Southern regions

“ The South as a whole, on any basis of material advancement, is below the average of other parts of the Union [Pg 339] and of several foreign countries; it is poor where it ought to be rich; it needs economic regeneration. ”

“ If life in the Northern States is a grand epic, a poem full of great teaching, then is that of the Southern States a romance of infinitely-picturesque beauty—yes, even though slavery and sandy deserts exist there. ”

“ The Southern States have great advantages over the Northern in soil, climate, and situation; they have a monopoly of the tropical productions so greatly sought by all northern nations; they have superior facilities for the acquisition of wealth, and through that for the rapid increase of population. In some countries the advance of both is retarded by oppressive legislation. Of this the South cannot complain, as it will by and by appear. ”

“ When, however, we have made all allowance for difference in climate, difference in traditions, total difference in the way of looking at life for a century, it is plain to be seen that a great transformation is taking place in the South, and that Southern society and Northern society are becoming every day more and more alike. ”

“ AMONG THE PALMETTOS ON THE BANKS OF HALIFAX RIVER, FLORIDA.—This is a typical Southern scene, and one of the most delightful to human senses that could be imagined. It is so perfectly in accord with nature that in imagination we can hear the bursting of the buds as they grow beneath the fructifying influences of the Southern sun, and feel the soft, hazy atmosphere as it gently rolls in from the cooling waters of the sea, and floods the intervening spaces of the moss-covered trees. ”

“ A large portion of the southern province is covered with palm-trees; the centre is a mountainous region, with magnificent scenery, crowned by the lofty summit of Adam’s Peak; while the low lands, where cultivation does not extend, are overgrown with dense masses of forest and impenetrable jungle. ”

“ The broad and beautiful Southland is peopled by about thirty million human beings (26,000,000 in 1900) , who constitute the “South” as a community conscious of a life separate in many respects from that of the North. What is there in these thirty millions which sets them apart? First of all is the sharp division into two races—two thirds of the people Whites and one third Negroes, which in uncounted open and obscure ways makes the South unlike any other country in the world. ”

“ At dawn of day we again discovered land from west-south-west to west-north-west, and another island north-north-west, the latter a high round lump of but little extent: the southern land that we had passed in the night was still in sight. Being very wet and cold I served a spoonful of rum and a morsel of bread for breakfast. ”

“ The South is a prosperous and advancing region on the highway to wealth, but advancing rather more slowly than other agricultural sections of the country, and in material wealth far behind the West and farther behind the Middle states and New England. ”

“ In its millions of acres of cheap lands the South has the advantage of an entirely new and undeveloped country, and has with this all the advantages and comforts and attractions of an established and advanced civilization. The South is in the main more healthful than any other part of the United States, its range of farm and garden products is greater, it offers better opportunities for profitable agriculture, and it is in all respects a section where life can be lived in greater comfort than at the North. ”

“ There is doubtless just the same thing in Northern places, if you look for it, but in the South it follows you. With all the aristocratic feeling classes are more mixed together, and it is a harder thing than in the North to sift your acquaintances. Still there is an upward movement in every stratum of society ”

“ The privilege of the outside visitor to the South is to range far afield, to compare conditions in various states, and to make generalizations, subject to the criticism of better qualified investigators who may go over the same area of printed book and open country, but which have a basis of personal acquaintance with the region. ”

“ The northwest was changing to a land of farmers and town-builders, anxious for a market for their grain and cattle; while the southwest was becoming increasingly a cotton-raising section, swayed by the same impulses in respect to staple exports as those which governed the southern seaboard. Economically, the northern portion of the valley tended to connect itself with the middle states, while the southern portion came into increasingly intimate connection with the south. ”

“ Our country extends at present to a region which is already in some degree infected by the moral miasma of the tropics. The influence of Northern civilization in close contiguity may, by its preponderance, be strong enough to control the disturbing elements, and thus to impart to our South, in its present limits, a reasonable measure of the peculiar blessings we enjoy. But to secure that beneficent result it is absolutely necessary to preserve the preponderance of Northern civilization to such an extent, that the Southern weight cannot seriously disturb the balance. ”

“ The Southern assessed valuation of 1907 was 8.5 billions, of the Northern group 10.7 billions.
What makes these differences? It certainly is not because the South is deficient in natural resources, in fertility, in climate, in access to the world’s markets, in the enterprise of its business men. What is the reason for this discrepancy between the resources and the output of the South? Some of the Southern observers insist that the North is made rich through its manufactures. ”

“ The north and south division truly represents the fact, that the great northern continents are the seat and birth-place of all the higher forms of life, while the southern continents have derived the greater part, if not the whole, of their vertebrate fauna from the north; but it implies the erroneous conclusion, that the chief southern lands—Australia and South America—are more closely related to each other than to the northern continent. ”

“ The most that can be expected of Northern individuals in the way of bettering Southern conditions is attempts like that of this volume to get into the real nature of the problems and to offer good advice. ”

“ That the openings which the South presents for Northern capital and industry are unsurpassed, has been sufficiently illustrated. With a capital of a few thousand dollars, and a personal supervision of his work, a Northern farmer, devoting himself to cotton-growing, may count with safety on a net profit of fifty per cent, on his investment. With a good year and a good location he may do much better. Through Tennessee 579and the same latitudes, east and west, he will find a climate not very greatly different from his own, and a soil adapted to Northern cereals as well as to the Southern staple. ”

