South Improvement Company

“ Contracts to this effect, giving the South Improvement Company the sole right for five years to do business between the oil wells and the rest of the world, were made with it by the Erie, the New York Central, the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern, the Pennsylvania, the Atlantic and Great Western, and their connections, thus controlling the industry north, south, east, west, and abroad. The contracts in every case bound all the roads owned or leased by the railroads concerned. ”

“ The Big Stone Gap Improvement Company has the city and its site in charge; it is a consolidation of the various interests of railway companies and heavy capitalists, who have purchased the land. The money and the character of the men behind the enterprise insure a vigorous prosecution of it. On the west side of the river are the depot and switching-grounds which the several railways have reserved for their use, and here also are to be the furnaces and shops. When the city outgrows its present site it can extend up valleys in several directions. ”

“ Scientific improvement of industrial methods is the only sure and safe road to permanent prosperity, and it would not seem that the South has much to fear when the great bulk of the most prosperous industry in Christendom is being conducted under more or less advanced forms of factory regulation. Furthermore, nobody need or ought to urge legislation as the remedy on the ground that Southern manufacturers are all indifferent and inhumane. Legislation is urged simply because it is the most uniform and least costly method the South could of its own accord adopt. ”

“ August Kohn, in Columbia, who is himself a broker and the historian of the South Carolina mills, while recognizing the fact of these shortcomings in Southerners, as obtaining in the past and yet not overcome, held out a more hopeful view for the future: "Lack of capital and lack of trained management have been the great difficulties where mills have failed. We are developing management of the trained sort in experience and in the improvement in the business tone of our people." ”

“ The men who invest these vast amounts in the South are interested in the general development of the section into which they have gone with their enterprise, and they readily double any local subscription for any legitimate local improvement. By the sale of these railroad properties to Northern syndicates at advanced prices the local stockholders have realized heavily in cash, and this surplus is seeking manufacturing investment. The prospect is that the next ten years will witness a growth in this direction beyond what even the most sanguine predict. ”

“ In business the South is developing a body of modern [Pg 63] go-ahead men who are alive to the needs of improvement in business methods, who adopt the latest machinery, seek to economize in processes, and have built up a stable and remarkably well-knit commercial system. The South before the war had many safe banks, and no state in the Union enjoyed a better banking law than Louisiana. All that capital was swept away by the Civil War, and for twenty years was not replaced, outside the cities; now little banks are springing up at small railroad stations, and in remote little county seats ”

“ As the construction of new mills went on, the temper of the South Atlantic States began to change. The people began to believe in Southern industrial development and to be eager to invest their savings in something other than a land mortgage. An instalment plan by which the savings of the people, small individually but large in the aggregate, were united, furnished capital for mills in scores of towns and villages. In 1890 there were nearly a million and three-quarters spindles in the South compared with less than six hundred thousand ten years before. ”

“ Surely a new era of industrial development has come to the South. Nothing should be permitted to check or retard it. To her nature has been most prodigal with her gifts. Her hills and valleys have been made the storehouses of richest treasure. Coal and iron mines wait impatiently the touch of labor and capital, and tempt both with the promise of lavish profit. ”

“ She is self-contained, and what is more, she is self-possessed, and she has set her face resolutely against the things which will hurt her.” Since that statement was printed the material conditions of the South have improved, population has steadily increased; and the resources of the section have more than kept pace with it, manufactures have wonderfully developed, industry has been diversified, railroads and trolley lines are extended by Southern capital; the production of coal has been enormously increased ”

“ In general, it attracts capital into the South to engage in mining and manufacturing; it keeps money at home; it builds up home markets; it develops natural resources; it quickens the inventive genius of the nation, and it diversifies industries, and [Pg 129] so provides occupations adapted to the various talents of different persons. This last is what the South needs more, in proportion, than any other section of the Union. Diversity of occupation, like diversity of crops, is essential to the realization of the best results. In many cases the most expert mechanics would make inferior farmers. ”

“ It is not only skilled, law-abiding laborers that are necessary to the South’s industrial success, but it is first of all necessary that employers be enlightened and abreast of the times in order that they may see clearly what their rivals are doing and what the markets of the world require. ”

“ On the industrial side there is pressing need of institutions of technology, of schools of applied science, for the diffusion of technical information and skill in regard to mining and manufacturing, and also to agriculture, so that worn-out lands may be reclaimed and good lands be kept up to the highest point of production. Neither mines, forests, quarries, water-ways, nor textile fabrics can be handled to best advantage without scientific knowledge and skilled labor. The South is everywhere demanding these aids to her industrial development. ”

“ More than three-fourths of the capital invested in the cotton mills since the war has been subscribed by our own people, and new enterprises are opening up the way to a proud and successful future. The Southern investment encourages Northern capital to come into the same field, and the rate of progress is far more rapid than if it depended on either Southern savings or Northern capital alone. ”

“ They have not only contributed liberally by personal investment, but they have used every honorable endeavor to influence other men to do likewise. Loyalty has stimulated their efforts. Their hearts are in the present and prospective glory of the New South. They are untiring in their furtherance of legitimate enterprises, and the fruit of their labor is seen to-day in every Southern State where new railroads are building, various manufacturing enterprises springing up, and vast mining interests being developed. ”

