The Dallas weekly herald. [volume] (Dallas, Tex.) 1873-1885, 1881-10-20
Cotton or Grain.

Correspondence of the Herald.
DUCK CREEK TEXAS, October - 1881.
wish SEINE one would tell me why it is
that so many newspapers of the south are
down on cotton-growing? We can't under
stand how it is that so great an industry as
cotton-growing should be so constantly and
persistently beaten down. Suppose that
every cotton-grower should take the advice
given by q great many persons and drop
cotton, have nothing more to do with it,
and should take to grain exclusively,
what would be the result ?
If good CROP, no money,
poor crop-a great tract OF land
to grow up in weeds during the summer,
and little cash, farmers with long faces,
and merchants looking down their noses,
thinking over unpaid bills having to lay
over. Cotton growing is paying industry.
IL distributes hundreds of dollars over the
country to where grain would one. There is
no crop grown, neither can there be any
grown in the south, that can equal cotton
in distributing money so generally among
the different classes and professions OF
cotton out p planted here in Texas this year, and
all had been grain, what would have been
the result? Why, hundreds of families
who are now making from three to five
dollars day, picking cotton, would have
been seeking for work and finding none,
hundreds of little boys and girls who are
now making from fifty cents, to one dollar
day, picking cotton, would have been peer
running idle, halfclothed and half,
they have been industrious and
saving, able to buy themselves good, warm
clothes for winter Cotton is a great bene-
factor, possessed with large and liberal
views, a friend to the poor man as well as
rich man. Cotton culture is an easy bust.
ness. There is no knowing the amount OF
cotton one man can plant and cultivate ON
clean land, with the advantages offered now
in improved farming implements. 1t is
true it takes good many hands to pick q
large crop of cotton, but doesn't
that give employment to class of people
who otherwise would be idle. And don't
it bring money and scatter it generally
throughout the country, so that. almost
every man and child can put his his hands
in his pockets and rattle the shining silver.
And il the producer has been industrious
and economical he need have no fears but
that he will have fair margin left him
after expenses have been counted out.
Take cotton growing from Texas and
put all her farmers to -. grow
ng grain exclusively, and in five
years the immigration to Texas would not
exceed one-tenth what 1t is now. IL is tne
sheerest nonsense for Texas to talk about or
even think about giving up cotton forgrain,
when it is well known that for any less
than fifty cents bushel for corn will not
pay us, and that an average crop of wheat
will pay the producer only very small
margin, if he gets less than one dollar Q
bushel for it, and oats, if general good
crop prevails, will be drag on the market
at twenty-five and thirty cents al
bushel. The time was when these things
paid well, but that time has past. Since
the advent of railroads into Texas from the
north there has been downward tendency
in our grain markets except on rare occa-
sions, and to-day the northern states can
put grain down at our doors as cheap as we
can raise it. Then, if we go to raising grain
exclusively, what are we going to do with
it? We can't consume it all at home, and
we can't compete with the northern mar
kets in prices.
The best way to settle this question is to
ask every farmer of the south who raises
cotton, are you willing TO give up cotton
Tor grain, depending on it for an income?
Yes or no. / think the answer would soon
decide the question as to whether cotton
was curse TO the south or not. No, let us
raise our bread and meat, and all the cot
ton we can manage, and leave grain grow
ing for market to those who live where cot
ton will not grow. MARION MURPHY.