Page:Nullification Controversy in South Carolina.djvu/209

190 and its causes. Long editorials asserted the prosperity of Charleston, and others asserted that the fall in the value of lands in the state was due, not to the tariff, but to the immense and extraordinarily fertile area made available in the south-western country, which was draining the Southeast of its population and reducing the price of cotton. In support of his assertion of prosperity, one writer said that there had been more luxuries imported into the state during the last two years than ever before; that more money was being expended upon elections and the vices incident thereto. Among several prosperous planters whom he named as examples, one was "a zealous Nullifier" who had recently complained of the slow progress of the railroad which was being built from Charleston, and who, when it was suggested that he spur on the work by hiring out to the builders a hundred of his slaves, replied that it would make the difference of $20,000 in his income. The railroad contractors would have given him $12,000; he must therefore have made from his plantations $320 net to the hand. To