The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1891-04-23
BILL ARP'S CHAT.
why Cannot Georgia Support Herself? !?
Atlanta Constitution.

Of course the world has been benehted
by the low price, but the cotton planter
has suffered. There is no profit in it, no
margin, and We are feeling it already.
What shall the farmer do?
|. We thought that'the Alliance WAS 60
ing to regulate the acreage, but it seems
they are not, and this year there is likely
to be more than last, for there are more
farmers, and in the cotton belt they won't
plant anything else. They say that they
can't, that nothing else is sure money
crop, and the merchants will not advance
them supplies on any other product.
Well, / have recently been up in Ten
nessee and Kentucky, where there is no
cotton, and inquired about these ad-
vances, and they dident seem to under
stand me. They dident want advances; /;
they dident need supplies. They raised
wheat, and oats, and corn, and mules
and horses and hay, and a little further
north they raise tobacco. Any traveller
can see the difference; you see it in the
beautiful fields of wheat along the rail-
way-in the fences and hedges and the
turnpike roads and painted cottages and
farmhouses-in the grazing cattle and
large focks of sheep. It is feast 10 the
eye to look upon the farms of middle
Tennessee, and the idea occurs to- you
that this is Gods country, and everybody
is happy and prosperiDg-why is this
difference? Is it in the land or the peo-
ple2 Why does Georgia, one of the old
thirteen, have to pay so much tribute to
Tennessee, and buy her grain and hay
and mules every year? Yes, even her
turkeys and chickens and eggs? Our
farmers have got in the cotton grooves
and can't get out.
Now, ne know that North Georgia can
raise anything that Tennessee can, and
can raise cotton nearly as cheaply as the
cotton belt. We know that middle
Georgia and South Georgia can beat the
world on oats and bermuda grass and
fruit and potatoes, aud if there is any
impediment in the way of raising mules
and cattle and sheep we don't know it.
But they are absorbed in cotton-a crop
that requires shout nine months to grow
and harvest and gin and take to market;
a crop that does not improve any land,
but leaves poor land poorer every year,
for il. we'll established fact that any
crop impoverishes land that does not shade
it from the summers sun.
But don't propose to teach the far
mers Of Georgia. I am only telling what
I saw on my journey and this causes me
to remark that, compared with Tennes-
see and Kentucky, our public roads are a
disgrace to our civilization. Is that in
the land, or the people, or is king cotton
at the bottom of it? With the exception
of few miles in the suburbs of some of
our cities, there is not: 8 turnpike in
in Georgia? What is the alliance going
to do about it2 If they have not yet
gotten the power in Congress, they have
absolute control of onr legislature.
AS travelled northward towards Ken
lucky I observed something white shin
ing upon the ground at every farm
something about twenty or twenty-five
feet square, and sloping little towards
the sun. I thought that it was glass, and
Was the covering of hotbed, but found
on inquiry that I had reached the tobacco
region, and that what saw was the white
cloth coverings over the tobacco plants.
Not long afterwards I reached Clarksville,
beautiful inland city of 10, 900 or 10000
inhabitants, largely white. This is said
to be the largest tobacco market in the
United States, and the second in the
world. saw many farmers gathered in
the town, and they held up their heads
and talked tobacco. Some had already
sold aud some we're selling, and the mon.
ey did not go to the merchant for advan-
ces. I inquired whether there was any
thing peculiar about the soil that gave
that region an advantage, and, they said
no-that tobacco would grow anywhere
from Connecticut to Cuba. It will grow
in North Georgia, we know, for it has
been tried, but there was no market near
where they could sell it in the leaf, and
not enough grown to supply factory, and
80 they quit I don't believe that tobacco
is of any great necessity to mankind, but
it is here. and has come to stay, l reckon.
Folks will use it, no matter how filthy it
is. In a great manufacturing town like
Winston, the immense buildings are oc-
cupied by negroes who manipulate the
leaf and stem it and Gull out the rotten
leaves, and throw all the refuse in piles,
on the long floors, and these piles are
their spittoons, and when they get big
enough they are cleaned up, shipped to
Durham, where they are dried and ground
up and spread out on floor and sprin-
kled with New England rum, and then
made into cigarettes for the boys. A man
from Key West told me that there were
$4,000 Cubans there making cigars. Most
of them curl the leaf to point and make
it stick with a little clean spittle from
their mouths, but the old, fat, greasy ones
use the nice, clean perspiration that runs
down the creases in their necks and face
This save them the use of pocket hand
kerchiefs. Nobody smokes cigar over
there without cutting off the point and
using mouth piece.
Clarksville has a university that is of
high grade, and turns out scholars who
are scholars. I mingled with their young