Coal from 6,000,000 tons to 45,000,000 tons.
Phosphate (since 1890), from 750,000 tons to 3,000,000 tons.
Railroad mileage, from 20,600 miles to 55,000 miles.
Cotton, from 5,757,397 bales to 12,162,000 bales.
The grain crop (corn, wheat, oats and rye), from 431,000,000 bushels to 791,000,000 bushels.
These facts are impressive, convincing and full of hope for the future.
The value of the staple crops—corn, wheat, oats, Irish potatoes, rye and hay—in 1904 was $542,121,000; the value of the other farm crops was $550,000,000; and the value of the cotton not less than $515,000,000, besides the cotton seed, amounting to $50,000,000 more. All this amounts to an aggregate sum of $3,657,121,000, earned annually by the South from the sources indicated, not including the lumber and other raw material, which, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, leave the South annually for all the parts of the habitable globe.
No wonder the South is prosperous! And an indubitable proof of its prosperity lies in its increase in the assessed valuation of its property. This increase since 1900 amounts to $1,000,000,000 for the fourteen states of the South. This is partly due to raised assessments, partly to increased prices for its products, but mainly to an increase of customary products and to new products. The increase in the wealth of the South, however, has been steady for the last twenty years, and in that time has aggregated more than $2,300,000,000.
What now is the magic spell which has wrought this abundant prosperity, the sesame by the pronouncing of which is opened the secret hiding place of Southern wealth? Diversification is the word—diversification of crops and diversification of manufacturing and diversification of all industries. Cotton, though a puissant monarch, seated upon a throne, from which for reasons of perfect adaptability of soil and climate he can never be deposed, is not the only king who conducts a beneficent sway for the complex needs of an enterprising people.
The forest king rears his august head and stretches out his hands cornucopia-like from the Potomac to the Rio Grande and from the Gulf to the Ohio, inviting capital and effort to his virgin domains, which, if properly protected, will in the future be a source of perpetual and inestimable wealth; and which even now furnish to the South approximately $400,000,000 per annum.