If you tell us what the condition of things is in the countryside, we will tell you the condition of things in the cities. The one is the barometer of the other. The great wave of depression which has been felt in the cities originated in the back-country of these cities, originated on the farms. Whenever anything happens that affects the power of the people in the rural regions to carry on their transactions in the markets, the effect upon the city, the industrial population, is immediate.
We felt the depression in this part of the land the moment the props went from under the cotton market. With cotton going down, the farmers were unable to create sufficient wealth to enable everybody else to get along comfortably. Eventually the situation became so bad that city merchants could not be paid what was due them, the banks had difficulty in collecting notes, business in the stores fell off because the decreasing purchasing power of the people, starting only as a little disturbance out in the countryside, became widely diffused and, finally, employment became difficult.
If that is a correct interpretation of the source of depression, it will be a correct interpretation also of the source of prosperity toward which we are all being borne. The moment the farmer can realize on those raw products with which he supplies the market, that moment the machinery of business will start up, money will get into circulation and industry begin to flourish. Is it, therefore, any wonder that a smile is parading the faces of the people of the South as they are witnessing the increasing strength in the tone of the cotton markets? It means the difference between adversity and prosperity for them.
From the editorial page of The Charlotte News, Sept. 6, 1921
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