has some excellent locomotive-building works and many car-wheel and axle foundries which even ship their product to the leading railroads North and West, large machine shops, agricultural implement works, and the finest and best-equipped iron shipyard in the world, which has lately launched the largest iron steamer ever built in this country, with the exception of some of the new war vessels. The census figures will show that during the decade between 1880 and 1890 the increase in the number of persons employed in New England cottonmills was 21,755, while in Southern mills it was 22,592; in the first case a gain of somewhat more than 17 per cent and in the second of nearly 135 per cent. Superintendent Porter lately said:

"The Southern States may well be proud of this magnificent showing. These States are employing in their cotton-mills nearly as many hands as Massachusetts did in 1870. In the ten years just closed, they have more than doubled the number of persons employed and the value of their product, and have nearly trebled the amount of cotton consumed and the number of their spindles. The increase in the amount of cotton consumed has been greater in the Southern States than in New England."

The output of coal from Southern mines in 1891 was over twentythree million tons, compared with about six million tons in 1881, a much greater percentage of gain than in the country at large. The forty cotton-seed-oil mills, with a capital of three million five hundred thousand dollars, in operation in 1881 have grown to over two hundred mills, with an investment of thirty million dollars or more; of phosphate rock the production in 1891 was between six hundred thousand and seven hundred thousands tons, as compared with two hundred and sixty-six thousand tons ten years ago.

If further examples or illustrations of the South's progress are needed, they may be found in every line of development. Probably no feature of Southern growth has commanded more attention during the last few years than the increase in business at the South Atlantic and Gulf ports. The tendency of Western produce has been to seek a foreign outlet through Southern ports, and so great are the advantages of these as compared with the more northerly routes that the business which has been started must of necessity grow rapidly. With Western grain and provisions added to Southern cotton, coal, and lumber passing through these ports, there is a foundation for large commercial cities at every good Southern harbor. Railroad construction is already tending in that direction. The official govern. ment figures can again be called upon in behalf of the South. The value of exports from Southern ports in 1881 was $257,535,401 and in

1891 $349,801,999, an increase of $92,266,598; the value from all other United States ports was $576,013,726 in 1881 and $620,713,801 in 1891, a gain of $44,700,075. Not only did the South gain 36 per cent, against an increase of only 7.7 per cent at all other ports, but the actual gain by the former was $92,266,598, as compared with $44,700,075 by the latter. Examining the banking business, it is found that the South has six hundred and forty national banks, with an aggregate capital of $99,905,405, against two hundred and twenty-three, with a capital of $45,010,000, in 1881, the percentage of gain being very much larger than in the rest of the country.

That the advance has been general as to States and as to all lines of progress is conclusively shown by the assessed value of property. In 1880 the total assessed value of property in the Southern States was $2,913,436,095. By 1891 this had increased to $4,816,396,896, a gain of one billion nine hundred million dollars. The average assessed value per capita in 1891 was $271, while in 1880 it was $187. It would only require the same rate of gain per capita and the same rate of increase in population as during the last ten years-and certainly these will be maintained—to give the South a total assessed value of nearly eight billion five hundred million dollars ten years hence. Summing up in tabular form some of the foregoing statistics, we find the following condensed showing of the South's progress:

The past ten years have only served to show the possibilities of Southern advancement. It would require too much space to elaborate the facts which prove that the growth of the whole country necessitates and will insure even greater progress in the South in the future than in the past. The increase in the population of the United States in the next ten years will about equal the present population of the entire 1 In a few cases these figures are for 1880.

fourteen Southern States. The growth in manufactures is illustrated by the fact that the increase in capital invested in manufacturing in 1890 over 1880 was more than the total capital so invested in 1870. The steady growth in the consumption of iron will demand an increase in production sufficient to require the building of at least as many furnaces in the South in the next ten years as have been built in the past ten. These facts and many more that will suggest themselves to the reader will show that even if the South maintain only an equal rate of growth with the country at large, it will accomplish far more between 1890 and 1900 than it did between 1880 and 1890, while in all probability its rate of growth during this decade will, as during the previous one, exceed the rate of growth in nearly all lines of development of the rest of the country.

