Memphis daily appeal. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1847-1886, 1872-08-21
THE COMING COTTON CROP AND THE
COTTON GATHERERS.

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cannot be accurately anticipated; the
quantity that can be gathered is easily
determined. We do not know what
disasters are yet in store for this most
uncertain crop. Boll-worms and cater
pillars are already desolating wide dis.
tricts in Alabama and Mississippi, and
unprecedented floods in Alabama have
lessened the product of that State per
haps one-fourth. But these are insig-
nificant facts. The difficulty conists in
the want of machinery to gather the
cotton crop. Last year less than three
million bales were forwarded TO
market and more than a quarter of a
million bales werel left ungathered in the
fields. There is hardly a planter in the
~lOwlands, who, for want of labor, did not
lose from twenty-five to fifty per cent.
Of his last years crop, and this simply
because human ingenuity has not de
vised a nOn-voting machine to pick cot
ton. This fact is not asserted as demon
strative of negro retrogression; on the
contrary, it is rather indicative of negro
advancement in intelligence and civil
cation. 1t is the commonly entertained
opinion among farmers that the number
OF a~ble-bodied capable negro laboreTs has
been steadily lessened since the war.
Very certainly the number of negroes
born and rearedis lessened. The labor
ers of former years have disappeared,
and whites, in the hills and hollOws, and
in the poorer uplands, who formerly
made nothing, now furnish perhaps the
bulk of the cotton crop. Descend the
Mississippi river, traverse the prairie re-
gions of Mississippi, ascend the Arkan-
sas and imperial domains of king cotton
are found desolate. Lessened production
Ofthese once splendid plantations is COM
pensated for by the labor Of the small
farmer away from railways and rivers
in the poorest districts of the South, and
it is certainly true that those people
whom the New York papers call "mean
whites" are growing rich with marvel
lous rapidity. The overthrow of slavery
was most fortunate, they assert, for
themselves. Last year, negroes, for the
first time, made money. Last year the
cotton States perfected most suddenly
and violently a system of public schools.
Heavy speculatiOns were made in school
books, desks, building contracts and the
b~enefcent work was therefore most Wig
orously prosecuted. SchOolhouses are
accessible to every negro in the
from six to eighteen years of age. !
The parents having made money last
year, the whole of the juvenilen negro pop
Of the South attends the schools.
Every head of a negro family would f.
have, and very properly, a son or daugh- ,
ter or wife read newspapers aloud, and
thus while a vast force of "cottOn pick
ersr is lost to the worlds wealth it is
added to the worlds progressive intel F.
and the world will be called !
soon to foot a heavy bill of costs incurred :
n this rapid propulsion of Ethiopian in .
diligence. In any event the South will
be the gamer. The twenty thousand ne ,
children now at school in the low :
ands, if slavery subsisted, would send .
eighty thousand cotton bales, now lost,t to :
market. OF course everybody under
stands that the quantity of cotton ex- I
ported by the South depends solely upon !,
he quantity that a be gathered. These
could produce easily five or even q
zen million bales, but the feecy magnet /
-or gold glitters in vain in the sunlight.
There are few nimble fingers to gather
is down, more valuable than the golden c
ieece, and the number of these is lessen g
ID greatly by the progressive good for q
une and intelligence of the African 1
ace. It is stated, BY those best inform c
that because of the school system, {
md because of the disappearance Of ne 5
yroes, drawn in multitudes into cities 5
md villages, that it is impossible to l
a crop greater than that forward q
ID last year and hat of this last years 4
fully thirty per cent. was lost for /
want Of cotton-picking force. The in c
.ervention Of the Presidential election, "
n the very midst Of the cotton picking u
will cost the cotton crop, it is II
aid, one hundred thousand bales. Bar
,ecues, speeches, nights spent in loyal
eagues, to be followed necessarily by 81
ofidleness the attractive drums and Il
ifes with which politicians are wont to 4
colored IabOrers from cottOnfields, 2
re incidents Of the Presidential cam n
align, detrimental to the last degree to :
he fortunes of cotton producers. The Il
stimated loss through September and o,
and November, because of the a
is hardly exaggerated when n
xed az one hundred thousand bales. n