June 5, 1863, The Charleston Mercury
Our enemies are elated with the vain hope of starving us out. Is there a man in the Confederate States who entertains a doubt of our ability to feed ourselves and our army? If there be such an individual, we refer him to the statistics of our export of wheat and flour, in former years, which will scarcely fail to satisfy him. The present wheat crop, now nearly ready for the sickle, covers a larger breadth of ground than was ever before planted, and it is admitted by all to be the most promising crop ever known at the South. An abundant yield is now beyond any contingency, and will, in all probability, be sufficient to furnish bread to our people at home, and to our armies in the field, and leave a surplus for a large export. Independent of wheat, our former cotton fields are now producing immense crops of corn, peas, rye, oats, and other provender for horses and cattle; sweet and Irish potatoes, sugar cane, sorgho, etc.
We will have more hogs to fatten, five or ten times more, than were ever previously raised and put on our markets, and we will doubtless have quite enough of pork and bacon to supply all our wants. There is scarcely a tanyard in the Confederacy that has not been greatly enlarged, and most of the planters are making leather for themselves, so that there is no probability of our suffering for leather or shoes.
We have plenty of arms, and can make our own powder, and the production of iron is rapidly increasing. Then what indispensable article do we lack to render us entirely independent! It is that of clothing; and, singular to say, very little attention has been paid by our public authorities to increased production, now almost indispensable to our safety. Our old stock of clothing is fast wearing out, the production is not half equal to the demand, and it has become a positive and pressing necessity to increase our means of supply. If this war is to continue, we will need new factories, and the old ones must be extended; the hand of industry must be induced to take hold of the spinning wheel and hand loom in every hamlet and hovel in the country. The question with us is, not how cheap we can be supplied, but how we are to get cloth at all. It will be safe to assume that we will have to rely mainly on home production, which leads to the inquiry – how we are to increase the means of supply? It will certainly not be done by legislative restrictions on prices; high rates must be looked to as a moving cause. That our safety should depend on high prices – yea, extortionate rate – is an uncomfortable reflection, but that is an ordeal we are doomed to pass through, and the difficulty ought to be willingly met and overcome by every lover of his country. Prices must go up to a point that will remunerate the hand loom and spindle, or we will be without a sufficient supply.
Capitalists will not engage in new manufacturing enterprises unless they have a prospect of great gain; and prices must be unrestricted by legal enactments, or our factories will be suffered to wear out and burn up without an effort to renew them; and as for new establishments being reared, that is out of the question with the present state of public sentiment, in and out of Congress and our State Legislature.
If half the amount that has been expended in importing calicoes, brandies, wines, cheese, fancy soaps, and the thousands of jim cracks of Yankee manufacture that load the ships coming through the blockade, had been expended in machinery for the manufacture of every needed article, we would now be in a situation to carry on the war within ourselves, and to put the Yankees at defiance; but unfortunately for us, public opinion has sanctioned the idea that he who exchanges our last golden dollar and imports Yankee ten cent calico and sells it for three dollars a yard, is a benefactor to his country. While the ingenious producer at home is branded with infamy and indicted for extortion for selling a similar article made at home for a dollar and a half.
Our experience in the salt production affords a valuable lesson on the stimulating effects of high prices. The unrestricted high price of salt stimulated the production of that article and saved our country. But for the high price of salt last summer, the salt kettle would have been idle, and meat could not have been saved; and so it will be with cloth. If prices be kept down by legal restrictions, the hand spindle and loom will be restrained and discouraged, and will not be put in operation as a matter of profit; for who will purchase high priced cards to spin and weave for a livelihood, while there is no better prospect than that of competing with factories at 40 and 50 cents a yard? You may traverse the country from one end to the other to find persons who can earn their bread at such prices.
Twelve to fifteen thousand pairs of cards industriously worked will produce as much cloth as a factory of eight thousand spindles and three hundred looms; but as long as factory cloth is sold for forty and fifty cents a yard, the twelve to fifteen thousand pairs of hand cards will not be industriously worked. They are now being made and coming into the country by tens of thousands, and they must be set to work in order to save us.
If there are not factories enough to supply all our wants, and there are certainly not enough to furnish half, then it becomes a positive necessity to stimulate private enterprise in the line of cloth making, and all legal restraints on the advance of factory prices will serve as a clog on expansive production, both of the power and hand loom.
If Congress and the State Governments desired to limit production, they could not pursue a more certain policy to effect that end, than that of restricting prices, and every such step taken by our rulers will tend to embarrass and ruin our country.
When the war commenced, from our limited number of factories, the price of cloth advanced, and the extortion rates, said to be charged by manufacturers (then only 16 to 20 cents), became a theme for newspaper scribbles and politicians, and our industrious, enterprising manufacturers were berated and stigmatized as little better than highway robbers; and such was the rage of warfare, that the public mind was poisoned against them, from the lowest strata of society to the highest circle of politicians. Long discussions in legislative halls set forth in glowing colors the monstrous evil of high prices, devising various modes of restricting them; and Congress wasted time and money enough in such discussions to have paid for importing cards sufficient to supply every working woman in our country. The result of all this legal restrictions of prices, that transferred profits from the hand of the manufacturer to the speculator, and utterly forbade the much needed expansion of manufacturing either by hand or machinery.
Unfortunately for the country, these restrictions led the people into the delusive hope of cheap supplies, and many who could have made cloth for themselves, utterly neglected the hand spindle and loom, and are now unable to purchase in sufficient quantity at any price.
The unfriendly spirit manifested in many of the States, particularly in Georgia, against manufacturers, and the uncertainty that has existed as to what restrictions might be thrown around manufacturing, by Congress and the several State Legislatures, has deterred many who have accumulated money from investing it in English machinery to run the blockade. Large establishments, that desired much to extend, have not earned enough to justify the requisite extraordinary outlay.
To import machinery now costs from twelve to fifteen prices, and we feel quite well assured that no large establishment in our country has earned money enough in two years past to pay for the importation of machinery that would add twenty percent to their production, and they will remain as they are, to the great detriment of the country, such as will induce Congress and the State Legislatures to abandon all restrictions on prices, and give full vent to every branch of industry. If exorbitant profits be the result, let them go, too, into the hands of those who earn them (who will probably use such earnings in a way to strengthen our country), and not into the hands of speculators who have amassed fortunes of late by standing between the manufacturer and consumer. The present policy is calculated to demoralize the community and to paralyze honest DOMESTIC INDUSTRY.