Edward Atkinson gave the weight of his great authority to the following statement, in a report for the United States Census, show- ing that New England mills, in cotton manu- facture, had an advantage of $3.50 per bale over the mills of Great Britain: "It may be said that this proves too much, and that the cotton spinners of the Southern States will have the same relative advantage over New England. Let this be freely admitted. If Georgia and the Carolinas have twice the advantage over Lancashire that New England now possesses, it will only be the fault of the people of these States if they do not reap the benefit of it. " That they have marked advantages New England no longer denies ; that they are reaping the benefit of them all the world knows. Some of the determining factors in the movement of the great cotton industry to the South are : Abundant and cheap water power and coal. An abundant supply of native American operatives. Low labor cost because of low cost of living. Cotton supply immediately at hand. Cheap and abundant transportation to the markets of the world. These advantages must inevitably draw the factories to the cotton fields. To say that the South will meet the world's increasing needs, not with bales of cotton, but with bolts of cloth, is merely to say that effect will follow cause. IRON. In the making of iron the South has eas- ily the advantage of any other portion of the United States. Her rapid development in this direction has been the phenomenon of the commercial world during the last decade. Not only has she compelled recog- nition in the markets of this country, but she is now shipping large amounts of foun- dry iron of the highest quality to Europe, South America and India. Shipments of enormous quantities to Japan, where 5,000 tons recently went in a single week, signify that the limits of her trade are to be confined only to the bounds of civili- zation itself. When Alabama can undersell English iron four dollars per ton, and make money for the producers, and can underbid Pennsylvania and Ohio furnaces and sell iron under their very eaves, the future of this Southern industry is in a good condition to take care of itself. The history of iron-making in the South can practically be covered by a span of the last twenty years. The most striking progress has been made during the last decade. Up to 1870 the industry south of the Ohio and Potomac rivers was limited to a few charcoal blast furnaces in Tennessee, Virginia and the Caro- linas. The annual output may have reached to 75,000 tons in the best years, or less by twenty- five per cent, than the amount shipped to Europe alone from the South the past year. A month's output of any of the modern furnaces in Alabama would more than equal the year's production of the best of those earlier plants. In the beginnings of the early-day development Northern ironmasters were loath to believe that any serious competition would result from the introduction of Southern iron on the market. They prophesied that the industry could not last sufficiently long to become a disturbing element in the market. How much of a factor it has developed into may be gained from the statistics which show that in 1870 the South made six per cent, of the whole country's product of pig iron ; in 1880 fourteen per cent. ; in 1890 sixteen per cent., and in 1896, out of the total aggregate of pig iron produced, the South made 1,850,000 tons, or over twenty per cent. In 1870 the South had $4,516,710 invested in the iron business; in 1897 over §30,000,000, producing an output for the year of 2,250,000 gross tons. Only three European countries make more pig iron than the South — Great Britain, Germany and France. The South is now far in the lead of Austria - Hungary, CHIMNEY ROCK — LAND Ul' THE SKY Belgium, Russia and Sweden. As showing the advantages of the home market, it may be stated that the consumption of iron in the United States annually is 320 pounds for each inhabitant, 280 pounds in Great Britain, 205 pounds in Germany and 186 pounds in France. There were mined in Ala- bama alone last year over 2,000,000 tons of iron ore, and this State is now the third in the Union in the production of iron ore, and the fourth in the manufacture of pig iron. Michigan and Minnesota only sur- pass her ore product, and Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois in pig-iron output. Ala- bama, east Tennessee and Georgia have not only ore but vast beds of coking coal and of limestone in the same localities, and in prodigal quanti- ties. Of late the production of basic pig iron for steel by the open-hearth method has been increasing in Ala- bama, and so great an impetus has been given to the steel- making industry by the success already attained, that great progress will undoubtedly be made during the next few years. There