A county paper told its readers: "We believe there is money enough in the
county, here and there, to make at least a modest beginning so as to
attract outside capital."[234]
Having sought to define the attitude of the South toward Northern capital,
and to indicate the nature of the appeals made to the outside capitalist,
the last topic of this discussion is reached in an examination of the
response of investors outside of the South to invitations, and the influx
of capital when the opportunities for profit had become apparent.
It must be plain that as the sections drew together with each year that
removed the "reminders of the Civil War, the South was more welcoming in
her attitude toward Northern capital, and the North more ready to invest
in the South. This is recognized in an editorial of The News and Courier,
headed The North and Europe Building Up the South": "It has been evident
during the past two years that the distrust which had prevented capital
from coming to the Southern States for investment has, in a large measure,
been dissipated, and that the disposition to place money in the South in
undertakings which promise a fair return is rapidly growing strong.
Indeed, the process has gone on much more swiftly than is supposed by
those who have not watched the course of events...." Continuing, the
editorial quotes an estimate appearing in the New York Herald, that in the
eighteen months preceding Northern and European capitalists subscribed to
Southern enterprises located in the section east of the Mississippi and
South of the James, $100,000,000. Of this amount, more than $90,000,000
was invested in railroads, without the $20,000,000 in the Cincinnati
Southern. "Besides the investments in railroads there are the investments
in cotton manufactures. There is hardly a city in the South in which there
is not a new factory building organizing, and in nearly every case a
considerable part of the capital is raised at the North."[235]
The Baltimore American said the same thing: "The South is now the focal
point of trade aspirations for the whole country. Capital and industrial
activity are crowding upon it from every point of the compass. Every
railroad system in the land is struggling to reach it...."[236]
Outside capital invested in Southern cotton mills took two
forms--subscriptions to the stock of mills managed in whole or in part by
Southern men, and the actual setting up of plants in the South owned
throughout by Northern promoters. Of these two, the second was of much the
rarer occurrence. Capital not domestic came from two main sources, the
North and East, and from England. There is no reason to believe that the
English subscriptions, in spite of frequent allusions to England as a
possible investor, were large or many.