Social Progress and Problems: South and Middle

A factor of the first importance in estimating national progress is the striking industrial advance made by the Southern States since 1880. Between 1880 and 1890 the true valuation of real and personal property in the South increased from $6,448,000,000 to $9,621,000,000, a gain of $3,173,000,000, or fifty-one per cent.; while the New England and Middle States combined gained only $3,900,000,000, or an increase of but twenty-two per cent. The per capita wealth of the South increased during the same period twenty-two per cent., while the increase in New England for the same period was but one and eight-tenths per cent., and in the Middle States but three per cent. The value of farm property in the South in 1880 was $2,314,000,000; in 1890, $3,182,000,000, a gain of thirty-seven per cent. The increase in farm values in all other sections was about thirty 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 sixteen per cent., while the gain of the rest of the country was only nine per cent. A comparison of these figures discloses the fact that in the South there was a gross revenue of twenty-four and one-tenth per cent. on the capital invested in farm interests, while in all other sections of the country the gross revenue was thirteen and one-tenth 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 manufactured 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 manufacturing $21,976,000; in 1890, $61,100,000, and now about $125,000,000. In 1880 the South had $3,500,000 invested in the cotton-seed-oil industry. It has now more than $30,000,000 so invested. The railroad mileage of the South has been increased since 1880 more than twenty-five thousand miles, at a cost in building new roads and in the improvement of old ones of over $1,000,000,000. 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 tons 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 amount of individual deposits from $69,846,500 to $160,875,309 in the same period. These figures are exclusive of savings banks, the deposits in which increased proportionately. These figures are taken from Presby's "Empire of the South." The negro laborer is reported as being fairly contented with his lot as a mill-worker, and so are the whites. Wages are about ten per cent. lower than in the East, and the hours are longer, but "the operatives have so vastly improved their condition by working in the mill, not on the farm, that they are little inclined to ask for shorter hours or increased wages. They are the most uniformly contented and prosperous class in the South." The factory at High Shoals, for example, has been in operation forty years with labor drawn from the vicinity, and "no strike has ever occurred, not even a misunderstanding arisen." Trion factory, in northern Georgia, established by the Allgood family, affords another instance. It has been running fifty-five years, and "no strike, friction of any kind, or demand for change of hours or pay ever occurred at this large mill." Practically all the operatives are white, the blacks acting as servants in the operatives' households or draymen at the mill. (Some leaders among the Southern blacks have organized cotton-mills to be operated by negro labor, but this interesting phase of the Southern industrial situation is still in the experimental stage.) It is Mr. Smith's opinion that "the negroes are going to return to farming when the whites come to the mill." He adds: "A negro can't work in a mill. The hum of the machinery would put him to sleep, and if he even got a dollar ahead he would loaf a week."