“ The birthday of Henry B. Plant, head of the Plant Railway System and of the Southern Express Company, was yesterday celebrated in fine and appropriate style at the Atlanta Exposition. It was Plant System Day. Mr. Plant deserves such recognition. He has done much for the South, the section of his adoption. He has brought a great deal of capital and enterprise into the section, and built up important conveniences that have proven highly profitable to the Southern country and people. No one man has done more for the advancement of the South’s material development. ”

“ If the organization of this manufacturing company (the Enterprise Factory, Augusta, Georgia, which was to be greatly enlarged after making good profits) proves a good omen—its extension may work as an invaluable stimulus to other enterprises now. It will hurry up the walls of the stupendous Sibley Mill, where 25,000 spindles will soon mingle in our industrial acclaim. It will quicken the shuttles of that giant corporation, the Augusta Factory. ”

“ Substantial progress has already been made in the building up of secondary manufacturing along some lines, and I believe that the most noteworthy progress of southern industrial development in the immediate future will be in this direction, carrying with it an increase in the volume of primary manufacturing through broadening the market for its products.
One of the most valuable of the natural resources of the South is its timber. It is also a resource of which the intelligent conservation will benefit, directly and indirectly, the largest number of people. ”

“ So great is this material development and so great the consequent demand for transportation facilities, that every railway in the South may well need double tracking, while to keep pace with the South’s present rate of progress, thousands of miles of new railways will have to be constructed every year for many years to come. The South should therefore continue to encourage capital no less than immigration, on a scale extensive enough to meet all its legitimate requirements. ”

“ At the present time, when much is said about the industrial development of the South, there is danger of following the crowd whose ideals are not the highest. The popular cry is for a rejuvenated South, a South with prosperous mills and factories, and the Negro with it. The Association has wisely kept out of this, and yet has done more than any other organization toward the industrial independence of the people. ”

“ When outside influences came in—commission and machinery men—new and difficult problems had to be faced. The factories were assuming the physical proportions which they were bound to assume, and which it was right they should assume, but they ran ahead of the development in the textile industry, and in the South of expertness of management, business resourcefulness and economic outlook. The spirit could not keep up with the flesh, and the mind lagged behind the body. ”

“ The Northwestern states have more manufactures than the Southern, but they have more of everything, which indicates industry and prosperity. The obvious reason is that laborers in the South, both white and colored, are inferior in average productive power to Northern laborers; and the obvious remedy is to use every effort to bring up the intelligence, and the value to the community of every element of the population. ”

“ It is at once mortifying and alarming, to see and reflect on our own dependence in the mechanic arts and manufactures, on strangers and foreigners. In the Northern States their highest talents and energy have been diversified, and more profitably employed in developing the resources of the country, in making new inventions in the mechanic arts, and enriching the community with science and literature, commerce and manufactures. ”

“ But the organization of labor and the advancement of wages will do more than any other one thing to lend confidence to those who are looking to the South as a field for investment. The Northern capitalist and investor cannot be made to believe that labor as good and efficient as Northern labor will remain unorganized and render its service for one-third or one-half of what the Northern workman receives. Nor does the Southern worker have the same incentive to the high efficiency reached by the Northern workman. ”

“ Its perils are braved and its evils endured by those who cherish it, hundreds of miles away; while to us it is a positive advantage. By obstructing the mechanical and manufacturing development of the South, it dooms her products, her commerce, her navigation, to build up Northern marts and factories; by its restriction of Southern industry mainly to the plantation, it opens broad avenues for the disposal of our wares. ”

“ Not only did some Northern corporations build branch mills in the South, but a considerable amount of Northern capital was invested in mills 95 under the management of Southern men. It is of course impossible to discover the residence of every stockholder, but enough is known to support the assertion that the proportion of Northern capital is comparatively small. The greater part of the investment in Southern mills has come from the savings of Southern people or has been earned by the mills themselves. ”

“ In the Northern and in some of the Border States, a different industrial policy has been pursued. Diversified occupation has raised up skilled labor in nearly every branch of industry. Notwithstanding the greater rigor of climate, adult labor on the average, under full and compensated employment, performs nearly three hundred solid days' work in the year. The eight millions of white population in the South, in consequence of this want of profitable occupation, perform much less, perhaps not one hundred and fifty days' work on the average. ”

“ But there is no article of household-furniture or wearing apparel, used by persons of moderate means among us, which they will not purchase, when they are allowed the opportunity of labor and earning wages. What a market the South would open under the new system! It would set all the mills and workshops astir. Four millions of people would become purchasers of all the various articles of manufacture and commerce, in place of the few coarse, simple necessaries, laid in for them in gross by the planters. Here is the solution of the vexed industrial question. ”

“ Such men as Gould, Vanderbilt and Plant have invested millions of dollars in our railroads, manufactories and other enterprises, and have been remunerated in the face of a 'Solid South and a Solid North'. It is useless to say that millions have been driven off from like investments on account of personal whims and jealousies among prominent politicians in both parties. Can the South afford to remain solid? This is the great question of the day, and it can be answered in the negative.... We want all the capital possible to develop our hidden and inexhaustible resources.... ”

“ The South is manufacturing a great variety of things needed in the house, on the farm, and in the shops, for home consumption, and already sends to the North and West several manufactured products. With iron, coal, timber contiguous and easily obtained, the amount sent out is certain to increase as the labor becomes more skilful. The most striking industrial development today is in iron, coal, lumber, and marbles; the more encouraging for the self-sustaining life of the Southern people is the multiplication of small industries in nearly every city I visited. ”