Up South

With the Civil War fading into legend, the ordinary northern U. S. citizen takes a sentimental attitude toward the South. It is the land of sleepy, gentle plantations. There Cotton is King; white men are colonels; lazy colored men lie on their backs and croon "Massa's in de col', col' groun'" up at a beautiful orange moon; and colored mammies are kissing babies & making pancakes. That conception received last week a rude jolt from Dr. Julius Klein, able chief of the U. S. Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce. At Memphis, Mr. Klein delivered an address, declared that: 1) manufacture exceeds agriculture in the South; 2) unlike the dear, dead days when King Cotton was courted by foreign buyers, the South now campaigns for foreign markets; 3) nearly half the export tonnage from the U. S. went out of Baltimore & ports south. Said he: "Those who have not followed the situation closely are compelled to recognize today--with distinct surprise, perhaps--that agriculture is . no longer the dominant activity of the South. Manufacture has outstripped it and the value of mineral products is high. . . . Mississippi and Arkansas alone among the southern states show a higher value for farm products than for manufactures and minerals."