Agricultural Requirements of the South [pp. 87-103]

90 AGRICULTURAL REQUIREMENTS OF THE SOUTH.
We are essentially and above all things an agricultural people. If we have consideration among nations, it is because
we have natural endowments which enable us, for the time
being, to produce firuits of the earth which have become a
necessity. There are other crops perhaps as much so as the
great staple, which vwe do not cultivate, and wlhich might give
us increased power. Unfortunately, we have, in common with
the Croniwells of the North, a disposition to the excessive use
of,adjectives, and are given to self,glorification. WVe admit. that
our land has been greatly blessed, and that our cott6ln crop is of
paramount importance to commerce; but that may not be so
always, for the very conflict in which we are engaged, and in
whichl cotton plays ~o potent a part, may iinauguriate or stimiulate to greater activity in the production of cotton elsewhere.
It may not be known to all of you that the cotton plant is a native of Abyssiiiia, and, at nine thousamd feet elevation, a staple
is grown as long and as fine as that grown on our sea islands.
If we can credit Livingston and other travellers, a vast portion
of Afiica is eminently fit for the culture of the,ossypium.
The soil is fertile, besides having a remnarkable climate, similarlv to our own cotton region. But, admitting( the fact that
neither South America, Africa or India is capable to compete
with the cotton latitudes of the Southern States, either science and history (ire unreliable, or the time is fast atpproachiiig
when the cultivation of cotton mrust cease upon the ul)lands in
the Southern Confederacy. The nmarl formatious may form an
exception. Indeed, without an entire and radical chlange, not
only the cotton wNill cease to be cultivated, )but the lands will
have to be abandoned altogether, and the capital at Columbia
will stand a monument in a solitary waste.
Fertility is thie nationi's hope for continued existence; land is
as nothing without it is productive, nor does production depend
upon culture, as how the land is cultivated, for sterilitv is not a
consequence of use but of abuse. In the absence of all restraint, and in the presence of a public domnain, rich with the
accumulated gifts of untold time, offered at a nonminal cost, the
public wreal is sacrificed to cupidity and ignorance, a legalized
invitation to ruin and destroy. The lands belong to the
nation, and without fertility is maintained the nation ceases to
exist, because there can be no population without pro(luction.
The time was when agriculture was mere empiricism, and the
soil regarded as a bank to be drawn upon until depletion.
Hence the march of civilization fi'om east to west. It is only
within the last quarter of a century that scientists have turned
their attention to investigations connected with the constitution and the functions of the soil. Fromi that period science
assumed command. With the progressive increase of population, science has become a necessity; there is no help for us out
of it, as wve do not form an exception to those laws which gov