The Laurens advertiser. (Laurens, S.C.) 1885-1973, 1900-01-31

injudicious cotton culticntion. 1t GER
talnly does not pay to plant an indis-
crminate and wide area IN cotton
though man have supplies, stock and
surplus of well-wOrn and overt axed
acres of hard-run land.
In the history and progress of our
agriculture that period has been reached
where farmers cannot raise and sell the
raw products of the farm at a satisfac-
tory profit, if we take into consideration
the deterioration of our lands.
This ls a startling statement, but it is
made deliberately and after thorough
consideration, and on Investigation it
will be found that such is the history
of every agricultural county, where
crops have been grown and sold off the
farm for many successive years, with
out an adequate return being made to
tee soil for the clements removed
in those crops. AS an illustration
of this truth, we have only to point
to Ireland, whose poverty stricken
people, under the bondage TO alien
lords, have seen their crops removed
and expended elsewhere, year after
year, and nothing of this departed
fertility replaced.
In our own case many causes have
tended to bring us to condition where
we have been compelled to study meth
dds to restore and preserve the fertility
of our soils and keep up the productive e
power of our farms. At the close of
| the war, much of the land at the South
was impoverished from successive
years Of culture and despite the fact
that the war left us very poor people
in Georgia alone property values being
reduced from 5000, 100000 TO $780,
600, 900, our farmers took up the strug-
gle bravely, hoplng to retrieve tn cir
losses in the further production of cot
ton, which ruled bewilderingly hinh.
The infatuation of high prices in
every avenue of trade and commerce
prevailed. Credit was easy, too easy,
and everything needed on the farm
was ruinously dear. Mules $3.50 to
$3.50; flour 80, SIS 800 per barrel {;
meal in the same proportions; meat %
to % cents pound; farm laborers $3.50
to S175 per year, and rations; besides
guano 500 per ton and farm tools were
eagerly purchased at prices which we
would now regard as almost prohibit
ory. But this high pressure policy
could not continue indefinitely, neith-
er could the methods prevailing before
the war, except in rare and favored
cases, be successfully brought over
into the new conditions, which follow
ed that memorable and devastating
struggle.
AT least 90 per cent. of the men who
plunged into this desperate and specul-
ative period became hopelessly invol.
we'd, both farmers and merchants. The
high price of cotton and the ease with
which high priced supplies could be
purchased, credit prices being predlc-
ated on big and remunerative cotton
crops, tempted many men to put every
available acre in cotton and not one
square inch or else totally inadequate
area III provision or supply crops of
any kind. When the price Of cotton
declined, both the farmer, who had
borrowed, and the merchant, who had
loaned, found themselves saddled with
debts which only years of earnest and
patient labor could hope to wipe out.
In many instances after vain struy-
gle to regain the lost vantage ground,
the merchants went to the wall and
the old plantations passed into the
hands of strangers.
This is sad picture and pity tits,
tits true. 1t was only those men who
followed more conservative methods
and who apprehended the new era just
beginning to dawn on our agriculture,
tuhn oh1n IN ,ntoin hn; ;.tl.
right and weather the storm of financi-
al depression, which swept with such
fearful force over the entire South. But
that generation has passcd--new men
have come upon the scene and now
prevail. The strong, young business
men Of the South, farmers and mer-
chants and manufacturers and bankers
have been trained in very different
school from the magnificent golden age
of the old South. Agricultural ltera-
ture has been spread broadcast over
the land, experiment stations have
multiplied, farmers Institutes and
colleges and other methods for dissent
mating agricultural and up-to.date prin-
ciples are In easy reach of the army
of earnest workers constituting 73 per
cent of our population who are reading,
studying and applying these vital
truths. Already diversified farming
and rotation, fruit growing, cattle rails
ing and butter making are taking the
place Of the one-crop system with its at
tendant bondage TO debt and the inde-
pendent farmer who can make his cot
ton and hold it is not the rara avis he
once was.
In technical education and manual
in manufacturing, in every
other development of business, the
new South is proudly taking her place