The daily phoenix. [volume] (Columbia, S.C.) 1865-1878, 1867-04-05
COLUMBIA.
Friday Morning, April 8, 1887.
Cotton VS.. Corn.

when we urged the planting of corr
and other provisions as the mai1
crop this year. in preference to cot
ton, espoused the championship O
the deposed ''so-called" king of com
merce-the liberal endower of wealtl
to the planters of the South before
the war, and under the system of
slauery. We have no idea of enter
ing the lists with such an intelligent
gentleman and experienced agricul-
turist; he would be able to confute
us very soon; nevertheless, he has
not convinced us but that, under er-
listing circumstances, it is the duty of
the Southern planters or farmers to
pay moro attention to the production
of breadstuffs, corn and other grain,
and mako cotton secondary consi-
deration, for this year, at least.
Our friend will excuse us, when we
venture to say that he has arrived at
that age when old habits and preju-
dices are difficult to shake of. His
argument is chiefly on the old ground
work Of the former slaveholding agri-
cultnrists-we can make cotton cheap
er than any other country-it is cash,
and, with that cash, we can purchase
corn, negro clothes, ploughs and
other farming implements; corn and
bacon we can get in Tennessee, and
from the other depots of the great
West and Northwest; improved farm
ing implements from New Jersey and
other Northern manufacturing States;
brown and bleached homespuns and
callcoes from Lowell and Manchester:
and if there should be any surplus
left, we can send our daughters to
fashionable institutions of learning OF
the North, visit Saratoga Springs or
some other fashionable Watering
place. Cotton furnished all these en-
JOJ ttllll luAllrlcS.
This, we say, was the theory, aye,
and the practice, too, of large num-
ber of the Southern planters, in the
days gone by; and our friend, and all
who read these lines, know that such
was tho fact. In the meantime, lands
were becoming exhausted, scarcity
in the pork market of Kentucky; tri-
chime, or some other disease, among
the Kentucky hogs, raised at once
the price of bacon; short corn crop
In the grain-growing West, doubled
and trebled the price of this staff of
life, and the planter, having none of
his own to fall back upon, had to
purchase at those enhanced prices
not that he had the money, but he
could get note discounted in bank,
in those good old palmy days, said
note to be paid out Of the neat crop.
This is our experience with regard to
the relations existing between the
merchant and the planter, the latter
almost invariably laying in his sup
plies for the year to come, to be paid
for out of the crop that had to bo
planted and gathered.
In this way, under the old system,
when cotton, under the sustaining
force brought to his aid by the insti-
tuition of slavery, assumed to be
king, and usurped all the rich lands
of the Gulf States, to the exclusion
of the culture Of grains and cereals.
What the results of extensive grain
planting may have been dwing tie
acar, when everything was demoral-
lied, from TIC labor in the field,
which planted and gathered the crop,
to tho quartermaster and his en-
ployces at every depot and station on
every railroad in tho country, cannot
be regarded as evidence in favor Of
our correspondents views. Moro
grain was destroyed by care1essncss
and mal-appropriation, moro bacon
ruined and lost by the safe cause,
than would have fed "the rank and
file Of the army" for the last two
years Of the war. This fact, at tho