Year: 1869

Corn and Cotton--Our Dan


ger.


We append from the Charleston
News a very excellent article
which urges upon the planters
the necessity of 'cultivating plen-
ty of provisions first, and then a
moderate crop of cotton" Its
suggestions our planters would do
we'll to heed and ponder, and then
reduce to practice. The effect of
the policy recommended is to fur
nish US with q full supply of bread
stuffs. at the same time that it
does not diminish the income from
cotton. How hard it is to realize
that "the half is sometimes greater
than the whole )" that the market
value of an article depends upon
it's scarcity that not the ."books
of the sybir' merely, but all things
else increase in price as they
diminish in number that cotton
is not exempt from the law which
governs all commodities. Read
the article aoeekzy and practice it's
suggestions daily:


The cotton crop of 1868 has
been a God.send to the South
We have money in abundance, our
credit is rapidly improving, the
chains are broken which bound
US, our future is bright with hope.
And yet all this will be an evil,
rather than a good, if we do not
persevere in that wise agricultural
policy whose first fruits we now
enjoy.


Our danger is that the planters
may be tempted by high prices
the result of a moderate crop,
growing trade and reckless specu-
ulation-to pitch huge crops Of





cotton. Each man who sold up
land cotton at 25 or 81 or "a cents
a pound, doubtless wished that he
had twenty bales instead of ten,
or a.hundred in place Of fifty
This feeling, however natural, we
must conquer or be undone.


We have made money by the
cotton crop Of 1868, because cot
ton was our first and principal
care. There had been two seasons
of anxiety, disappointment and
loss, which forced the planter to
acknowledge that his only safety
lay in securing, at any cost, what
bread and meat he required. The
dullest and most wrong-headed
could see this necessity, and, as a
consequence, the South produced
all the breadstuffs she needed, the
corn crop Of South Carolina alone
being 100000 bushels more than
it was in 1867. Cotton was a Sc
condary consideration with the
planter but the two.and-a-half
million Of bales which from the
crop of the year have still brought
us more money than four million
bales would have done at the
prices before the war. Had the
whole strength of the South been
directed to the culture Of cotton,
the crop would have been three
million bales or more, and then
our fortunes would have been
staked upon one cast of the die,
prices would have fallen and the





purchase of Western grain would
have swallowed up the greater
part of the net proceeds Of our
cotton. AS it is, we have been
independent of outside help. We
have not eaten into the morrow,
wo have not been obliged to throw
our cotton upon the MARKET and
we approach another season with
distended purses, and the fairest
prospects of success.


But the lessons Of this year and
Of the years which have preceded
it will be worse than thrown a.
way, if high prices induce our
planters to make cotton their king
and not their. slave. The first
labor, the first thought, the first
pains, should he given to wheat,
corn ard provisions; and then,
and not before, might the reign of
cotton begin. We should have
IL L,.1 ,o.1 ca oo RI ;nonrove the