New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1871-09-03
THE SOUTH AS AN AGRICULTURAL
COUNTRY

Il
Give a nation the proper soil and the
necessary implements for tillage-let her
| produce food for herself, and the luxuries
soon follow.
Yet day by day we see this proposition
refuted throughout the South. = Her
planters are always heels-over-head in
debt, and at last it has become doubtful
mode of gaining a living, and one that
requires the incest calculation and un-
firing watchfulness on the part of those
engaged in planting to prevent total
failure.
Many hoped and thought after the rough
experience of the war, that the South
would seek to remedy the evil of entire
dependence for food on the North and
West, by making at least meat and bread
enough for home consumption, and at
! first there did seem to be a tendency on
the part of the planter to do so, but this
lessened every year, until now we find
the welfare of the country resting, as OF
yore, upon the cotton crop.
Men who have been accustomed to
seeing cotton crops from infancy, and re-
garding them as the source Of wealth and
prosperity, can not resign the long cher
ished idea and form others upon a more
| practical and liberal basis. They will not
see that it takes three times the labor to
produce cotton that any other crop takes,
| and more than three times the risk. Then
when good crop is made they have one
chance in ten of getting it picked. From
january to january the crop is always on
hand, always q source of anxiety and
care. There is no rest for planter or
| hands, as the whole year is required to
plant, work, pick, gin, pack and ship the
| crop. After it is sold, two-thirds, and
| and sometimes the whole, goes for pro-
visions, which might have been made on
the same land, with far less work and
trouble. 1t is this which keeps the South
impoverished and her Golfers drained of
money. What country could withstand
this excessive drain year after year, and
yet grow rich and opulent?
Let Southern men cease this extrava-
CANT course for ten years and see the re-
suit.
Raise corn, wheat, stock, poultry and
vegetables at home, some for market per-
haps will be left over; then plant little
cotton-a few bales will not break you if
the worms eat it up; if it turns out all
right it will yield pretty penny, as the
market will not be glutted with a surplus
amount and see if you are not richer
man in ten years than if you are scot
ton planter" for a lifetime. One acre of
fine cabbages clears more than five of cot
ton, and they are grown in three months
of light labor instead of twelve of hard
work.
Give up so much farming on a big
scale; do not hope to make grand for
tune in one year at the risk of involving
yourself in debt, which will take years to
pay, besides running your unlucky COM
mission merchant as well as yourself. Be
content to go a little slower and deal
surer on the road to wealth. Let some
honest, laboring man have some chance
to make living, too, by renting few
acres of the boundless fields it has been
your pride to see covered with growing
cotton stalks.
The South wants small farms and scien-
tifc farmers to make her a rich and pros
porous country, not cotton planters. In
stead of going to the root of the evil and
providing a remedy, these disappointed
planters are too prone to rush into towns
and villages, and seek to regain their lost
fortunes by merchandising. Thus food
ing the country with little retail stores
which have but few months existence,
ending in ignominious failures, and dis
couraging, still more, the bankrupt
planter.
In no other country in the world are the
people in such haste to be rich or do they
cast aside so recklessly the true means of
becoming so. 1t is well known that the
waste in an American kitchen would feed
a French or German family and we add
that the wasted lands of Southern plan
tation would sustain half dozen foreign
families. The South has offered but few
inducements to foreigners to settle in her
interior, as they are seldom, or never, pos
sessed of means to enable them to plant
on this grand scale, and the idea of any
thing less than this sinks him at once to a
low place in the society by which he is
surrounded, and he finds himself indeed
an alien in the land of his adoption.
When we see this old system passing
away and the new fast coming in, then
we shall see the dawning of the true glory
of our country.
When we see men no longer eager and
straining every nerve to buy yearly some
bit of land adjoining his own, but willing
to let his poorer neighbor keep his patch,
and to greet him with kindly word of
encouragement as brother farmer, then
we shall begin to feel that prosperity
which is, undoubtedly, in store for us,
sooner or later, as we will it, for nothing
good comes unless we strive for it,
Letus, then, make every effort to hasten |
this much to be desired day of peace and |
plenty, each uniting with the other to
promote our eou4{rys good and our own