THE SOUTHERN STATES.

Te Aroha News, Volume XI, Issue 1747, 3 July 1895, Page 2

THE SOUTHERN STATES.

[By Outis.] - ■ -flfe 1 ' Plato,. Eeno, or some other antiquated authority is credited with the remark “ That a good man struggling with adversity is a spectacle for the gods.” Probably, as there is nothing new under the sun; for this original idea please consult Solomon and a few score before him, beginning, perhaps, with Tubal Cam’s bosom friend. Probably the recovery of France after Bismarck had “ bled her white ”in 1871, is the v most conspicuous example of such a successful struggle in the history of . nations. Men of our own race, though. * have made an equally gallant figho against worse conditions without gaining much credit. When the war of Secession in the U.S.A. closed it is no exaggeration to say that nothing remained to the South but its land. In the struggle, gallant we must admit whatever we think of its justice, of six against twenty-one millions every other item of material wealth had disappeared, while every family, had lost its bravest and best on the battle-field, and the, feeble remnant who remained had to recommence the struggle for existence. under entirely new conditions. Starting with less than nothing, inheriting as they did the happy-go-luckedness of the slave system'they have amply vindicated their title to belong to that progressive race to whose history it is hard to say whether Irish, English or Scotch has contributed tbe largest share of renown. Eor a long , time content with growing cotton the South now threatens the supremacy of New England in its manufacture, and may yet rival Lancashire. Late as .she started she has already one-sixth of the spindles in the United States, and her mills owing to the abundance °f water-power, cheap labour, and proximity of the raw material, run full time when the Lowell factories are closed down or working half time. She has added a full tenth to the value of her raw cotton, already worth £60,000,000, by utilising, its waste products. Though cotton has sold under cost price for the past three years the wealth of the South is now ■ twice what it was before the war, which left it valueless outside the energy of its enfeebled people. Before the war the South looked down with gentlemanly contempt on manufactures ; it now makes more pig iron than the whole United. States in 1870,- at half the cost on the, average : returned .by Northern mills. Ore, coal, and limestone" are all as in England, and a few year's will see Pennsylvania. take a back seat to -Virginia “and - Georgia in. the ' production of steel. Before iB6O she imported most of her food from -the North; the . agricultural products now are worth a billion a year. She-three-fifths of the sea-board of fitto United States, more than half of its timber area, the revenue from which last year was £30,000,000, and in nine years her length of railways increased by 150 per cen|. ; Even in the precious metals she mines about £l,000,000 a year. The sympathy most of us had with the South in the war was due to our recognition of the Peckeinffianism of the North; now that the South has found in the Eden of the same war its Mark Tapley and cast aside its selfish

indolence our sympathies are with fit still. .