The miles of railroad in the Southern group were 55,000; in the Western, 94,000; the total value of agricultural products in the South was estimated at 1,060 millions, in the North at 1,945 millions. Even the cotton crop of the eleven states, worth 550 millions, was overbalanced by the Northern corn crop which brought 595 millions. The manufactures in the South for 1905 were 1,267 millions; in the Northwest 2,932 millions. The Southern group expended for schools 26 millions, the corresponding Northern states expended 91 millions. The value of Southern school property was 43 millions, of the Northern group it was 216 millions; the average annual expenditure per pupil in daily attendance in the South was $9.75; in the North about $28.45. For public benevolent institutions the South expended in 1903 net $3,000,000, the North $7,000,000; the Southern group had 1,070,000 illiterate Whites, of whom 76,000 were foreign born; the Northern group had 207,000 besides 389,000 illiterate foreigners. In the indices of accumulated property the comparison is about the same; the Southern deposits in all banks were, in 1906, 701 million dollars, the Northern 2,439 millions. In manufactures the Northern group, with a capital of 2,240 million dollars and 903,000 hands, produced 2,932 millions; against Southern capital of 1,140 millions, employing 659,000 persons and producing 1,267 millions.
The comparison of valuations brings out one unexpected result, namely, that several of the Southern states have actually less taxable property now than they had fifty years ago. This does not mean that they are poorer because they have lost their slaves. Leaving slaves out of account, in 1860 South Carolina had a valuation of $326,000,000; in 1906 of $250,000,000; in Mississippi the valuation of real estate in 1860 was $158,000,000; in 1906, with a population more than twice as great, it was $131,000,000; in the rich state of Georgia the valuation in 1860, deducting slaves, was $432,000,000 against $578,000,000 in 1906. The Southern people feel justly proud of the fact that the valuations of the eleven former members of the Confederacy between 1902 and 1906 increased by 962 millions, from a total of 3,799 millions to 4,761 millions, that their annual manufactures increased by 450 millions; from 819 millions in 1900 to 1,267 millions in 1905.
This increase in industry is so striking that the Southern states suppose they are unique in that respect; but the corresponding Northern group of equal population in the same periods gained 4,000 millions in valuations and 705 millions in annual manufactures. These figures may be checked off in various ways. Take, for instance, the annual value of crops; the South is very certain that with its cotton, its corn and other crops together it is far in advance of the North. In the Southern states which were in secession (excepting Texas) the value of farms and stock in 1900 was 2,100 millions, the value in an equivalent Northwestern group was 7,800 millions. The total farm product in the Lower South was 1,360 millions, in the Northern group of equal population 2,390 millions. If Texas be compared with a group of Pacific states, of equivalent population, the Texan farms are worth 960 millions, the Far Western 1,400 millions.
The Lower South has been saving money of late years and is proud of its growing bank deposits, from 168 millions in 1896 to 701 millions in 1906, an increase of 450 per cent; but the equivalent Northern population has increased from 716 millions to 2,439 millions. The Lower South in 1905 had 917 national banks with deposits of 308 millions and assets of 568 millions; the similar Northern states had deposits of 834 millions and assets of 1,418 millions. Let us see whether the South makes up this disparity by its state banks. In 1906 the Lower South, including Texas, had deposits of 700 millions in all banks; and total bank clearings of about 3,920 millions; the equivalent Northern group had deposits of over 2,400 millions, with total clearings of about 8,500 millions. Measured, therefore, by accumulated savings, by bank capital, by clearings, the South is poorer than the least wealthy section of the North. If we were to take the rich Eastern and Northwestern states, with their immense population, enormous manufactures (New York City contains over twenty thousand factories), and vast transportation lines, the fact that the South is far behind the North in things both material and intellectual would stand out even more clearly.
II. The Whole South
It might fairly be said that it is unreasonable to compare the former seceding states which have gone through the disruption of their labor by Civil War with new Western communities in which there has been no destruction of capital. Accordingly the second set of tables compares the whole South—fifteen states and the District of Columbia—with a Northwestern and Pacific Coast group of equivalent population. Since a part of the contention of Southern writers is that the South was richer than the North before the Civil War and is only returning to her rightful place of supremacy, it is worth while to examine the supposed wealth of the South in 1860. The assessed valuation of the Lower South was then 4,330 millions, which a Southern statistician attempts to show was 750 millions more than the combined wealth of New England and the Middle states; out of this sum, 3,100 millions was for personal property, including about 1,200 millions for slaves; but either the slaves should be left out or a capitalized value of Northern laborers should be added on a slavemarket basis.
