The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-05-19
THE SOUTHERN STAPLE.

THE SOUTHERN STAPLE.
From the N. Y. Tribune.
From the time when so good farmer as
George Washington had a hundred cows in
his yards, and yet bought butter for his table,
the South has been standing illustration OF
q system that seems to bring wealth but IN
fact leads to penury. Ten years ago she went
to war, trusting mainly to the fact that she
could do one thing to perfection-grow clean,
ong-stapled upland cotton at cost of less
than ten cents a pound She had not then
learned that national strength depends on
doing many things well; she is not in way
to master that lesson now, though it has been
enforced with the gloomy rhetoric of the
cannon She has yet to learn the omnipo-
tence of concerted action and diversified in
dustry. For instance, the last decade has
proved conclusively that England will put
no limit on the price she is willing to pay for
q certain amount of good American upland.
Her spindles and looms are all fitted for
Just such cotton as America alone can grow;
and if she must pay gold dollar for
pound of it, she will pay the dollar
rather than dispense with the cotton. The
scanty crops of 1867 and 1868 reduced the
supply in her factories so she has been will
ing to give 25 cents pound. But the three
million bales of 1869 have gone so far to fill
the void that the price has declined, aud may
cotton by free labor becomes Improbable.
If in January and February the planters of
the South could have met in conventions,
talked these matters over, and agreed to
plant less cotton, and more of something
else, they would have controlled the price,
and held it at quarter of dollar and over.
AS it u.s. the old infatuation of one crop, one
style of farming, has crept back upon the
Southern mind, and with it, in many cases,
an exaggerated estimate of the Importance of
the Southern staple to the welfare of the
world. Instead of this being true,
the cotton crop, as an ele-
ment of national and international
strength, ceases at two and q half million
bales. When cotton is cheap, England uses
choice American for both warp and woof;
now she mixes it with the short and kinky
staples of less favored climates When cot
ton is cheap it creeps as dull adulterant
into all our fabrics, it hardens the surface
and chills the warmth of our woollens, it
takes the gloss from our silks, it makes our
linens limp in texture, it drives richer and
more lasting goods out of the general market,
discouraging the wool-grower, the silk-worm
feeder, and the flax-producer-d delaying the
introduction of ramie and of mohair, as pro-
ftable American staples
All this subtle mischief great crop of
| cotton works in the world, while the curse of
one-sided and exhausting tillage rests over
all the cotton fields. The planter will float
corn a thousand miles down Western rivers
and then haul it fifty miles over muddy and
narrow roads, that he may cling with closer
and more ruinous devotion to his single
staple. His cattle are small and bony. They
| pick scanty living in the canebrake, ticks
worry them, mosquitoes torment them and
poachers kill them; so he learns to depend on
Kentucky for his beef. His hogs are wild
and restless all summer, gaining no flesh and
h,,II I.NAl -
his plow-horses, and he learns to depend on
Cincinnati for his pork.
He needs artisans of all sorts near him
wagon makers, tanners shoemakers, rope
walks, plow-makers and cotton -weavers. But
| these persons find that while wages are little
higher, food is good deal dearer; that the
roads are narrow and dusty when not muddy;
that the streams keep all who are not we'll
mounted weather-bound for day after every
rain that the undrained swamps breed
myriads Of mosquitoes, and that where the
lands are rich they abound in malaria. Argu-
ments like these must continue to drive the
mechanic from the Cotton States, certainly
| while, in addition, he is made to feel that
neither James Watts, nor George Stephenson,
nor Robert Fulton, if landless, would be as
much honored as the wild owner of a thou
| sand wild acres.
We are aware that the South has suffered
| from the struggle and starvation of long
war. We admit that the proclamation and
the surrender destroyed vast amount which,
by the Constitution, as it then read, was pro-
| perty. Far be it from u.s. who Justly prize
the thrift, the enterprise, the invention, and
the progress of the Northern character to
draw invidious distinctions or fan sectional
| pride. But we wish to show the South how
she is cheated by that insane loyalty to old,
tyrannous, and now uncrowned King Cotton
She wants bread and he gives her stone;
she asks fish and gets a scorpion. Cotton
| gives her gold, but for all important ends
of national power that gold is dross. 1t
buys nothing of that which makes
nations great and keeps them so. 1t has
little power to fell forests, to drain
swamps, to bridge steams, fill school-houses,
and change villages into cities. The funda-
mental mischief in that sunny and for the
most part fertile land, is not the negro, nor
the bureau, nor the bayonet, nor the army
worm; but a political economy false in its
first principles and ruinoIs in its working
The South spends so much on factors and
shipping merchants; she keeps on the road
such long trains of wagons; she supports
such an army of steamboat hands aud sailors
and clerks and brokers and insurance agents
in short, she pays so large share of what
| she earns in order to get a chance to buy
what she wants, that she must continue to
| live in log cabins and ride in bridle-paths
! What she most needs is a statesman, far-see-
| ing and sagacious, as able as Calhoun was,
to mark out the path of national greatness
and draw her feet into it.
FREE LOVE IN THE SOROSIS.
From the N. Y Sun.
The club of women known as the Sorosis