The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 18??-19??, 1903-09-08

One of the greatest errors about the
South is found Ill the belief that negroes
are absolutely essential to the raising OF
such staples as rice, tobacco and cotton.
This belief was cultivated even in the
South before the passing of the institution
of slavery, but its underpinnngs have
been weakened one by one, and III no re-
spect more so than by the wonderful ex-
tension of rice culture during the past
fifteen or twenty years IN Louisiana and
Texas, largely by men who had been
wheat growers in the North and West.
The revelation made by them has come
with something of shock to long range
economists Ike Goldwin Smith, who have
not kept up with the facts of Southern
development, and the shock is likely to
be intensified when they study the chang
ing relations of negroes to the cotton
crop More than thirty years ago an in
telligcnt English traveller, who had de-
voted several months to careful first-hand
observation in the South, with especial
reference to the possibilities of the cot
ton crop, noted in the older cotton grow
ing regions tendency to a breaking up
of plantations into small farms occupied
by white persons This was very appar-
ent to him in Mississippi and Alabam
and. referring to the latter State, he
wrote:
THE hilly districts have long been in
habited by a poor white population, who
have always produced more OF less cot
ton. But the high value to which cot
ton was raised by the war and the labor
difficulty of the large plantations have
inspired them with new hope, life and
industry, and this class of growers has
swelled considerably of late years the
deliveries of cotton at the railway depots.
They gin and bale their pro-
duct at common gin houses; they spin and
weave their own cloth, nourish Their
COWS and hogs, and, when the seasons
are favora BILE, succeed IN raising a ta1r
stand of cotton There never have been
better or larger crops Of cotton IN the
hill districts than this season. These
small hill farmers come down OCCASION
aIly into the plain, looking for the land
to rent or buy, and it IS not improbable
that many of the better and more lnnus-
trious of families in the mountains, as
the gently-swelling uplands are called,
will eventually come down altogether and
help to renovate the waste places ana
build I'D the agricultural prosperity OF
the valley
Reviewing conditions in the South gen
orally, and referring to competition
which has arisen between the larger plan
tations on which the negroes were chiefly
employed and the smaller farms cultivated
by white people with as little negro labor
IS possible, he said:
'"rhis feature of cotton planting in the
South is at present conspicuous, Tor l
hold it. from observation as well as tca-
timonv. to be certain that the larger pro
norton OF the annual expansions or tne
cotton crop since the war IS due TO me
energy on small farms, IN gardens aho
IN crops taken on waste and unoccuDiet
nIantations Of white labor. Some lew o.
tbe negroes, no doubt, contribute lhde-
nendentlv to this small farm movement.
hut the ad captandum mode OF arguing 9
the superior efficiency OF tree-negfo laDor'
viz that so many negroes perlsheu III
the war, that negro women 90 not 10"
work in the field, that negro children ar
mt 10 school and that, nevertheless the
eron being all but equal to What II "ds
under slavery. it follows that the negroes