Breadstuffs and Cotton [pp. 363-365]

BREAD STUFFS AND COTTON.
Hungry stomachs can wait but a short time for steamers and
railroad cars.
Many large planters are killing their stock cattle, and prefer
purchasing their provisions. How much better is it to appro priate a part of the land to corn, potatoes and ground peas, and
raise the meat required, than thus improvidently pauperize the
country. Many a son of Jacob may go down to Egypt, but
scarcely will another Joseph be found to fill our sacks with corn.
We'remember the history of Spain shortly after the discovery
of South America. She was a lead,ling power in Europe, rich in
agricultural products, abounding in live stock, and prosperous in
manufactures. From this exalted position of national wealth
and power she soon began to fall, by directing her talents, her
resources, her industry, to mining for the precious metals. At
one time Spain furnished clothing and food, in large quantities,
to the nations in Southern Europe, and even to Great Britain.
But when the absorbing passion for gold seized so inordinately
upon the nation, her manufactures were abandoned, her agriculture languished; the fine Andalusian breed of stock perished;
and in procuring gold wherewith to purchase without labor
everything needful for man, Spain become a mere conduit pipe,
through which the precious metals flowed to other wiser and
more practical nations, from which she was compelled to draw
her resources. It need not be repeated that Spain, thus becoming a carrier of the precious metals for nearly the civilized world,
soon found her commerce dwindled to a span, her fields and pastures and workshops abandoned, and the country of Charles the
Fifth, and Ferdinand and Isabella, passing from the first rank
among nations to the second, and even third grade.
It was the weakminded one idea which drove Spain to the
one pursuit, it is the same perverted idea that is becoming popularized among Southern cotton planters, making nothing but
cotton, and purchasing everything else, down to northern cabbage, black eyed peas and red onions. A few years will leave
the ever-abiding sentiment of stupidity watching over the desolation of the land.
A country that is not self-sustaining in either one or more
pursuits will ultimately become pauperized.
What is the pursuit of the South? Should it be confined to
one single occupatiou, that of making cotton? If so, agriculture is but poorly followed, The business of the planters must be
to make the plantations self-supporting. Bread and meat are
necessary items in the production of cotton, and the cheaper way
of producing the bread and meat is to make them on the plantation. We pay for our labor, and have capital invested in land;
is it not cheaper to make that labor and that capital unite in
sustaining the plantation, in the great remunferative crop, cotton,
than to take a large part of that cotton to supply the plantation
in provisions?
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