Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1867-07-11
Crop. and the Finances.
From Harpers Weekly, July 0.

of the South were stdrUtng, and |
the North, out Of It's abundance, sent |
them shiploads of food and hundreds of |
thousands of dollars. Such wall of !
and extreme necessity was
never heard before in our land; etthere !
was nodeception. The distress was real,
and nobly was it relieved. To-day every !
one of those Southern States is teeming
with food, either harvested or ripening
in the fields There are exceptional To-
calities where Incidence and Ignorance
shall reap as they have sown, and whose
poverty-pinched inhabitants will con-
tinue TO appeal for aid. But the univer-
sal testimony IL in favor ofoyerwhelming
crops.
From Texas to Virginia it is the same.
The two thousand barns which were de-
stroyed in the Shenandoah Valley two
years ago are rebuilt and waiting for the'I
products of ten thousand fiAds. Cotton
is growing with excellent promise where
the floods inundated the bottoms of
Louisiana. The famed Sea Islands of
the Georgia and Carolina coasts, long
abandoned, are ready to contribute their
precious long-staple to the hungry mar
kets of the world. Texas, always thrifty,
thriYes as she has never done before
The negroes, shiftless by nature, are rap
idly acquiring habits of industry, and
the old planters whose former occupa-
tion was Incidence, are taking their sons
into the fields with their hoes. This is
the beginning OF prosperity. The South
has taken new lease of life, and hence
forth will press forward in the race of
improvement to the development of
wealth. One letter from Louisiana says,
"With successful cotton this year, the
planters will be independent Another
remarks: Corn constitutes three-fourths
of living at the South. We shall only
have to make up the other fourth"
The Raleigh North Carolina) Standard
says: "From what we can learn a larger
breadth will be planted in cotton in this
State than in any former year. Cotton
will pay well at fifteen cents" For the
first time in many years, before the war
as well as since, there is ready acknowl-
edgnent that the prospect for large
crop of cotton is good. Croakers about
short crops, rust, worms, ETC., are no
where heard. The season is backward,
but this makes an abundant harvest the
more certain.
But Fortune has poured its plenty into
the lap of the North as well as the South
and blessed it beyond precedent. All
the accounts from every state agree that
such crops have not been promised for
ten and twenty years. 1t is remarkable
that we hear nothing of weevil rust, and
midges. The eyes of the whole country
we might say, of the world-are in
tently fixed upon the maturing fields
| To them there is a confding and hope
full looking for relief from present dis
tresses. They are the potent means TO
set in active motion the sluggish ma
chinery of trade. All kinds of business
wait on their development. a success
full harvest from Maine to California
would add at least 81 800, ,000,0 to the
wealth of the country. The wheat crop
last year was valued at S333, ,773, ,646, and
the corn crop at S,59l ,G66, ,295. An esti-
mate of this years crops gives thirty
million tons of grain against twenty-five
millions last year, and nineteen millions
in 1860.
With such an influx of wealth the
South will provide for its present needs,
which are distressing, and have q large
surplus to begin business with once
more. 1t will have this advantage, too,
that it can commence with a clean ledger.
In former years before the war, the
South was always in arrears it antici-
| pated its income at least a year. Now,
both the necessity and the temptation to
live beyond its means are gone. No Ion
ger burdened by huge family of slaves
to provide for, Obliviouss to the craving
desires which idleness begets, the plant
er Joins his efforts with those of the freed
men and works out the more abundan
reward. Cheered by his good fortune
his heart will enlarge with kindly feel
ings toward his flag and his countrymen
and the good work of reconstruction viii
be fastened.
In the West the present stringency IL
the money market and the scarcity o
currency, which is attributed to poverty
of resources due to former crop failures
will disappear, and an impetus be giyel
to all departments of trade. The earn
ings of railroads and steamboats, VII
multiply fourfold.
At the North, capital, now idle, vii
seek investment in numberless enter
prises which now receive only shru
) andsuspiciousshake of the head. Stock
and securities of all kinds will improve
and we shall go on prosperously as w
have done-only business will be trans
acted on somewhat different basis
/ Speculation has had its day and vii
have to stand aside. There is to be n
, more fattening on the eXorbitant profit
eXtorted from consumers. The dry
goods men, the manufacturers, and tn
cotton dealers, have all had their day {
, high living and their day of discomfitu1
) and distress, and now the grain and PR
Vision dealers must take their turn. III
i laborer will no longer beobliged to stary
F, because his scanty purse will not pu
l chase flour at So per barrel and pork
$35 but prices will come down to nearl
u what they were before the war. In Liz
J manner an abundant cotton crop WI
= lower the price of dry goods. With foo
. and clothing cheap, wages must eltnt
fall and the employer be the gamer,
= the workman will be permitted to pl