The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-02-04
"a EXPECTED RISE IN COTTON.

As soon as a general disappointment at the
results OF freedmens kbor the past year in
the South was realised, it was safe to base
commercial operations on the anticipation of
a rise in the price of cotton. Unfortunately,
very few factors, and scarcely any planters,
have been in position to accept the benefit
offered by this prospect to those who should
refuse to sell at existing low quotations. Yet
a considerable amount Of last years crop re-
mains to be disposed of at rates which are
now increasing and which are doubtless des-
tined to increase henceforth until midsuu-
mer; a fact that relieves with at least one
CLEAN of light the gloom and dependency so
widely experienced in this city with reference
TO the immediate future of the business Of
this city.
We say with reference to the immediate fu-
ture, for we confidently assume that the COM
mercial recuperation and Advancement of New
Orleans are among the certainties of the ulti-
mate future. We hold it to be out of for
tunes power, out of the reach of malign con-
trivance, to cheat our city Of this hope,
founded as it is in great and salient physical
facts destined to survive the injurious effects
of either political injustice or commercial
error. Let her merchants, her capitalists, her
property holders cling fast to the conviction
that nature and time are on her side, and will,
in the end, bring her out victress and crown
her as the queen city OF half a continent Such
a conviction Will assist marvelously to hgh-
ten their bur,7eno, 20 raise their dropping
spirits, and to reinvigorate their tagging
Efforts.
But in the meantime, the urgent question
for practical decision is how to bridge over
present difficulties and this question is
intimately connected with the price and the
production of cotton. 1t is well to precisely
formulate a problem before attempting its
solution. The one which our commercial
and agricultural communities are called at
once to practically work out may be thus briefly
stated-to obtain the maximum Of enterprise
under actual conditions of commerce and
agriculture, along with the minimum of risk
incident to the present incertitude of legisla-
ton and politics. Within the past two years
there has been an excess of enterprise in
some ways, and a deficiency of it in
on account of legislative and political
uncertainties, and too much has been post
poned to such uncertainties. In their present
Strengthened circumstances, our merchants
and agriculturists cannot afford consistently
with true economy of their resources and
labors to trust to experiment, however much
it may promise in an uncertain contingency,
or to neglect P single opportunity, however
small in seeming or however far out of the
way of old and conventional channels of
effort. This fact should be carefully kept in
mind while considering the prospect of a con-
siderable rise in cotton from this time to the
middle of next summer. The principal cause
of such rise could be nothing else than
the belief on the part of the cotton-buying
interest of on imminent and great decline in
the Southern production of cotton, by reason
of political distractions and the scarcity and
deterioration of labor. 1t would be, there
fore, terrible mistake for planters, tempted
by the expectation of higher price for
another CROP to enter as largely into the pro-
duction of cotton as last year. unless thA
ADVERSE CONDITIONS Of last year, political and
industrial, should cease to exist. The mere
exhibition Of this desire to repeat the disas-
trous experiment Of last year would
have the effect of checking the
present upward tendency of cotton. Their
policy, it seems to US, is to feel their way
slowly and surely until they are out of the
Wilderness of difficulties and peril5 through
which they are now passing. Let them raise
cotton only with the. assurance that it will
pay, or atleast that its failure, in either short
ness of crop or fall in price, cannot infict
disaster. Let them obtain laborers and sup
plies on the terms offered by government,
only so far as they may be certain that the
product of such laborers will cover the value
of the provisions which they consume and
and leave n reasonable margin for net profit.
With these precautions, the price of cotton
may be maintained and the next crop may
prove profitable if not large.