Passing by the figures of 1870, which are discredited by all statisticians, in 1880 the total property valued for taxes in the Lower South was 1,880 millions, in the whole South was 3,420 millions; while in similar blocks of Northwestern population they were respectively 2,712 millions and 4,640 millions. This is a splendid record for a people who had given their all in a civil war and who had to build up nearly every dollar of their personal property from the bottom. The land, of course, was always there, but was worth much less per acre in 1880 than similar good land in 1860.
How far has this rate of progress been continued since 1880 as shown by the inexorable method of comparing groups of Southern states with groups of Northwestern states of equal population? The tax valuation shows about the same proportion, so far as can be ascertained, to real values in one section as in the other. The local differences of mode of assessment when averaged would probably not disturb the result by more then ten per cent. The whole South (16 communities) as compared with a Northern group of the same number of people in 1907 showed 8.5 billions of assessed property against 13.7 billions in the North. It may therefore be set down as proven that the taxable wealth of the lower agricultural South is less than half that of similar agricultural communities in the North; so that while mining and manufacturing states like Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri have about the same wealth as similar Northern communities, the South as a whole has not one half the wealth. Take the former slaveholding states all together, including such a rich commonwealth as Missouri, and the farm value in the whole region in 1900, with 28 millions of people, was under 5,000 millions; while 28 million people in the West and Northwest owned farms to the amount of about 11,000 millions, or more than double. The total Southern crops in 1899, the last year in which the totals are obtainable, were worth 1,360 millions, the Northern crops counted up to 2,390 millions. The value of the Southern corn crop in 1905 was 416 million dollars; the equivalent population in the Northwest raised 601 million dollars’ worth of corn. The whole South raises about 32 million dollars’ worth of oats; the North raises 201 millions. The Southern potato crop is worth 19 millions; the Northern, 76 millions. Southern hay counts up to 66 millions and Northern to 258 millions. Even in tobacco, the North furnishes 7 million dollars’ worth against 35 million dollars in the South. Cotton is the one crop that is exclusively Southern, and the crop of 1905, the year that we are considering, including the seed, was worth 632 million dollars. The Southern group had 127,000 teachers, school property of 84 millions, and total school revenue of 45 millions, against competing Northern figures of 199,000, of 293 millions, and of 120 millions. It is difficult in these figures to find justification for the notion that the South as an agricultural region is richer than the North, or is likely ever to rival it.
The actual figures for the present conditions of the South are sufficiently attractive. During the four years 1904-1907 the big crops and high price of cotton gave to the South such prosperity as it had never known before, the total output being nearly fifty million bales, which sold, in cash, for about 2,700 million dollars. This happy result was reflected in every city and every county of the rural South, for old debts were paid, new houses built, land doubled or even trebled in value, and a spirit of hopefulness pervaded the whole population. A buoyancy is reflected in the press, and particularly in the Manufacturers’ Record of Baltimore, the leading Southern trade paper. “The South,” says the Record, “is now throughout the world recognized as the predestined center of the earth, based on greater natural advantages that can be found anywhere else on the globe.” Or as another Southern paper put it some years ago: “In 1860 the Richest Part of the Country—In 1870 the Poorest—In 1880 Signs of Improvement—In 1889 regaining the position of 1860.”
Nobody can be more pleased with Southern prosperity than New Englanders, who have long since found out that the richer other sections of the country become, the more business Northerners have with those sections; if there are directions in which the South is making more rapid progress than the North, it should be candidly acknowledged. Nobody can visit thriving cities like Richmond, Atlanta, Birmingham, Memphis, New Orleans, and the galaxy of future centers of population in Texas, without hearty pleasure in the increasing evidences of civilization, but it is very unevenly distributed. Off the main lines of transportation the towns are still ill-built and unprogressive, and the greater part of the area of the South is no farther along than states like Illinois and Minnesota were in the late sixties.