The Manning times. [volume] (Manning, Clarendon County, S.C.) 1884-current, 1886-01-13

! agriculture. Viii however, arswer
any question that may be asked. Let
us examine this question little before
going further. Without entering into
statistics I Will say ahas inasmuch as
the farmers constitute three fourths
of the population of the State, pay
three fourths of the taxes and furnish
three fourths of the votes, which make
anything like decent government pos
sible, can we not fairly and justly look
at it, and discuss it, from the stand
point, which can be best expressed BY
asking, what are the States duties to
itself?
We constitute the State, what are
our duties to ourselves, and how have
we discharged those duties? People
are generally supposed to look after
their own affairs in a free country
but I feel that I am speaking nothing
but the truth, and the naked truth,
when say, that you and I, and all OF
us,-we farmers, all have acted like i'd
lots and towards, We have basely
surrendered our birthright, which en-
titles us to control and dire >Nhe af-
fairs Of this State, and asae years
of this neglect of our =, ~" af-
ter nine years during have
drifted, soto speak, |ited for
something to turn IS, sg that
somehow, some would
come out all right, we find ourselves
in our present condition. Not con-
tent with turnsag the State over to the
lawyers and politicians to run as they
choose, we have turned our lands over
to the negroes to manage,--the Anglo
Saxon abdicating in favor of the Afri-
can. Brains and energy giving place
to muscle and ignorance, and yet we
have vainly imagined that We could
prosper, and that the State could pros
per under such conditions. With
Inulish conservatism we have followed
in old ruts, the ruts cut by slavery
and a system of farming which re-
garded land as only made to wear out,
the quicker the better if its fertility
was turned into money. With an ap-
athy which may well be called crimi-
nal, and a stupidity which borders on
the sublime.
We have in great degree intensi
fled the errors of the old system of
farming by renting to negroes, while
we have trusted to the craftsmanship
ofothers, not interested in agriculture;
and we feel aud see the result Igno-
rance, cxtravigance, and laziness have
held high carnival. The State has
proved a veritable step-mother to her
agricultural interests, and they have
been neglected OF subordinated to ev-
ery thing else. sSOnly farmer" has
become to be regarded as equivalent
to saying man is 'only fool" and
looking back to my own shortconl-
ings in the management Of my lands,
seeing their and ruy present condi
ton, compared with what ought to
and might have been, I acknowledge
my errors, most of them due to faul-
ty education, and say to those of you
who may feel agsrieved at this in
dictment, "Let him that is without
sin amongst you cast the first stone"
Here and there in the State reasona-
BILE thrift and progress can be found
-but<taken as whole, our farming
interests are badly depressed, and
gaunt poverty is an ever present guest
in many farms whose owners were once
wealthy or well-to-do. We are grow
ing poorer as men, and our lands are
doing the same thing in spite of our
increasing use of fertilizers While
Judging the future by the past there
is not sleam of sunshine to Tighten
the darkness.
It is claimed by s'atisticians and
those who are employed to write up
such things that this is not true-that
the State is progressing aud growing
in wealth-and that the outlook is
hopeful I may be pessimist and
'tsee through clouded spectacles" as
a gentleman told me at Bennettsvine
last Summer. But I will undertake
to prove and demonstrate to any
thinking man, and I believe every in
telligeut farmer, who has given the
subject any thought, will agree with
me, that whatever may be said as res
CARDS our cities and towns, the coun-
try is poorer than it was in 1865. We
have raised in this State alone over
$500, 100000 worth of cotton during
the twenty years since the war, but all
the profit Of raising it has gone into
the hands of merchants and others,
and they hold this increased wealth.
if it exists-not we. Where one
farmer has grown richer, enough Of
his fellows he have lost more THAN SUI.
icient to make Il balance. Like Sissy
phus We have rolled the stone to :hc ,
top of the hill only to see it roll down
again, and We have nobody 10 blame
for our poverty but ourselves
If these things are true, and don't
think many farmers will dispute them,