Coincident with very rapid industrial progress and with increase in population and wealth in any community there is invariably more or less speculation in real estate. No section of the country is free from this. For many years the West was the centre of attraction for real-estate operators, and the whole country was flooded with the stories of the marvellous increase in town-lot values as grain fields or forests were almost in a day transformed into booming towns. Throughout the great West there are many sad monuments of blasted hopes in deserted towns that failed to realize the expectations of their founders; but on the other hand there are magnificent cities, such as Denver, Omaha, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Spokane Falls, Duluth, Tacoma, and dozens of others, whose phenomenal growth has been largely due to the work of the real-estate "boomer." When the South commenced to develop, the real-estate operators turned their attention this way. The Southern people, who had heretofore been great speculators in cotton, now became speculators in corner lots, first in Birmingham and then in Anniston, Sheffield, and other places.

The fever of speculation excited by the marvellous advance in values in Birmingham when fortunes were made in a day, and when the stock of the chief land company there rose from $100, the par value, to $4,500 a share, based on dividends in one year of 2,200 per cent, spread to several other Southern States. This excitement was checked by the collapse that followed the Baring failure; and because the corner-lot booming and the founding of new towns have temporarily ceased, many people wrongly imagine that the general advancement of the South has received a severe blow. On the contrary, the future development of the South will be on a sounder basis and

on a broader scale by reason of the lessons learned since the panic of 1890. The solid industrial interests of this section have stood the strain in a way to command universal attention and to prove to the world the claims made as to the superior advantages of the South. The fact that the largest iron company in Alabama, which is also one of the largest in the world, earned more money during its last fiscal year than ever before in its history, notwithstanding the extreme depression in iron, has made a deep impression upon iron men everywhere; and when a revival in business comes to the country at large, capital will seek the South as never before, because of the vitality displayed by its iron and other industrial interests during the last two years. In addition to the depression which has been felt throughout the business world since the Baring failure, the South has had to suffer from an overproduction of cotton, resulting in very low and unprofitable prices. This, however, is a matter which soon regulates itself, and will prove a blessing in disguise, as it has already driven Southern farmers to the cultivation of larger food crops. Present indications point to very large grain crops in the South, and a cotton crop sufficiently small to insure much better prices than those of last year. With these indications realized in the fall, Southern farmers will be more prosperous than for many years.

It would be a great error for the public to charge the present financial troubles of several Southern railroads to lack of business. The South is in no way responsible for this condition of affairs. To Wall Street speculators who for years have manipulated the securities of these roads to their own personal gain must be charged their bankruptcy. In no way, probably, can this be more clearly seen than by contrasting the management and its results of these now bankrupt roads with those of such roads as the Seaboard Air Line, the Atlantic Coast Line, the Norfolk & Western, and the Chesapeake & Ohio. While others were operated from Wall Street and made the foundation for new issues of securities almost without number, these were being managed in the interest of their stockholders and of the country tributary to them and without Wall Street manipulations. The Wall Street roads were driven into bankruptcy, the others have prospered and they have made prosperous the country along their lines. Let the blame rest where it belongs, and not on the South.

RICHARD H. EDMONDS.

THE DISASTROUS EFFECTS OF A FORCE BILL.

AFTER years of peace, without special complaint from any portion of the country, the Republicans of the Fifty-first Congress deliberately offered and urged legislation now commonly known as the Force Bill. The people in the fall of 1890, at the ballot-box, repudiated both the party and the issue. Still the bill was pressed in the Senate, and with a desperate effort most of the Republican senators sought to make it a law. The Republican party now presents a candidate for President who has approved the measure, a candidate for Vice-President whose newspaper labored for its passage, and a platform which practically gives it an indorsement. In view of these facts, it is clear that a Force Bill is before the American people. They must decide upon its desirability at the polls in November.

The same men who prepared and supported the old Force Bill of 1890 and 1891 will have charge of the new Force Bill in 1893 and 1894. It is just to infer that their new Force Bill will be similar to their old Force Bill. The Force Bill of 1890-91 embraced a scheme for the appointment of supervisors who were to control Congressional elections. They were to be appointed by the circuit courts and to be backed by deputy United States marshals. The original bill gave them authority to visit private residences for the purpose of investigation, to inquire of wives and daughters about husbands and fathers concerning politics, nativity, residence, and anything else which the supervisors might think related to the right of suffrage. The supervisors could also carry on this mission, deputy marshals to aid the enforced examinations of women of families, while the men were away from home. This plan of supervision could be brought into any district in the Union on the application of one hundred men; and the number of officers, not including deputy marshals, who could then take charge of the district has been estimated at not less than six hundred. What district is there where there are not one hundred men so far below the standard of manhood as to ask for supervisors, if only for the purpose of becoming supervisors themselves? The circuit. judge would first appoint his chief supervisor, and this man could