[118] Ingle, Southern Side Lights, p. 32 ff. "There were 101 persons in the jails of Georgia on June 1, 1860; Virginia had 189; Massachusetts, 1161 and Illinois, 489. In the open life of the South and West, where men could easily get to the land, there was little crime and jails were often empty; in the industrial belt the prisons were always occupied. In like manner and for the same reasons Southern and Western hospitals for the insane and homes for the poor often showed very small percentages of these unfortunates." (William E. Dodd, Expansion and Conflict, p. 231.) Cf. the map on p. 188, showing the industrial belt of 1860 to extend along the Atlantic Seaboard from New Hampshire to the head of Chesapeake Bay, covering the coastal States, with scattering development indicated to the westward. The territory south of Maryland shows a few plants of an output of $250,000.
[119] Upon this whole matter, see Scherer, p. 179 ff. "In 1816, when Webster opposed protection, there was a capital of only about $52,000,000 invested in textile manufacture, of which much still lay in the South. In 1828, when he reversed his position, this capital had probably doubled, and had become localized in and about New England." (Ibid., p. 181.) Cf. Ibid., p. 234.
[120] Scherer, p. 152. "When the United States of America was formed, manufacturing interests were as well developed in the South as the North. Slavery ... existed under protection of law more than a hundred years in Massachusetts before it was tolerated by law in Georgia. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the tariff was not a matter which was exclusively political.... The subject ceased to be an economic one and became a political one in proportion as slavery grew in the South and diminished in the North, and in inverse proportion as manufactures dried up in the South and became of greater importance in the North.... The time came when the South stood for free trade and the North for protection. This was because slavery made agriculture more profitable in the South and protection made manufacturing more profitable in the North with the South as a protected market." (Tompkins, The Tariff and Reciprocity.)
[121] Tompkins, Tariff and Protection.
[122] Clark, in South in Building of Nation, Vol. V, p. 316 ff. See pp. 30-31-32. Contrast Tompkins, History of Mecklenburg, Vol. I, pp. 133-137.
[123] But some of the agitation in favor of industries in this period, as in other ante-bellum and indeed post-bellum years, had a flavor not symptomatic of healthy desire for improvement. One hundred and thirty-one delegates represented nineteen North Carolina counties at a meeting held in Salisbury in 1836, at which resolutions were adopted asking the legislature to give assistance in the building of railroads; another evidence of this interest was the Knoxville railroad convention of about the same date. Of the advantages which it was agreed would flow from the building of the Charleston and Cincinnati Railroad, it was declared that "it will form a bond of union among the States which will give safety to our property and security to our institutions." (Tompkins, History of Mecklenburg, Vol. I, p. 125.) Of more positive character was the utterance of a Southerner who viewed with deep concern the danger that the North would crush slavery and place the South under complete submission to tariff aggressions, congressional representation for the latter section finding a stop in the limit to slave territory: "Under these circumstances, the true policy of the south is distinct and clearly marked. She must resort to the same means by which power is accumulated at the North, to secure it for herself. She must embark in that system of manufacturing which has been so successfully employed at the north.... All civilized nations are now dependent upon our staple to give employment to their machinery and their labor.... If, then, we manufacture a large portion of it ourselves, we reduce the quantity for export, and the competition for that remainder will add greatly to our wealth, while it will place us in a position to dictate our own terms. The manufactories will increase our population; increased population and wealth will enable us to chain the southern States proudly and indissolubly together by railroads and other internal improvements; and these works by affording a speedy communication from point to point, will prove our surest defense against either foreign aggression or domestic revolt." (J. D. B. DeBow, Industrial Resources of the South and Southwest, Vol. II, p. 127.) J. H. Taylor, of Charleston, combatted the antipathy toward massing the poor whites in factories with the reflection that small farming in competition with slave labor brought discontent that might mean social upheaval, whereas the factory opened a door of opportunity that allowed of intelligence and stability; with the chance of coming to own a slave, "they would increase the demand for that kind of property, and would become firm and uncompromising supporters of Southern institutions." (Ingle, Southern Sidelights, pp. 25-26.)
[124] In earlier pages he has developed with much care the promising industrial status of the Colonial and Revolutionary South. "In the Southern colonies iron making became an important industry, even before the beginning of the eighteenth century." The activity in Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia is shown: Governor's Spottswood's ventures in Virginia, the passage in 1727 by the Virginia General Assembly of "an act for encouraging adventures in iron-works"; South Carolina forges built in 1773 are dwelt upon. His original investigations reveal valuable facts as to iron-making in North Carolina and upper South Carolina—details are given of the works of E. Graham & Company, formed in 1826 and later merged with the King's Mountain Iron Company; the Magnetic Iron Company, 1837, near the former plant, and the South Carolina Manufacturing Company. It is to be noticed, however, as a modification upon the good effect which might have been expected from these enterprises, that the Graham Company had a considerable part of its capital invested in slaves, and sixty per cent. of the Magnetic Company's capital of $250,000 was used for the same purpose. (Richard H. Edmonds, Facts About the South, Ed. 1894, pp. 3 ff.)
[125] Ibid., pp. 10 ff.
[126] Edmonds, p. 18 ff.
[127] In reference to the false idea of wealth and prosperity in the ante-bellum South, it has been said, "A delusion of great wealth was created in the listing as taxable property of slaves to the amount of at least two thousand millions." (A. B. Hart, The Southern South, p. 218.)