The Cotton Resources of the South, Present and Future [pp. 132-144]

THE COTTON RESOURCES OF THE SOUTH.
a negro to the square mile, putting under cultivation in cotton less
than one-quarter of one per cent. of her area, produced, in 1860, onehalf of all the cotton required by the IJnited States north of the Potomac, in all 405,000 bales, including the crop of the Red River,
usually counted in New Orleans.
But returning from Texas to the oldest cotton country we find the
line of mean summer temperature starting from near the centre of
the coast of North Carolina, thence through the centre of South
Carolina, through central Georgia, northern Alabama, and then
almost due north across Tennessee to southern Illinois, thence bearing again to the south-west through southern Missouri and northern
Arkansas.
My attention has been especially turned to these facts, for, I think,
none will deny that the climate of Georgia is mo)re suitable to the
labor of the white man than the climate of southern Illinois. We
have never heard that white men could not live and labor in St.
Louis; yet it has the mean summer temperature of central Georgia,
and the extremes of heat are greater in St. Louis than in New Orleans. I do not expect to see cotton made a permanent crop north
of Tennessee; the summer is hot enough, but frosts c(ome too soon,
and the picking season is too short, unless (and while it sounds absurd it is not improbable) a month shall be added to the picking
season, at the beginning, by starting the plants in a hot-bed as we do
cabbages in the North.
It may be that some time will elapse before the cultivation of cotton will be fully re-established in the more southern portion of the
cotton country, except in Texas. The first idea of freedom with the
negro is to leave the hated cotton-field, and much suffering, must of
necessity ensue, and much time must elapse before he will labor
cheerfully again upon the river bottoms and in the southern region
where white labor will not at once attempt the cultivation of the
land. It is perhaps needful that we should induce emigration from
southern Eur;ope before the question of the cultivation of large crops
in southern Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana will be fully settled.
But there is a broad tract of cotton country lying in Georgia, South
Carolina, Tennessee, northern Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas,
the land of farms, not of plantations, on which a million and a half
bales of cotton have been produced in a given year, of which a very
large portion was produced by white labor, even in the days of
slavery. On this section we shall soon see an enterprizing c(ommun ity of small farmers, not raising cotton by the plantation system, but
on small allotments, under the personal supervision of the owner,
himself working in the field. Here we shall soon see northern
economy-the seed no longer wasted, but the rich oil which com poses twelve and a half per cent. of its weight expressed and turned
to a useful purpose; the cake, the richest food for cattle known, fed
out to stock; the land no longer exhausted by the waste of seed, but
the manure returned, and the cotton-farm growing richer instead of
poorer year by year. And as the population becomes more dense,
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