=Efforts to Start Southern Industries Fail.=—­A few of them, seeing the predominance of the North, made determined efforts to introduce manufactures into the South.  To the leaders who were averse to secession and nullification this seemed the only remedy for the growing disparity in the power of the two sections.  Societies for the encouragement of mechanical industries were formed, the investment of capital was sought, and indeed a few mills were built on Southern soil.  The results were meager.  The natural resources, coal and water power, were abundant; but the enterprise for direction and the skilled labor were wanting.  The stream of European immigration flowed North and West, not South.  The Irish or German laborer, even if he finally made his home in a city, had before him, while in the North, the alternative of a homestead on Western land.  To him slavery was a strange, if not a repelling, institution.  He did not take to it kindly nor care to fix his home where it flourished.  While slavery lasted, the economy of the South was inevitably agricultural.  While agriculture predominated, leadership with equal necessity fell to the planting interest.  While the planting interest ruled, political opposition to Northern economy was destined to grow in strength.

=The Southern Theory of Sectionalism.=—­In the opinion of the statesmen who frankly represented the planting interest, the industrial system was its deadly enemy.  Their entire philosophy of American politics was summed up in a single paragraph by McDuffie, a spokesman for South Carolina:  “Owing to the federative character of our government, the great geographical extent of our territory, and the diversity of the pursuits of our citizens in different parts of the union, it has so happened that two great interests have sprung up, standing directly opposed to each other.  One of these consists of those manufactures which the Northern and Middle states are capable of producing but which, owing to the high price of labor and the high profits of capital in those states, cannot hold competition with foreign manufactures without the aid of bounties, directly or indirectly given, either by the general government or by the state governments.  The other of these interests consists of the great agricultural staples of the Southern states which can find a market only in foreign countries and which can be advantageously sold only in exchange for foreign manufactures which come in competition with those of the Northern and Middle states....  These interests then stand diametrically and irreconcilably opposed to each other.  The interest, the pecuniary interest of the Northern manufacturer, is directly promoted by every increase of the taxes imposed upon Southern commerce; and it is unnecessary to add that the interest of the Southern planter is promoted by every diminution of taxes imposed upon the productions of their industry.  If, under these circumstances, the manufacturers were clothed with the power of imposing