DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOUTH 375 



doubled in size, measured by the 1904 figure, since 1880, 

 when the south's real progress since the war began to be made. 

 The United States produces three fourths of the world's cot- 

 ton, all of the American crop being raised in the south. In 

 that staple the south has something like a monopoly of one 

 of the most useful and profitable commodities in commerce. 

 Nor is the south's connection with cotton restricted to raising 

 the raw material. The old slaves states have now caught 

 up with the region about the Potomac and the Ohio in cotton 

 manufacture. Of the average of 4,000,000 bales retained 

 for home consumption now about 2,000,000 are manufactured 

 in the southern mills. In 1880 the south manufactured only 

 221 bales of cotton. In this branch of industry, owing to the 

 nearness of the raw material, to the low price of labor and to 

 the low rents, the south is bound to far exceed the north. Its 

 facilities for the production of the raw material, too, are 

 practically exhaustless. The 13,500,000 bales of cotton in 

 1905 could be more than doubled if all the south's waste 

 lands capable of cotton production were to be reclaimed and 

 utilized. 



The south has not yet regained its political prestige of 

 the antebellum era. It furnishes no candidates for either 

 end of national tickets. In no convention is its advice sought 

 with the eagerness of the old days. The south furnished all 

 the country's presidents along to 1861 except the two Adamses, 

 Van Buren, Harrison, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan and Lin- 

 coln, and Harrison and Lincoln were born in the south. For 

 fifty one of the seventy two years of the nation's fife preced- 

 ing the civil war a man of southern birth and residence was 

 at the head of the government. Many of the country's vice 

 presidents in those days were also southern men. No south- 

 ern man has filled either the first or the second office since the 

 war, except Johnson, who, however, was chosen before the 

 war ended. In two elections immediately after the war the 

 south was not fully represented in the electoral college. Since 

 that time, until recent days, the south has been giving the 

 electoral vote to one party, and thus depriving it of a very 

 powerful means for exacting favors from each of the parties 

 in national conventions. 