have been es- tablished a great many foundries, rolling mills, stove works and manufactories along the line of the Southern Railway, using Southern iron exclusively, for while it was formerly supposed that no product could supplant "Scotch pig" for smooth castings, it has been successfully demonstrated that Alabama iron is its equal in every particular, and the foreign product has practically been driven from the markets. The Southern foundry trade is a large item in the list of her industries. It has grown rapidly since 1880, especially in gas and water pipe production, planes, and castings for engi- neering. No statistics of the melting capacity as a whole are obtainable, but good judges place the consumption of pig and scrap iron in these concerns at more than 600,000 tons annually. The largest tonnage goes into pipes and stoves, with agricultural implements and machines second. The most extensive works of this character are at Richmond, Chattanooga, Louisville, Birmingham, and Columbus, Ga. The furnace "practice" in the South, according to an eminent author- ity, is equal, for obtaining the best results and economizing expenses, to . that of the leading regions of Pennsyl- vania and Ohio. The superior con- struction of stacks, more complete utilization of heat, etc., enables Southern masters to make more iron than they made ten years ago, though they now operate fewer plants than they did then. Southern iron furnaces have been running full time when those of the North and West have been shut down from time to time. The reason for this is that the Southern furnaces, as a rule, are most economically situa- ted as regards their supply of coke, ore and limestone. Northern and West- ern furnaces buy their ore from the Lakes and their coke from Connellsville or Pocahontas. The Southern furnaces own their coal mines, coke ovens, ore mines and limestone quarries, and themselves mine all their raw material. They pay no profits to coal miners, ore miners or coke makers. They have also another advantage. While the Northern furnaceman ships his ore from the Lakes to Pennsylvania, and the Western fur- naceman ships his coke from Connellsville or Pocahontas, in either event at a great cost for transportation, the Southern furnaceman mines all his coal, ore and limestone, and makes his own coke, within a radius of less than ten miles from the furnace. All the raw materials are found in the valleys together — the coal on one side, the ore on the other side, and the limestone between the two, frequently not more than four miles from the coal to the ore. Hence Southern iron can be exported at good profit, while the Northern and Western iron cannot. It costs from $3 to $4 less to make a ton of pig iron in the South than it does in the most favored dis- tricts of the North and West. COAL. Mining in the South, not- withstanding the enormous production, is as yet practically in its infancy, and the extent of the coal fields and the magni- tude of their possible produc- tion are but dim- ly appreciated. It has been esti- mated that the area of profitable production of the coal fields of the South is over four and one-half times that of Great Britain, while the coal is all of excellent quality. The importance and value of this coal region is greatly increased owing to its close proximity to the ores and lime- stones entering into the production of pig iron. The coal has, hoTvever, outside of this use, other possibilities. The Southern Railway is shipping coal to Brunswick, there to be distributed to Europe, Mexico, South America and India. When the immense coast that can be cheaply reached is considered, and the fine Mexican and South American trade that lies all undeveloped and waiting, it will be perceived that the great coal treasures of the South can find a ready market — a market the greatness of which at the present time the most sanguine of Southern enthusiasts scarcely realizes. In 1880 the Southern States mined 3,756, 144 tons, while in 1896 there were mined in five States alone, all reached by the Southern Rail- way, 13,238,547 tons, valued at $10,973,277, as shown by the following table: 1S87. 1S89. 1892. 1896. Virginia 795.263 §16,375 637,986 1,254.723 Kentucky l,933.iS5 2,399,755 1,231.110 3.333,478 Tennessee i,900,a)o 1,967,297 2,092,064 2,663,106 Georgia 313.715 180,000 215,498 238,546 Alabama 1,950,000 2,900,000 5.529,312 5,748,696 Total 6,892,163 8,263,427 9,705,970 13,238,549 Coincident with the coal-mining industry is that of the manufacture of coke, and an article on the coal interests of a section would be incomplete without a mention of the sister and dependent indus- try — the manu- j'._^ facture of coke. '•Mu'-' jj^ j.}^jg respect ■#■ the Southern States have made strides equal to, if not exceeding, the remarkable de- velopment of ' ^ their coal mines. ,,\