The very day of opening, the exposition greeted crowds of visitors with these words from Daniel W. Vorhees, of Indiana; "There is a far higher remuneration than has ever been given by cotton yet in store for the laborer, the manufacturer, the South and the entire country. In the midst of the cotton plantations themselves there is a career for manufacturing development such as the world has not yet seen. With coal, iron and timber in perfection and inexhaustible, and water power everywhere, by what rule of political economy should the Southern people send their cotton, at an expense always deducted from its price, to distant sections and foreign countries to be spun and woven? If the manufacturer in Great Britain, transporting his cotton from India and the United States, can realize substantial profits, why may they not be realized here...? We have seen the manufacturer of New England, at a long distance from a productive base of supplies, turn a sterile country into the seat of culture, refinement and wealth. Why shall not the South put forth its energies and reap the same and a far greater reward? Here the cotton grows up to the doorsteps of your mills, and supply and demand clasp hands together. The average exportation during the last ten years, from these wonderful fields to England and other European ports, has been over 3,000,000 of bales per annum; while to the mills of New England and other Northern states another million have (has) been annually carried away from your midst, and from the best manufacturing region on the globe."[173]
So, even from the opening of the exposition, matters had taken a decided turn toward cotton manufacturing for the South. After the fair had been in progress three weeks, Mr. Atkinson and a committee from the New England Cotton Manufacturers' Association came down for their initial visit. From Mr. Hemphill's letter to The News and Courier[174] it is clear that the New Englanders appreciated most those parts of the exhibit which had to do with "ginning and preparing." Still considering all cotton manufacturing to belong to the North, just as all cotton growing belonged to the South, the verdict of the party on this first inspection was: "Nothing ever happened in the history of the country to prove so adequately the identity of the interests of the cotton grower and cotton manufacturer as this exhibition." Thus were visitors coaxed to examine into the increased efficiency and profit which lay in sending clean Southern cotton to Northern manufacturers.