The Southern states were the scene of the conflict, and resounded with the tread of armies. As a consequence, the prosperity of the South was arrested during the war and its fields and towns destroyed or damaged. The North held the mechanical industries of the country, and under the stimulus of war these industries were expanded to their fullest capacity. Business of all kinds in the North prospered, prices were high, and the armies in the field were sustained and paid by a thrifty agricultural and manufacturing domain behind them. The agricultural South could not compete with the manufacturing North. Prior to the war, the diversified resources of the South were not appreciated - scarcely noticed. Her rich deposits of iron and other ores, the coal to work the ores, her timber and stone and her water power were almost untouched. It was actually contended that manufacturing could not be profitably carried on in the South on account of climatic influences. But the war not only revolutionized the system of labor in the South, but thereafter began the mechanical development of the Southern states. With the return of peace, attention was turned to the elements which are essential to industrial development, and there has since grown up in that section an extensive factory system. The South found that besides the capacity to raise cotton and tobacco for domestic and foreign consumption, great sources of wealth were hidden beneath the surface in the mineral deposits of the country. Thus near Birmingham, Alabama, rich iron mines were discovered, with coke-making coal and limestone needed for smelting and making steel near by, and thus the cost of making did not involve the transportation of either of these products. As a result, Birmingham has now become an important manufacturing center.

For a time directly after the war, and as its natural consequence, agriculture and all other industries in the South were depressed, and society was more or less discouraged, disorganized and in a state of doubt. Fears were entertained that their great staple, cotton, would not be raised so plentifully under free as slave labor, but the contrary was proven to be the case. The largest cotton crop prior to the war was in 1860, and amounted to 4,669,770 bales. This yield was not reached again until 1871, and since 1876 there has never been a year when the crop did not exceed that of 1860, while in 1901 it reached the enormous total of 10,383,422 bales. While formerly the South exported nearly all of her raw cotton or sent it to the mills of New England, she now manufactures a very large part of it, 1,583,000 bales having been woven by southern cotton mills during the year 1901 as against 1,964,000 bales manufactured in the North. The opening up of coal mines in the South for fuel supply, and the movement of northern capital and skilled labor southward, may be ascribed as the reasons for the increased manufacture of cotton in the South.

The growth and development of the cotton industry in the South during the past forty years may be almost taken as an example of the general development of the country in all lines of activity. New industries have been constantly appearing and old ones enlarging. New processes and improved machinery have been constantly reducing the cost and utilizing products which formerly were considered worthless. Many industries have passed from the household or small shop to the large factory, where steam power or electricity have supplemented man power, and thus cheapened production. The wonderful develGrowth of the Cotton and other Industries opment of the natural resources of the country, the ambition manifested by the people in all lines to supply home demand, ever increasing on account of a large immigation, and to have a share in foreign markets, have tended to stimulate all lines of manufacturing during this period. Added to these, the protective tariff has given an additionl encouragement to a large list of industries, and assisted in the general commercial advancement.

In no class of industries has there been a greater advancement in the methods of manufacture from the raw to the finished product during the past forty years than in that of iron and steel, and in none has there been produced a greater diversity of .finished products. The processes through which the metal passes, from the ore in its natural form up to the manufacture of almost an unlimited variety of articles for man's convenience, ranging from the spiral watch spring up to the mammoth beam of structural steel, is a triumph of inventive genius. One of the principal causes of the enormous development of the steel and iron industry has been the demand for railroad track, incident to the expansion of our railroad systems. Iron rails were formerly used, but steel has almost entirely superseded them. The substitution of coke for coal and charcoal in the production of pig iron, and the cheapening of the process of the manufacture of steel caused by the introduction of the Bessemer and Siemens-Martin or open hearth system, have tended to facilitate the use of steel in the construction of buildings and otherwise, while the invention of new machinery usually necessitates the use of steel in its construction.

In 1859 petroleum was discovered in Pennsylvania, and the supply from that region and from Ohio has thus far proven inexhaustible. A method of refining the oil was soon after devised, and there are now over two hundred products of this mineral oil used for illuminating, lubricating, etc., the whole constituting one of our most important industries. A great demand for this oil in its various forms has made it an important article of domestic and foreign commerce. Thousands of miles of pipes have been laid from wells to the seaboard and the Great Lakes, and extensive refineries have been established in New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Buffalo and Chicago. Large discoveries of fuel oil were made in Texas in 1901, affording a valuable source of supply to western consumers, and proving especially fortunate for use upon the great prairies of the west where wood and coal are scarce.