The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1900-04-09

Grass means hay and beef, butter and
cheese. Cotton means cash, says a South
ern paper. OF late it means also cotton
seed meal, oil, cotto,ene, huns, beef and
milk. Grass means an agriculture rever-
ent of Mother Earth fields preserved from
the tooth of time well-flled granaries,
good country living, with butter AMI
cream. and all that these imply; freedom
from mortgages, sleek horses ana catte
and handsome turnouts (Kent1cky). Cot
ton means quilted hillsides, stale living out
of stores, weather-beaten rigs, cotton
blowing mule of 'looped and Widowed
raggedness" Georgia or North Florida.)
The discovery of the uses of cotton seed
has nearly doubled the value of the cotton
crop; still there is little abatement of the
pileous slaughter CT the soil. Grass binds
all together aud holds il in its kindly en-
brace feeding upon the soil. it is true, but
without robbery, and often, through the
legumes, restoring more than ii takes.
Cotton is not a soil-destroyer, and if the
seed and foliage are carefully returned to
the ground, there is little soil-dep.etion
But the outlying Of the earth through the
gnawng rains and pulverizing frosts.
where there is no protecting blanket OF
glass-this is the deplorable feature. Then,
too, there is an indetinable something OF
permanence, of home building, of thrift, in
the regions that are founded on grass
which is less noticeable where one staple
swallows in its Unsuitable NAV all labor
and all thought; be that staple cotton or
wheat or sugar cane.
In statistics a our command it has been
difficult TO find statements showing both
exports and imports of cotton growing Sec
tons One of these was of Mobile, in he
year 1868.
Mobile exported that year 2S0621 bales OF
cotton, worth $2S,22S'70S. Her imports in
IL, n mo 1Dd ha
plantation, or in the house, from $105 so
worth of bagging to SAG, 400 worth of
-four, and footing up $2,676,626. This leaves
a balance of $25,662,0 S2 on the export or
credit side of the ledger. No wonder the
South was infatuated with cotton in those
days.
But no millions of favorable balance
could recompense for the eroded hill
sides or the noble rivers of Alabama run
ming bankful and red with the blood of
ruined fields. There is the respect that
makes calamity of so long life. This Is
what makes the South to-day, after
century OF wastage of the nitrogen, the
potash and the phosphates of the soil,
Alphabetically weak, and, therefore, finan-
cialy and industrially weak. The great
rivers. from the James to the Mississippi,
have carried down and buried at their
mouths forever, hundreds of millions OF
dollars worth of the silt that can never
farms of New England have lost their
profta bleness, but the grass has retained
the soil. The South has spent its inter-
est, and its principal lies ia thoms deep
at the outlets of its rivers.
The succession of cotton after cotton,
then cotton again, without rotation or
rest or year in grass to interlace the
soil and hold it together-even a SOW
ing of rye would have tied it down
against the water rains-has baked 1T in
summer and humed it away in winter.
Slipping down through Georgia from the
noun aims to the sea, on a train, the
traveller sees no more pathetic spectacle
than these fleshlesS wastes. spread out
like anatomical specimens upon the sur
face of the slopes, every nerve or vein
outlined by tiny rivulet all gradually
concentrating into rills gaining force and
volume in the descent, walloping and
smashing with the soft. oily gurgle of
silt laden water carrying down to the
sea the priceless patrinony of the farm
ers. These naked old fields, these sad old
fields of the Appalachian and Piedmont
slopes-it takes the richest ammoniates
to galvanze some life under these ribs
of death"
Some Northern communities, with their
unending succession of wheat, have perpe-
trated similar folly. The farmers Of the
Genesee valley are buying back in poverty
and travail the fertility they wasted. But
they called halt long ago, and grass AMI
clover. meadows and diaries have begun
the work of ehabilitaton.
The more intelligent cotton-growers
have terraced their lands. Some OF these
old fields have been seeded to Bermuda
grass, but many have been abandoned to
the volunteer growth of pines, which seem
to be in the South, a special provision Of
nature to stitch together and cicatrize the
wounds inflicted by the rapacity Of man.
The grasses on these now eroded hill
sides and the lower Piedmont slopes, the
farmers could have eaten their cake and
kept it, There would not have been the
prodlgal wealth resulting from cotton "A
the ante-bellum years, but slavery won
not have been so fostered. with grass in
stead Of cotton there might have been no
Civil War.