Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1902-11-05
THE PIEDMONT SECTION.
The Advantages Afforded by 0conee County.
Our People Should be Happy
IN. b. Cary in Carolina Home.l

IN. b. Cary in Carolina Home.]
When we read of the fearful
strikes in the North, which so cripple
and threaten to paralyze the business
of the country, the soorching drouths,
terrible floods, disastrous cyclones,
pestilential diseases, bad water and
unwholesome climate of many Sec
tions of our country, we cannot but
exolaim "happy, thrice happy"
should be the fortunate owner of a
home in Upper South Carolina.
Indeed, we know of no more desir-
able place to live. all things consid-
cred, than the Piedmont region of
South Carolina, and, with your per-
mission, we will endeavor to emu
merate some of the advantages of
this section, especially Oconee county.
Her climate is most delightful
rarely excessively cold in winter or
severely hot in summer; the very
best water from pure wells and
gushing springs. Her soil, of every
variety, is adapted to the growing of
almost any crop; rich alluvial bot.
toms along her rivers, creeks and
br anches, when properly cultivated,
yield abundantly the finest Indian
corn, wheat, oats and rye. The
uplands, though somewhat rolling,
are rich and strong in the elements
of production, and, when rightly
managed, grow excellent corn, wheat,
oats, rye, sorghum, barley, buck
wheat, Irish and sweet potatoes,
melons, tobacco, cabbage, tomatoes,
peas and vegetables in great variety
with as little labor as the same can
be produced in any country.
Grapes, pears, peaches and apples
thrive splendidly.
While the soil and climate are not
specially adapted to the growing of
cotton, unfortunately that feecy
staple is made a speciality by our
farmers to the exclusion of crops
better adapted to the soil and eli
mate but by liberal fertilizing and
thorough cultivation, as fine cotton
can be produced here as in the Mis-
sissippi bottoms or the fertile lands
of Texas. But herein lies our trou-
BILE with cotton-it can only be made
to pay at prevailing prices, when the
intensive system is followed, and so
few practice that method that it is a
question if the cotton crop of this
section, taken as whole, pays for
the costs of production.
You truly state in your editorial
that "much of our land has been al
lowed to wash away and become
dead in consequence of successive
cotton growing"
This being true, it looks very
strange, to put it mildly, that any
reasonable mann should continue to
pay twenty dollars per ton for guano
and put two dollars worth on each
acre every yeaftS be washed away,
in many instances, before the seed
are put in the ground, and, if not
washed away, but cultivated, gather
in the fall about cotton enough to
pay for the guano used and small
mercantile lien for corn, bacon, flour,
ETC., which every man could and
ought to produce at home.
Instead of this, if we must make
cotton, why not fertilize highly and
cultivate well smaller area, thus
producing more to the acre and saw
ing in time and labor.
This is not naturally cotton pro-
ducing county, but it looks as if
Oconee, in the near future, is des-
tined TO become q cotton manufac-
turing county, there being already
four large cotton mills in operation,
with water power enough in the
county to run every cotton mill in
the world.
just as sure as "the night follows
the day." observation, sad experience
and the inexorable law of necessity
will force upon as the conviction
that we must produce our own sup
plies at home. This would not be n
difficult matter.
If the same time and labor, to say
nothing of the expensive commercial
fertilizers devoted to the cultivation
OF cotton, were applied with the
same energy to the production OF
j corn wheat pfc and IN tho ra;o;nf,