While the proof sheets of the foregoing chapter are passing through their revision there appears in Collier’s Weekly for January 22, 1910, an article by Clark Howell of the Atlanta Constitution who makes, in italics, the statement that “the trend of Southern development is incomparably in advance of that of any other section of the continent.” The opportunity to apply the cold bath of statistics to such torrid statements can still be taken, by adding to the tables in the Appendix some figures for 1907 and 1908, and even 1909, together with some generalizations based on figures not included in the tables. For example, the figures for public school education in 1907 show for the ten seceding states 78,000 teachers against 153,000 in the corresponding Northern group; school property to the value of 19 millions as against 41 millions; annual revenue of 24 millions as against 90 millions. The rich state of Texas, with 18,000 teachers, is balanced by the Pacific group with 28,000; its school property of 15 millions by 64 millions; its annual expenditure of 7 millions by 25 millions. Even the richer border state group of five communities, and an average daily attendance of a million school children, has school property of 48 millions against 86 millions in the corresponding Northwestern states; and the school revenue of 21 millions must be placed against the revenue in the corresponding group of 38 millions.
The assessed valuations of the states, as reported to the World Almanac for 1910, are as follows: the whole South in 1909 was assessed on 10,051 millions—a gain of 2,200 millions in three years; in the equal Northwestern group it was 19,884 millions—a gain in three years of 7,000 millions (out of which perhaps 2,500 millions should be deducted, on account of a bookkeeping increase in the assessments in Kansas and Colorado). The cotton crop of 1908 sold for 675 millions and the corn crop of the North for 886 millions. The railroads in the South in 1908 totaled 71,790 miles and in the Northwestern group 123,332 miles. The South “has just harvested a billion-dollar cotton crop” says Clark Howell, and he predicts twenty-cent cotton. The actual crop for 1909 was probably less than 11 million bales, and at the average price for the season of about 14 cents, it sold for something like 770 million dollars. The corn and wheat crops of the whole North (not the equivalent group) sold in the same year for 2,091 million dollars.
No good can result to anybody either from belittling or exaggerating the productivity of the South. That section is progressing, and the more it progresses the less become its difficulties of race and labor problems, the greater its connection with neighboring states, the larger the advantage to the whole nation. Still, on any basis of comparison with the least wealthy states and sections of the North—whether it be made between the total population of equivalent groups or between the white populations only, leaving out of account the productivity of the Negroes, the South is below the national standard of wealth and progress; it grows constantly in accumulations and in productivity, but its yearly additions are less than those of the Northwestern states, and much less than those of the Northeastern states.
CHAPTER XVIII
MAKING COTTON
“The South holds a call upon the world’s gold to the extent of $450,000,000 to $500,000,000 for the cotton which it will this year furnish to Europe.... This money, whether paid in actual gold or in other ways, will so strengthen the financial situation, not only of the South, but of New York and the country at large, as to make the South the saving power in American financial interests. No other crop on earth is of such far-reaching importance to any other great country as cotton is to the United States.”
This extract from the Manufacturers’ Record is a somewhat grandiloquent statement of the conviction of the South that it possesses a magnificent cotton monopoly which no other part of the world can ever rival; that with proper foresight and with courage, the South may corner the world’s market in the staple, and fix a price which will insure prosperity. In a country full of natural resources of many kinds, with a soil on which corn may be grown almost as good as in Indiana, where cattle can be raised and dairies may be established, the chief aim and object of life is to “make cotton.” The talk of small farmers is cotton; every country merchant of any standing is a cotton buyer; and most of the large wholesale houses and banks are interested in cotton.
In all the large cities and some of the small ones are cotton exchanges at which are posted on immense blackboards the day’s data for “Receipts at Ports,” “Overland to Mills and Canada,” “Current Stock,” “Southern Mill Takings,” “Total in Sight to Date,” “World’s Possible Supply,” and so on. The federal Census Bureau publishes from time to time estimates of the acreage and condition of cotton, which so affect the markets that great efforts have sometimes been made to bribe the officials to reveal the figures before they are published. The Census Office issues periodical reports showing the number of bales of cotton ginned throughout the South.