From the standpoint of values lumbering is a more important industry than the manufacture of fertilizers. In this respect Louisiana is the second State in value of products, and the industry is important in Arkansas, Mississippi, and North Carolina. The South furnishes nearly half of the lumber produced in the United States. This industry is, of course, only one step from the raw material. The manufacture of wood into finished articles is, however, increasing in some of the Southern States. The vehicle industry is considerable, and the same may be said of agricultural machinery, railway and street cars, and coffins. North Carolina especially is taking rank in the manufacture of furniture, most of it cheap but some of it of high grade. So far, ambition has in few cases gone beyond utilization of the native woods, some of which are surprisingly beautiful. Many small establishments in different States make such special products as spokes, shuttle blocks, pails, broom handles, containers for fruits and vegetables, and the like, but the total value of these products is small compared with the value of the crude lumber which is sent out of the South.
The iron industry is important chiefly in Alabama, of the purely Southern States. This State is fourth in the product of its blast furnaces but supplied in 1914 only a little more than six per cent of the total for the United States. Virginia, Tennessee, and West Virginia produce appreciable quantities of pig iron; no Southern State plays a really important part in the steel industry, though Maryland, Alabama, and West Virginia are all represented. Birmingham, Alabama, is the center of steel manufacture and has been called the Pittsburgh of the South, but though the industry has grown rapidly in Birmingham, it has also grown in Pittsburgh, and the Southern city is gaining very slowly. There are great beds of bituminous coal in the South, but only in West Virginia and Alabama is the production really important, though Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia produce appreciable quantities.
In the total value of the products of mines of all sorts, West Virginia and Oklahoma are among the leaders, owing to their iron, coal, and petroleum output. Other Southern States follow in the rear. Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Florida, and Louisiana all have a mineral output which is large in the aggregate but a small part of the total. The sulphur mines of Louisiana are growing increasingly important. North Carolina produces a little of almost everything, but its mineral production, except of mica, is not important. In this State large aluminum works have been constructed and the quantity of precious and semiprecious stones found there is a large part of the production for the United States.
The tobacco industry is growing rapidly in the South. There have always been small establishments for the manufacture of tobacco, and many of these during the last three decades have grown to large proportions. New establishments have been opened, some of which are among the largest in the world. The development of the American Tobacco Company and its affiliated and subsidiary organizations has greatly reduced the number of separate establishments. Many were bought by the combination; their brands were transferred to another factory; and the original establishments were closed as uneconomical. Many other small factories, feeling or fearing the competition, closed voluntarily. But the total production of tobacco has steadily increased. Plug and smoking tobacco are largely confined to the Upper South. North Carolina easily leads, while Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri (if it be classed as a Southern State) also have factories which are known all over the world. Richmond, St. Louis, Louisville, and New Orleans, and Winston-Salem and Durham in North Carolina are the cities which lead in this industry. Winston-Salem probably now makes more plug, and Durham more smoking tobacco, than any other cities in the United States, and the cigarette production of the former is increasing enormously. Some factories supply export trade almost exclusively. There has been little development of the fine cigar industry except in Louisiana and Florida, though in all cities of the Lower South there are local establishments for the manufacture of cigars from Cuban leaf. Richmond is a center for the manufacture of domestic cigars and cheroots and has one mammoth establishment.
Twenty years or thirty years ago scattered over the South there were thousands of small grist mills which ground the farmer's wheat or corn between stones in the old-fashioned way. These are being superseded by roller mills, some of them quite large, which handle all the local wheat and even import some from the West. However, as the annual production of wheat in the South has decreased rather than increased since 1880, it is obvious that the industry has changed in form rather than increased in importance.
There are other less important manufacturing enterprises in the South. The census shows about two hundred and fifty distinct industries pursued to a greater or less extent. Maryland ranked fourteenth in the total value of manufactured products in 1914. Only seven Southern States were found in the first twenty-five, while Minnesota, which is generally considered an agricultural State, ranked higher in manufactures than any of the Southern group in 1914. The next census will undoubtedly give some Southern States high rank, though the section as a whole is not yet industrial. The manufacturing output is increasing with marvelous rapidity, but it is increasing in other sections of the country as well. Although the South was credited in 1914 with an increase of nearly 72 per cent in the value of its products during the decade, its proportion of the total value of products in the United States as a whole increased only from 12.8 per cent in 1904 to 13.1 per cent in 1914. The section is still far from equaling or surpassing other sections except in the manufacture of textiles.
[CHAPTER VI.]
Labor Conditions
The laborer employed in the manufacturing enterprises of the South, whether white or black, is native born and Southern born. Sporadic efforts to import industrial workers from Europe have not been successful and there has been no considerable influx of workers from other sections of the Union. A few skilled workers have come, but the rank and file in all the factories and shops were born in the State in which they work or in a neighboring State. Speaking broadly, those dealing with complicated machines are white, while those engaged in simpler processes are white or black. We find, therefore, a preponderance of whites in the textile industries and in the shops producing articles from wood and iron, while the blacks are found in the lumber industry, in the tobacco factories, in the mines, and at the blast furnaces. There are some skilled workmen among the negroes, especially in tobacco, but generally they furnish the unskilled labor.