Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/351

Rh increase of the whole country. In banking there was an increase of surplus of 146 per cent, while it was only 63½ per cent in the rest of the country. While in 1879 the South had only 220 banks, with a capital m stock of $45,408,985, in 1889 she had 472 banks with a capital of $76,454,510. In 1889 she had increased her banks 113 per cent, while at the North the increase was only 13 per cent and in the West 80 per cent. In capital stock she increased the amount 70 per cent against the 4 per cent in the North and 95 per cent in the West. In 1897 the bank clearings in January, as compared with January, 1896, give a gain of 6 per cent; the Middle States a gain of 2½ per cent, and a decrease of from 5 per cent to 11 per cent in the West and on the Pacific coast.

What the South may be said to have accomplished, may be summed up in the language of Mr. D. A. Tompkins, who said:

(1) It has shaken off the idea of dependence on the negro as a laborer, and the latter is falling into the relation of helper to the white laborer. (2) It has accumulated capital enough to undertake very extensive manufacturing without, in many cases, the need to borrow capital from the North. (3) It has demonstrated that the Southern man makes as successful a manufacturer and skilled mechanic as the Northern man or the Englishman, and that the climate is rather advantageous than otherwise to successful and profitable work. (4) In iron, cotton and lumber manufacturing, it is not a question whether the South can hold its own against other sections, but whether other sections can compete with the South.

Mr. Frederick Taylor, a banker of New York, said in 1889, after visiting the South: "The new South has been built up by the indomitable energy and by the hard work of the Southern people themselves." Hon. H. B. Pierce, of Massachusetts, said: "I predict for the new South an era of prosperity which shall eclipse any which has ever been achieved in any other section of our great country, so remarkable for its success in that line."