Edgefield advertiser. [volume] (Edgefield, S.C.) 1836-current, 1859-01-19
LOUISIANA.

Ten of@these Parishes constitute neighborlng
Territory. Upon number of rice plsntations
on the sea board of Georgia and South Carolina,
negroe. are born, live and die without ever seeing
any white person, except the overseer and 1t may
be the master Almost the same may be said
OF many large cotton and sugar estates IN the
valley of the Mississippi. Yet we are alarmed
by no insabordinstion- no fears of any, ex-
cept among the timid, whoseimagination creates
what it breads and discovers ghosts in shadows.
If the slave trade were re-opened with the aid
of our civilized negroes We should have but little
trouble in educating Africans, compared with
that, which our ancestors had. In their time
aunegroes were savage-adults were broght Either
from Africa and hence no wonder that there were
attempted instructions and bloody Laws to pre-
vent or suppress them. Each American negro
could nop act as quasi guardian, overseer and
school master, for at least one wild African. No
more then of the -bloody-bones,
.lled insurrection, if we had five even ten
negroes to one white. But when? tell us when? ?
shall each white have only one slave?
Another objection to revival is that it would
depress the price of cotton by over.production.
admit that it might and contend that it, or
s,mething else, ought to reduce the present price
of cotton but combat the idea that it would
reduce the price below paying point. Five
blles cotton at ten cents per pound are worth no
more than ten bales, at five cents per pound and
if one negro valued at twelve hundred dollars
can make only FIVE bales, heis worth no more than
two negroes, each valued at six hundred dollars,
who can make the ten bales. Or assume the
present price of cotton at ten cents per pound,
then double the usual crop would have to be pro-.
duced to lower it to FIVE cents the pound and
~, cfo 1orl pripp nf n q
twelve hundred dollars, then there would have
to be as many more negroes brought into the
country as we now have, to reduce their value
to six hundred dollars each, allowing that We
deyelope no mu source Of industry. This pro.
portion of value would still exist, no matter how
much, or how little cotton might be made or how
few or many negroes introduced. That is it we
were to raise only cotton. But when cotton
should be depressed below the paying point
what would prevent US from undertaking other
kinds of profitable agriculture, or embarking in
new braches of industry-mining
Shipping. The culture of rice, sugar, hemp and
tobacco can pro6tably absorb five times the
labor now engaged in those pursuits, to say moth.
ing of the additional labor needed for rearing
grapes, tea, coffee and tropical fruits, or for
working Southern mines-building and sailing
Southern ships-erecting and manipulating
Southern factories.
Raising cotton is notthe only paying business,
ne could follow and even now if we had a sur.
plus of labor, no one would grow cotton, when
It had ceased to pay. Suppose wehad q surplus
of negro labor in the South: at this time it might
and ought to seek employment in the production
of sugar, because the cultivation of sugar in
Texas, Louisiana and Florida would still pay
handsomely if half million of barbarous Afri.
cans were landed in thoseStatcs tomorrow. And
ifsuch an accession could be made to the labor
there, the people in the remainder OF the Union,
would not have TO pay ten, or twelve cents per
pound for sugar as they do now, or 60 without it.
Sugar although necessary of life and therefore
III object much wanted by every body is yet so
high at present as to be prohibited to the poor,
many of whom, in the North and North West
particularly, are either drinking their coffee
without sugar, or are sweetening it with the
nauseous syrup Of Sorgho.
A surplus Of cotton producing labor is what we
want above all things. 1t il the lack of this sur
plus and consequent lack of diversified industry
which occasionally delivers us bound hand and
foot to diversely agricultural, manufacturing and
commercial peoples. Whenever community
having sufciency of labor produces but one
thing for sale there must at intervals be glut of
that article upon the market and when that is
the case, how hopelessly without remedy and
wide spread is the desolatiDg result7
But the scarcity of labor is so universal and
iutspse among US, that question without war
or other cohyusion five Shall ever be able again