“ Much of the mountains is still in the colonial condition, but railroads, schools, and cities are powerful civilizing agents, and a people of so much native vigor may be expected in course of no long time to take their place alongside their brethren of the lowlands. The more prosperous South is too [Pg 38] little interested in these people, and is doing little direct civilizing work among them, in many districts leaving that task to be performed by schools founded by Northerners. ”

“ Physically, they protect the cotton belt from the North, and thus affect the climate; and they are fountains of water power as yet little developed. South of the mountains and thence westward through northern Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, is a hill region which is from every point of view one of the parts of the South most interesting and at the same time least known by Northerners. This is the traditional home of the Poor Whites; whose backwardness is in itself a problem; whose industry contributes much more than the world has been prone to allow to the wealth of the South ”

“ The South has numerous natural advantages over the North,—a better soil, a more genial climate, the privilege of producing those tropical plants now deemed indispensable to civilization. Of ^193,000,000 of exports last year, $893,000,000 were of Southern cotton and tobacco. Yet such is her foolish and wicked system, that, while the North continually increases in riches, the South becomes continually poorer and poorer in comparison. ”

“ The Southern Cross shines on a Southern world.
Now soon, with ecstasy, they hear the cry,
Land! land in sight! the land we can descry.
And now the longed-for shores before them rise,
With mountain peaks which fringe the azure skies;
Tall beetling crags frown o’er the breaker’s roar,
Whose white-tipped billows kiss a sandy shore;
’Tis Afric! land of mystery and fear,
Of burning climate, and of desert drear,
Where the fierce lion and fiercer savage roam ”

“ Now, in consequence of numerous natural advantages, among which may be enumerated the greater mildness of climate, richness of soil, deposits of precious metals, abundance and spaciousness of harbors, and super-excellence of water-power, we contend that, had it not been for slavery, the average value of land in all the Southern and Southwestern States, would have been at least equal to the average value of the same in the Northern States. ”

“ It is not so diversified, but the vast areas of cotton on the one hand and of sugar and corn and rice on the other, and the forests, present well-marked features and give the South a handsome natural aspect. It is true that the Southern point of view as regards the Negro does not change very much, and that all vote one way, but it does not follow that the Southern point of view as regards the whole future of the [98] United States has not been modified and will not change. The South has been very poor and is becoming rich, will perhaps become very rich and prosperous. ”

“ There is less solicitation at the South; here it is a nightly trade, without disguise. At the South the young must go in search of opportunity; here it confronts them. The small number of yellow children in the interior of the Cotton States, on 'lone plantations,' is positive proof against the ready suspicions and accusations of Northern people. ”

“ The branches towards the south are for the most part more luxuriant than those on the other sides of trees, and several other distinctions also subsist between the northern and southern sides, conspicuous to Indians, who are taught from their infancy to attend to them, which a common observer would perhaps never notice. ”

“ In the last twenty-five years great inroads have been made on the Southern forests, and clearing is going on everywhere on a large scale. Nevertheless, a very considerable proportion of the Southern Whites and many Negroes still live in the woods, and have retained some of the habits of the frontier. Population is commonly sparse ”

“ The South is really at about the same place where the Northwest was thirty years ago; it is developing its latent resources; building its cities; perfecting its communications; starting new industries; and in much less than thirty years it will come to the point that the Northwest has now reached; but that section is still driving ahead more rapidly, and thirty years hence may be proportionately richer than it is to-day. ”

“ I believe it is now generally admitted that the Southern route is the most practicable—that it is the most level, the most fertile, the best watered, the best timbered, and that the climate through which it runs is the only one that is favorable at all seasons of the year. ”

“ There need be no illusions as to the extent of the knowledge thus acquired. These various journeys and points of contact with Southern people have shown how large is the Southern problem, and how hard it is to discover all the factors which make the problem difficult. ”

“ Compared with the North, the Southern States have been strictly an agricultural region. Their few manufactures were conducted on a small scale, and could not compete with those of the colder latitudes. ”

“ There, too, grew up, quite a distinction between the people of the northern part and those of the southern part. The southern part was much better suited for cultivation under the systems of that time and it became a farming community, with large farms and the people were not close together and there were not many towns and cities. In the northern part farming could not be carried on nearly so successfully, and so manufacturing and commerce grew, both of which demanded that people should live in towns and cities. ”

“ The South Land has, on its coasts, downs covered with grass and sand so deep, that, in walking, one's foot is buried ankle-deep, and leaves great traces behind it. At about a league from the shore there runs a reef of rock, on which here and there the sea is seen to break with great force. ”

“ Partly owing to the efficacy of the waters and partly to the absence of other Southern watering-places, the springs became very early the resort of every Southerner who could afford to leave home in the summer, and they grew in favor owing to the peculiarities of Southern society and the delicate state of Southern relations with the North. In the first place, at the South people know each other, and know about each other, in a way of which the inhabitants of a denser and busier community have little idea. ”

“ Nor will any slaveholder admit, for a moment, that Providence has scattered his gifts with a more sparing hand at the South than at the North. The richness of their soil, the salubrity of their climate, the number and magnitude of their rivers, are themes on which they delight to dwell; and not unfrequent is the contrast they draw between their own fair and sunny land, and the ungenial climate and sterile soil of the Northern and Eastern States. ”