The New Orleans bulletin. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1874-1876, 1875-11-26

From the Macon Telegraph
There was representation yesterday from
the Southwest that if the cotton in the fell
could be saved, the incoming crop woult
outrank IN magnitude any hitherto produced
IN the Southern country. We have been in
clined to look for crop in the neighborhoot
OF 400 600 bales, and to hope that it vii
not greatly exceed that amount. Three o.
tour hundred thousand bales in excess woulC
take prices entirely beyond the influence o
producers, and the whole cotton growing bus
mess would rush down hill to ruin without
bachstrap or breeding.
This, we take it, is the pending question
Just now, and the great rock OF peril ahead
We may not strike it this year; but where is
the probability of missing it next year, OF
any year in the future which shall prove to
be very fruitful. The past heavily productive
year, as affairs are progressing, is bound to
overstcck the raw cotton market and send the
whole crop begging.
1t Is quite true that such a catastrophe did
happen twice before the war; with no very
ruinous consequences to the planter but it
will be unwlse In cotton producers to measure
the future results OF sucn q catastrophe by
the past. Before the war their lands and all
their plantation Investments, including la
borers, were solid, available assets, yielding,
altogether, moderate income in the shape of
increasing value, independent OF crops.
But now, there is nothing to make farming
lands in the South of any money value what
ever, except profitable returns from culture:
and when these cease and can not be reason
ably expected to revive, Southern lands be-
come as worthless in the market as railway
stock which can never bring q dividend
And let no man delude himself with the
idea that recovery IN prices will be an easy
matter when quotations have fallen absolutely
below the cost of production upon any rea-
sonable scale of remuneration. There will
still be q wide margin for loss in price by the
degradation of the producers. Negro labor
can still be squeezed down good deal in the
interests of consumers, and then there is also
an immensely Of white labor which can find
little or no other employment except in agri-
culture, and will be forced to work at any
price on the root hog or die principle.
Cotton has sunk rapidly every successive
year since the war, until we see it now from
ffty-two cents pound in 1866 to twelve cents
in 1875. very few months more of that
headlong speed in decline will bring it to a
point when it's culture will cease to comfort
ably support the labor which produces it, and
the latter must sink to condition of disorder
and disorganization or to mere squalor and
serfdom.
1t would be folly and cruelty to hold ND
this impending doom before the great South
ern cotton interest, if there were no remedy
for this overproduction. But there is
remedy-an easy remedy-which an intelli-
gent people, seeing and approaching the
deadly peril ahead, could be induced to apply.
1t is in the power of the State Oranges to
abate the cotton product third, and SO en-
force reasonable compensation for their labor.
This remedy is direct and legitimate one
resorted to by all handicrafts when the mar
t-n<., hon - -
prices fall below the cost of production.
1t is also in the power of the intelligent
husbandry OF the South to make such diver
sion OF their labor as still to employ it all
probably and increase their own productive
wealth, instead of sinking down into de-
structive and degrading poverty which shall
deprive them of the comforts and elegancies
of life. We can apply larger portion Of our
agricultural labor to the cereals and grasses, |
and to the production of animal food and |
laboring stock. We can produce fruit crops, |
RICE sugar, tobacco, Sisai hemp and all other |
fibers for the production Of the immense |
quantity of bagging we annually consume, |
and We can, if we would, add at least twenty
five per cent to oar annual revenues on the |
fleece Of Sheep and of the variety of valuable !
goats.
The vast range of our productive capacities |
admit of not the first reasonable excuse for
the over product Of any single crop. The
course We are pursuing is gratuitous self
murder. II is not alone that it is running us
pecuniarily; but that with pecuniary ruin, in
this case comes the loss of social dignity
the sinking down gradually into the condition
of mere peGsanhy, whose scanty earnings do
not permit of generous food, or the means of
mental, social and religious culture.
If ever a case called for a corps of Peter
The Hermits, to rouse up the people to sense
Of their danger and the great yawning gulf of
ruin before them, we think this one. Why
do the Changers fail to appreciate the crises
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