Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/348

832 chiefly foundry brands for open market, and the makers of the South, no inconsiderable number of the former would be unable to survive long." (Iron Age.)

"It is idle for Pennsylvania and other great iron and coal-producing States to close their eyes to the fact that we have reached the beginning of a great revolution in those products. . . . The tread of the iron and coal diggers of Alabama threatens the majesty of the Northern iron and coal fields."

With scarcely less advantage in economic condition, are the immense iron and coal fields of West Virginia, southwest Virginia, western North Carolina, east Tennessee, Georgia and Kentucky, an inexhaustible field of ores 700 miles in length and 200 miles in breadth, as rich almost in timber as in coal and iron. In 1896 the production of pig iron was 8,623,181 tons in the United States, less by 823,181 than the amount produced in 1895. There were produced in the South 1,834,451 tons, an increase of 132,000 tons over 1895, a shortage for the North, and an increase for the South. The South to-day presents the most inviting field for investment of any section of the Union.

The coal fields in the South are as extensive as the iron fields, and as already stated, coal and iron are frequently mined out of the same mountain, and the supply is inexhaustible. Coal and iron together give to the South advantages, from an economic standpoint, to be found in no other section of the same area in the world.

The cotton crop of the South alone is a wonderful source of wealth and gives her advantages possessed by no other country of equal area. She produces about 70 per cent of the entire cotton crop of the world, and her climatic conditions will give her this advantage for all time. This crop alone from 1865 to 1890 was valued at $7,867,113,555, of which $5,161,000,000 was exported. This crop is every year becoming more and more a surplus crop, and will be a mine of wealth to the country,