The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-12-10
RIAL WEALTH AT THE SOUTH.


the bulk of their products, and the most ELI
| gible of their lands, were represented by few
planters and few factors. There was great
enterprise, and in certain sense there was
no lack of accumulation. But the enterprise
involved the perpetuation of debt and mort
gage, and the accumulation was of such a
nature as to prevent improvement of property
| from keeping pace with the increase of its
| quantity. This fault of the planting system
| with slave labor would doubtless have recti-
| fed itself in the course of time as the cult
waited areas of the South were filed up and
the scarcity of lands rose to an equilibrium
| with the demand for laborers. But while it
lasted its tendency was to exhaust without
| renewing the soil, to produce an unhealty
congestion of capital, to impede an equable diff
fusion of wealth and comfort, and to retard
industrial, commercial and social pro-
gress in many important partic-
ulars. The net proceeds of production
under the old system, after factors advances
for supplies, or for the purchase of more
slaves or mora land, were satisfied, were ire
pressibly fugacious; insomuch that the New
York Evening Post utters a considerable de-
gree of truth, along with some exaggeration
and vulgar slang, when it says: "There was
no proper distribution of the annual product,
nor was there any real investment. The sur
plus was spent among the first families Of
the border States, who squanderei il in
Europe or at Saratoga and Newport, and by
the use of the chattels thus bought, the soil of
the cotton States was more and more ex-
hausted. For each dollar expended in the
North to build cotton mill, it was necessary
forthe cotton planter to expend dollar and
half in human live stock before he could
raise the cotton to run the new spindles, and
it might be said that the more real wealth the
South drew from the soil by the labor of its
people the more rapid was the devastation and
loss"
But all this is changed in consequence of
events which we need not recite. The shock
of those events was attended by some inevita-
BILE disasters which have been needlessly ag-
gravated and protracted by unjust and per-
nicious legislation. But these disasters are
not irreparable. To a large extent they have
already been repaired, as the experience of
this year is demonstrating From 1866 to
1868, agriculture in the South was in state
of painful and convulsive transition. 1t was
not in human nature, or In the nature of ma
terial conditions, to pass easily and prosper
ously from the old order to the new order of
things. Either the new wheels would not run
at all in the old grooves, or would only run
there at the cost of a ruinous friction and to
provide the new grooves required to enable
the new wheels to run with facility and profit,
was aproblem which only time and experiment
could solve. These difficulties of transition
were complicated with exceptional calamities,
such as overaows and the cotton worm SO
that, at the beginning of 1868, the Southern
planter, without cash, without credit, stood,
SO to speak, stark and friendess, simply the
exponent of three successive failures and
three terrible disappointments. But right
here was the turning point of his destiny.
Necessity, that sternest but kindliest of foster
mothers, took him under her tuteage and
taught him invention. He learned that it
was possible to dispense with borrowed capt.
tai, and that the truest road to success Law in
dependence upon his own energy and skill.
His faculty of organization was developed in
new directions. He found out way to i'm
press upon many of the freedmen the whole |
some lesson which he himself had learned.
These freedmen, understanding at length, in |
spite of the delusive expectations which they |
had INDUCED of illimitable bounty in store |
for them as wards of the nation" that they |
must work or starve, wisely concluded to |
work. Thus the planter was enabled to OBJ |
tain, at the rate of about one hundred and |
fifty dollars year, laborers who, under the |
old system, would have represented cash in
Sestment on his part of about twelve hundred
dollars each.
The result is that enough grain is produced
in the South the present year to feed its whole
population, either in the shape of breadstuffs
Or an equivalent of beef and bacon Beyond
this il is estimated that there will be a surplus
Tor sale, consisting of, say, two million and
half bales of cotton, one hundred and twenty
thousand hogsheads of sugar, together with
liberal crops of tobacco, rice, and consider
lble quantities of other marketable products,
III of which, it is supposed, will amount to
he aggregate value of three hundred million
dollars.
AT no former period was there realized by
agricultural industry at the South so large
um free from pre-engagements on account of
debts. There is no reason why the
'ulk of it should not be distributed, first of
ii, among the Southern people at large, and
tx itself there. in the shana of roafrl ;,,,as. |
nents. And we believe that it will, in fact,
ontribute more than the proceeds of any
ormer agricultural season to build up an
ctive and profitable home trade salutary
ome enterPrisss,v and all the constituents
nat give elegance, beauty and comfort to
ONE life.
The steamship Bavaria, Capt. Hebich. sailed last
vening, for Hamburg via Havre, Southampton
nd Havana, with full freight and the folio wing