Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/361

Rh ing grain from the North and West, but the iron, cotton, and timber products (one-half of all the standing timber being in the South at the present time), to be manufactured into the various articles of commerce. The South is now making enough for home consumption, and is shipping largely besides, and will increase annually these shipments. These are no longer doubted facts, and there is now going on a movement toward the South of larger manufacturing interests, of capital, of railroad builders, of population. A most significant illustration of how immigration is increasing is the locating of a colony, composed of veterans of the Union army, in South Georgia, by ex-Governor Northen of that State. Scarcely over two years ago there was established in the piney woods of that State a town of 6,000 inhabitants with constant accessions in population and capital. The settlement has sprung up almost like magic, and has attracted great attention. It is one of the many such colonies now being contemplated and being established throughout the South, and must necessarily continue, as nearly all of the available arable land fit for settlement is now in the South, while much of the land settled by agriculturists in the extreme Northwest has been found unsuitable as farming land, owing to uncertain seasons and little rainfall.

The class immigrating southward is a most desirable class, being mainly Americans, or foreigners who have become thoroughly Americanized, and who prefer the South on account of the very cold weather in the North. Nearly all new emigrants from Europe prefer the North at first.

The cotton and iron manufacturing enterprises in the South did not experience the effects of the depression in money matters in the panics of 1892 and 1893 as did similar plants at the North. At Fall River, Mass., and other manufacturing centers, mills were run on half time ; in fact, for many years the loss on this account in