111. The New South

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"It is into this illimitable trade, even now in its infancy, and destined to attain a magnitude not dreamed of twenty years ago, that the Europeans are struggling to enter. It is the heritage of the American people, of their children and of their children's children. It gives an absolutely free trade over a territory nearly as large as all Europe, and the profit is all our own. . . . President Cleveland now plainly proposes a policy that will admit Europe to a share in this trade."

"What must be the marked and general effect of the President's message?"

"It will bring the country where it ought to be brought-to a full and fair contest on the question of protection. The President himself makes it the one issue by presenting no other in his message. I think it well to have the question settled. The Democratic party in power is a standing menace to the industrial prosperity of the country. That menace should be removed or the policy it foreshadows should be made certain. Nothing is so mischievous to business as uncertainty, nothing so paralyzing as doubt."

A BILLION-DOLLAR COUNTRY

The most distinguished citizen of the South in the generation following the Civil War was Henry W. Grady of Atlanta, Georgia. Gifted with rare oratorical power, constructive statesmanship, and generous sympathies, he devoted his great talents to the encouragement of the South in the development of its material resources and the cultivation of a broad national spirit. "He was the leader of the New South, and died in the great work of impressing its marvellous growth and national aspirations upon the willing ear of the North." He also impressed

1 Remark of Chauncey M. Depew at a dinner of the New England Society of New York, December 23, 1889, on the reception of a telegram announcing the death of Grady. The reference in Depew's remark is to a visit made to Boston by Grady, only a few days before his death, to address the Merchants' Association - a visit in which he

these ideas on the minds of the South, most eloquently, perhaps, in a speech at a state fair at Dallas, Texas, October 26, 1887, from which the following passages are taken:

What of the South's industrial problem? There is a figure with which history has dealt lightly, but that, standing pathetic and heroic in the genesis of our new growth, has interested me greatly our soldier farmer of '65. What chance had he for the future as he wandered amid his empty barns, his stock, labor, and implements gone-gathered up the fragments of his wreck urging kindly his borrowed mule - paying sixty per cent. for all that he bought, and buying all on credit- his crop mortgaged before it was planted—his children in want, his neighborhood in chaos-working under new conditions and retrieving every error by a costly year — plodding all day down the furrow, hopeless and adrift, save when at night he went back to his broken home, where his wife, cheerful even then, renewed his courage, while she ministered to him in loving tenderness. Who would have thought... that he would in twenty years, having carried these burdens uncomplainingly, make a crop of $800,000,000? Yet this he has done, and from his bounty the South has rebuilded her cities, and recouped her losses. While we exult in his splendid achievement, let us take account of his standing. . . .

With amazing rapidity [the South] has moved away from the one crop idea that was once her curse. In 1880 she was esteemed prosperous. Since that time she has added 393,000,ooo bushels to her grain crops, and 182,000,000 head to her live stock. This has not lost one bale of her cotton crop, which, on the contrary, has increased nearly 200,000 bales. With equal swiftness she has moved away from the folly of shipping out her ore at $2 a ton and buying it back in implements from $20 to $100 per ton; her cotton at 10 cents a pound, and

contracted a fatal case of pneumonia. "New York mingles her tears with those of his kindred," continued Depew, "and offers to his memory a tribute of her profoundest admiration.”—J. C. Harris, The Life of Henry W. Grady, p. 624.

buying it back in cloth at 20 to 80 cents per pound; her timber at $8 per thousand [feet] and buying it back in furniture at ten to twenty times as much. In the past eight years $250,000,000 have been invested in new shops and factories in her States; 225,000 are now working who eight years ago were idle or worked elsewhere, and these added $227,000,000 to the value of her raw material more than half the value of her cotton. Add to this the value of her increased grain crops and stock, and in the past eight years she has grown in her fields or created in her shops manufactures more than the value of her cotton crop. The incoming tide has begun to rise. Every train brings manufacturers from the East and West seeking to establish themselves or their sons near the raw material and in this growing market. Let the fullness of the tide roll in.

