Memphis daily appeal. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1847-1886, 1876-07-13
COTTON, CORN, AND MONEY.

We are congratulating ourselves IN
the south because we are raising por-
ton of the corn, wheat, oats, hay,
chickens, eggs, butter, and other neces-
sArieS of life that we used to buy from
the west when we confined our atten'
zion almost exclusively to raising cot
ton. Is there really reason for such con-
gratulstion? Are we gamers, in fact,
by applying portion Of our labor and
capital to the production of produce for
home consumption? Apparently
writer in the New York Bulletin, of the
tenth of July thinks not, for he says:
"The south must make cotton, the east
must manufacture, and the west make
corn and meat" Why must cotton be
the exclusive occupation of southern Ia
Dor? because cOtton,n says the same
writer, sis the only product of the south
which brings money!" the italics are the
writer's own. This implies that the proper
object of southern effort is the attainment
of money-is that really the end and
aim of our enterprises? II single in
dividuaI gain fifty dollars week, and
put forty OF it away in safe every Sat-
urday night, and let it accumulate there
till he die, there has been no difference
between his real position and that OF
man who got ten dollars week and no
more, and lived on that amount. The
money in his safe is no more to his
everyday life than it would be if those
who will own it after he.is dead, owned
it now; except that he has the trouble
and risk of taking care Of it, in return
for which trouble and risk he receives
no return whatever. All this is as true
OF a community as it is of an individ-
ual; the south, therefore, is not raising
cotton or anything else for money as an
end, but as a means. Not for what
money is, but for what money will do.
Cotton will bring money, and
money will bring corn, butter,
aud shirts. But these necessaries
are no more acceptable to us when we
get them in exchange for money than
when they come in exchange for some
thing else than money. Ifs farmer can
raise as much corn for seventy-five dol
lars as would cost hundred dollars
bought from the west, why should he
raise hundred dollars worth Of cotton
to buy his corn with, when he can raise
the corn itself for seventy-fve dollars?
True, the cotton brings money, and the
corn does not; but, if the corn saves
more money than the cotton brings,
why must the south grow cotton and
buy its corn from the west? When the
agriculturist of the south buys the west
erner's corn with money gained by
growing cotton, he pays not only for the
corn grown by the westerner, but for the
carriage Of that corn from the western
farmers field to his own homestead. Be-
side this, he pays for the grinding Of such
as is put in the form Of cornmeal, and for
the grinding of alI the wheat into the
-four he uses. If the southern farmer
raise the grain at home, he saves paying
the carriage from the grocer's door to
the railway depot, or to the wharf, and
the freight by land or water to the place
where it is delivered, and from whence
he must fetch it in his wagon with his
own driver and his own mules. When
the corn is grown where it is wanted,
this money is all saved. True, what
goes 10 mill costs something, but that
amount goes not into hands Of west
erner, bat into the hands Of resident
it does not go out Of the community.