Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1884-04-19
Diversified agriculture IN the South.
Baltimore Manufacturers Record.

baltlmore manufactures record.
If wide diversity of manufac-
lures is one of the most essential
factors in the continued develop
ment of the industrial interests of
the South, as we so plainly pointed
out not long since, how much more
important is il that agriculture
the basis of all prosperity-should
also be widely diversified. All
history teaches that complete reli-
ance upon any one crop, year after
year, whether that crop be cotton,
grain, tobacco, or anything else,
will eventually result in great dis
aster to the majority of those who
are engaged in the business, though
there may here and there be man
who meets with great pecuniary
success. And SO it is outside OF
agriculture. The city that builds
its trade on one interest alone will
in the end find its prosperity de-
parted, however bright its prospects
may have appeared. Baltimore,
for example, a few years ago had
an enormous grain trade, and all
the energies of her merchants seem
ed centered in the development of
that. For a while all went well.-
Millions of bushels of grain poured
into her elevators for foreign ship
ment, and hundreds of ocean YES
sells crowded her harbor seeking
cargoes of wheat and corn. There
came a time, however, when the
United States had comparatively
little grain to ship, followed by
season when Europe did not want
what we did have. And to-day
Baltimore's shipping merchants
find comparatively little to do, and
the vessels that now enter her har-
Dor can be counted by the dozen,
where formerly there were hun
dreds. A wise diversity of foreign
exports and imports would have
prevented such state OF affairs.
In the South we find the great
bulk of farmers giving all their at
tention to cotton raising and buying
their bread-stuffs and provisions
from the West. Those who are
doing this, are, with few excep-
tions, steadily growing poorer, and
each year finds them more deeply
involved in debt. The South is
now paying TO the West an average
of $159, 200, 900 a year for foodstuffs,
a drain that is SO surprisingly
large that we may well wonder
how the South has ever borne it.
Now there is no valid reason why
the South, with proper agricultural
methods, should not be able to fully
supply its needs for foodstuffs, and
that, too, without any material in
crease upon the present cultivated
area in that section. Instead of
10000, 900 acres of land in cotton,
producing on an average only g.
600, 900 bales of cotton, or three
eighths of bale to an acre, it
would be far better if not more
than 100000 or 12,000,000 acres
were put in cotton, and that thor
cultivated could readily be
made to produce fully as large crops
as are now gathered.
Intensive farming is the hope of
cotton planters. While there are,
of course, some sections OF the
South not we'll adapted to the pro-
duction of wheat and corn, it is
true that in large
portion of that section small grains,
as well as provisions, can be raised
far more cheaply than they can be
purchased, even for cash. And
when it is remembered that South
ern planters buy their supplies al
most wholly on time, at so per
cent, on an average, over what
they could be purchased for if cash
were paid, the disadvantage under
which planters labor is made all
the more apparent. On cash ba-
sis diversified farming in the South
offers great inducements, and the
profits, we feel sure, are equally as
as in the most favored
localities in the West. 1t behooves
the press of the South, as well as all
others interested in the growth and
prosperity of that section, to urge |
upon the farmers that their only
hope ia in diversified and intensified |
agriculture. Could we see the ag-
ricultural interests of the South as
as there is every reason
why they should be, united with
the increasing wealth that is being
by manufactures and
mining, the South would undoubt-
edly show a degree of prosperity
rarely, if ever, equalled by any
in the world.