It will not exhaust our materials, nor shall we glut our markets. When the growing demand of our Southern market, feeding on its own growth, is met, we shall find new markets for the South. We buy from Brazil $50,000,000 worth of goods, and sell her $8,500,000. England buys on $29,000,000, and sells her $35,000,000. Of $65,000,000 in cotton goods bought by Central and South America, over $50,000,000 went to England. Of $331,000,000 sent abroad by the southern half of our hemisphere, England secures over half, although we buy from that section nearly twice as much as England. Our neighbors to the south need every article we make; we need nearly everything they produce. Less than 2,500 miles of road must be built to bind by rail the two American continents. When this is done, and even before, we shall find exhaustless markets to the South. . . .

The South, under the rapid diversification of crops and diversification of industries, is thrilling with new life. As this new prosperity comes to us, it will bring no sweeter thought to me, and to you, my countrymen, I am sure, than that it adds not only to the comfort and happiness of our neighbors, but that it makes broader the glory and deeper the majesty, and more enduring the strength, of the Union which reigns supreme in our hearts. In this republic of ours is lodged the hope of free government on earth. . . . Let us once estranged and thereby

closer bound - let us soar above all provincial pride and find our deeper inspirations in gathering the fullest sheaves into the harvest and standing the staunchest and most devoted of its sons as it lights the path and makes clear the way through which all the people of this earth shall come in God's appointed time. . . .

The South needs her sons today more than when she summoned them to the forum to maintain her political supremacy, more than when the bugle called them to the field to defend issues put to the arbitrament of the sword. Her old body is instinct with appeal calling on us to come and give her fuller independence than she has ever sought in field or forum. It is ours to show that as she prospered with slaves, she shall prosper still more with freemen; ours to see that from the lists she entered in poverty she shall emerge in prosperity; ours to carry the transcending traditions of the old South from which none of us can in honor or in reverence depart, unstained and unbroken into the new. Shall we fail? Shall the blood of the old South

the best strain that ever uplifted human endeavor — that ran like water at duty's call and never stained where it touched shall this blood that pours into our veins through a century luminous with achievement, for the first time falter and be driven back from irresolute heat, when the old South, that left us a better heritage in manliness and courage than in broad and rich acres, calls us to settle problems? . . .

I see a South, the home of fifty millions of people, who rise up every day to call from blessed cities, vast hives of industry and of thrift; her countrysides the treasures from which their resources are drawn; her streams vocal with whirring spindles ; her valleys tranquil in the white and gold of the harvest; her mountains showering down the music of bells, as her slowmoving flocks and herds go forth from their folds; her rulers honest and her people loving, and her homes happy and their hearthstones bright, and their waters still, and their pastures green, and her conscience clear; her wealth diffused and poor houses empty. . . . Peace and sobriety walking hand in hand through her borders; honor in her homes; uprightness in her midst; plenty in her fields; straight and simple faith in the

hearts of her sons and daughters; her two races walking together in peace and contentment; sunshine everywhere and all the time, and night falling on her generally as from the wings of the unseen dove.

The New York Times of Sunday, March 31, 1889, published the following dispatch from Rear Admiral Kimberley in Samoa, sent via Aukland and London :

Hurricane at Apia, March 15. Every vessel in harbor on shore except English man-of-war Calliope which got to sea. Trenton and Vandalia total losses. Nipsic beached; rudder gone; may be saved; chances against it. . . . Vandalia lost four officers and thirty-nine men; Nipsic lost seven men; all saved from Trenton. . . . German losses ninety-six. Important to send three hundred men home at once. Shall I charter steamer? Can charter in Aukland. . . . Fuller accounts by mail. Kimberly

Three years later this terrible calamity was described by the greatest living writer of narrative prose, Robert Louis Stevenson, in his "Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa."

By the second week in March, three American ships were in Apia bay- the Nipsic, the Vandalia, and the Trenton, carrying the flag of Rear-Admiral Kimberley; three German -the Adler, the Eber, and the Olga; and one British, the Calliope, Captain Kane. Six merchantmen, ranging from twenty-five up to five hundred tons, and a number of small craft, further encumbered the anchorage. . . . In this overcrowding of ships in an open entry of the reef, even the eye of a landsman could spy danger; and Captain-Lieutenant Wallis of the Eber openly blamed and lamented, not many hours before the catastrophe, their helpless posture. Temper once more triumphed. The army of Mataafa still hung immanent behind the town; the German quarter was still daily garrisoned with fifty sailors from the squadron; what was yet more influential, Germany and the [United] States, at least in Apia bay, were on the brink of war, viewed each other