The Opelousas courier. [volume] (Opelousas, La.) 1852-1910, 1882-06-24
Down With the Fences.
EDITORS OF THE COURIER:

We AAC 1TJVICcu ~ sec tuO d"dhoHILIss
interest of the farming community,
(as evidenced by an article with above
heading in your last issue,) on the sub
jeet of fencing. The question is being
subjected all over the South to the
test of analysis and arithmetical calcu-
lation--Whether it pays best to fence
in ones cotton and hogs, or to fence in
ones crops and fence out ones own
and neighbor's stock Most good
farmers have decided, and SO act, that
it is better to fence in ene's stock, for
they generally have pastures as we'll
fer their work stock as for their cattle
and hogs. South Carolina put the
question to the test of arithmetic, and
found that the yearly cost of fencing
to the citizen was equal to two years.
expenses of the State government, and
so abolished fencing as "A wasteful and
unproductive expenditure, contribut-
ing nothing to the profit, the pleasure,
or qualification of the appetites, the
taste or the caprices of man-as an ex-
crescence of unhealthy fungus gu the
farm. A county in Georgia did the
like, and found that the cest Of fences
to fence out stock was 1894 900, and
annual repairs $50, 900, while the total
value of the stock of the county was
only $780,, 900, and SO abolished fenc-
ing, with the result of the increase of
90 per cent in the cultivated lands; /;
the utilization of what was before
wasted in fencing, in developing aud
rendering productive more land, with
better implements cessation of the
disputes and ill blood growing out of
the depredations of stock among neigh
bors and general content with the
change.
What are the figures bearing on the
question in this State? According to
the Agricultural Report, the crop of
1879 was, in cotton, 500, 900; in
sugar, $l5,O0O,0 600; molasses, SO, 5OO,-
600; corn, SO, 100000. Total, fifty four
millions of dollars. The value of cat
tie was $l,15O,O 900, and ef hogs l,5OO,-
600. Total, two millions six hundred
and fifty thousand dollars. There are
according to the census "a, 292 farms in
this State; and that the average of
fencing to each is ever mile is low
calculation when we consider that
lot of forty acres is mile on its four
sides. We have then, in the State, in
reund numbers, $4,000 miles of fencing,
which, at the low average figure of
$3.50 per mile, gives twelve millions
and half of dollars as the cost of fenc-
ing in the State! Yearly repairs can
not be less than one and half mil
lions, and interest en original cost one
million more
One third of the stock which existed
in 1879 must have been destroyed in
the overflow of this year, and one third
is kept by its owners within their own
enclosures, thus leaving the value of
the rowing stock of the State less than
one million.
Thus, the agricultural interest, in or
der to protect its crops, worth fifty -four
millions, against the depredations of
stock worth less than million, has to
incur aD original outlay of twelve and
half millions, and yearly burthen of
two and a half millions of dollars
However bearable the facts as told in
these figures may have been in old Lou
isiapa, they are oppressive, burthen-
some and intolerable to new Louisiana
In the career of progress which is just
opening before her. The cost of the
fences of the State. which 10 sum
thrown away, would have been suffi-
eient to put slack water navigation in
all the bayens within the State; by
being saved and added To the annual
accumulation of the citizen, would have
yitatized and put in being cotton facto-
ries. foundries, and those other diversi
fed industries which are essential TO
the formation of complete, self-sas-
tanning and compact commonwealth.
What 10 the compeDsatiug good for
this enormous burtheR ? Not for the
benefit Of any valuable stock-mules,
horses, work stock, are kept by the
ewner within his own enclosure; but
it is to protect against depredations of
stock which it does not pay for the
owner TO take care of. and which from
neglect are undergoing yearly deterio-
ration-cattle that are all glands, girls
tie. hide and horns, and razor back or
land pike hogs.
The spell Of the inviolability of pro-
perty. to keep up which is a cheap aid
to the Statesman in government, is sha-
ken if not broken by the law which
protects property in crops only on cen
ditiou of their being fenced in. :. IF
creps have TO be fenced in,p says Sci
pio, . why may not take and keep
what may fnd unguarded either on
the road or in the heuse ?n
MORE ANON.