Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/346

380 fined her crops mainly to cotton, sugar and tobacco. Everything was needed in the way of furniture and family supplies, and had to be bought anew, and in those dark days, only cotton brought money at once on the market, so this crop only could be mortgaged to get these necessaries. Now this drain is all over, and the South is developing a great industry in early fruits and vegetables, amounting to $50,000,000 a year in her oranges, apples and vegetables now shipped North. The South is reversing matters, and beginning to send food products North, having a surplus over her needs. Her great cotton crop and other staple crops are now becoming surplus crops since she is feeding herself, and today the Southern planter and farmer is generally as comfortable as he was in the better days before disaster overtook him.

The growth of manufactures in the South is fully brought out by the statistics given in detail, and we may sum up the bearing of these industries by stating that in the ten years 1880 to 1890, the South so firmly established herself as to more than compete with the Middle and New England States in the manufacture of iron and cotton goods. The conditions are so favorable in economic advantage, the iron, coal and limestone frequently being found in juxtaposition in the same mountain, as to enable the mills almost to do away with the cost of transportation of ore, coal and coke as compared with this item of expense which in the North involves an average distance of from 300 to 600 miles. As early as 1884 and 1885 the South began shipping pig iron to eastern markets. Southern iron was sold at a profit, after paying freight rates, of from $3 to $5 per ton, and at all periods when the business is not profitable at the North, and the mills and furnaces shut down or run on short time, the Southern furnaces and mills continue to work and make money and supply the deficit caused by the shutting down at the North. It is now an established fact that