Wilmington journal. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1844-1895, 1868-07-31
ADDRESS
DELIVERED BEFORE THE NEW
HANOVER AGRICULTURAL So
CIETY, NAY lith, 1868.
BY S. J. SON.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN In compliance
with an invitation from the New Hanover
Agricultural Society, for an expression OF
my views on any subject, selected at plea
sure, and pertaining to the interests Of
farmers, L am here to-day, and will con
slider, most briefly, our home agriculture,
! its unfavOrable condition, some of the
reasons why, and what, in my Judgment.
is the the most effectual remedy for its
eally restoration to healthful and substan-
tial progress.
A palpGble and paramount reason OF
the present nnprOpitious state of our
agriculture occurs at once to every mimi,
as proceeding from the recent severance
and radical change in the relation, which
for centuries prior to the late civil war,
subsisted between the farmer and his la
borers.
Our progress in improved husbandry ur
to the late war WAS limited, when we con
slider the great advantages which late dis
coveries in Agricultural Chemistry afforded
as we'll also, the immense value of the
useful appliances which inventive art has
brought to our aid in improved imple-
ments, and altogether new implements OF
husbandry, as the subsoil pillow, the
reaping and threshing machines, and
others, astonishing in variety, (remem-
bering the short period within which
discovered) as may be perceived if we
shall examine the wares of any large
agricultural store. But the shock caused
in the rupture of the system of Southern
labor has sunk US in the amount of annual
products far below level with those du-
ring the war.
We are now in our fourth year of peace,
s. SO called" and an untutored observer,
as myself, can scarcely perceive that we are
convalescing. And, let us consider for a
moment why many reasons might be sug-
gested but will content myself with Of
fering only two.
First, the necromantic influence over the
negro, achieved by the blue coated mill
tary and civil bureau agencies, has, III
no wise diminished his Importance,
as a consumer, whilst he has been
rendered unreliable to q deplorable ex-
tent, and indeed almost worthless as
producer. And, reminded as we should
be of the unremitting doses of political
chloroform administered by low-bred, un-
prlncipled, vile and hypocritical emissaries
from puritanical New England, and known
under the derisive names Of carpet-baggers,
scalawags and CAD flies the wonder is,
that the poor African has not become such
an intolerable nuisance, as to insure his
summary and wholesale determination
throughout the Southern States
Nothing else, in my humble judg-
ment, but the high degree of dis
cipline, moral and intellectual, to which he
had been schOoled by his owners, has saved
him from fate so disastrous to himself,
and [ may add, that so speedy and SO con-
elusive a solution of the relation, he has
been forced to occupy towards his late
nj + Id La
for ourselves many sad impressions in the
history of it's contamination.
We are assured from the most reliable
sources that in Great Britain the land has
been cultivated for successive generations,
and the last in possession finds the soil as
fertile, or even more SO, than when IL the
possession and under the management OF
ancestors long since mouldered into dust.
Their knowledge and application of the
laws of agricultural chemistry and 1mprov
ed modes of tillage have gained this desir-
able end.
Why is it that we have felled almost all
our beautiful and noble forests, except of
the pine, and still continued to scratch our
impoverished acres that yields barely
a peck of Indian corn to the single square?
The explanation is to be found in the great
value of the negro as chattel property, the
prime importance OF WHICH value was
maintained, after clearing and draining
our lands, in the products of cotton, sugar
and rice, aided by few other staple pro-
ducts in some of the Southern States: He
was Just as available as bank or any other
stocks to his owner, upon whose credit
he secured an advance Of all the capital
needed in ordinary individual enterprises.
In this view consisted his chief value in
this State, where cotton and rice were of
limited culture, and sugar cane cultivated
not at ALL His capacity for the skilfull
manipulations of an improved husbandry
could not bring him in competition fully
with the white laborer, and especially did
this inferiority prevent his owner from in
Producing costly labor saving machinery
and improved agricultural implements of
modern invention, the extensive introduce
ton and general use of which, not less
than discoveries for fertilizing the soil, in
countries where white labor alone exists,
has enabled those countries to far outstrip
us IN the great race of agricultural attain
ments.
A second reason for our tardy recupera-
ton from the late disastrous war is to be
found in the peculiarly of our land own
ers. We had but few farmers, proper.
Our preachers, lawyers, doctors, school
masters and often merchants and me-
chanics, were farmers. To this may be
added another class which really did more