Department of Commerce [pp. 105-117]

112 COMMERCE.
poses. Factors in the leading Southern cities have long since exhausted
their resources in furnishing implements, fertilizers, provisions, etc., and so
limited is banking capital throughout the South, that first-class planters'
paper, with the best city acceptances, cannot be disposed of at two per cent.
a month discount. The obstacles imposed by the stringent regulations governing the collection of the internal tax are ably stated in a brief editorial
from the Xewo York Daily Bulletin which is subjoined:
The season is rapidly approaching when the question of the movement of
the Southern crops will be a subject of considerable commercial importance.
In ordinary times large advances are required for the purpose, and planters
were in the habit of obtaining advances on the maturing crop. But this
resource can now only be available to a limited extent, owing to the deficiency
of capital and credit, and the general want of currency in the South. But
there are other and more important obstacles to the rapid movement of the
crop to a market, arising from the altered circumstances of the Southern
States in consequence of the war.
First there is the injudicious levy of the tax on cotton. The mere prepayment of the tax imposes a heavy strain upon the resources of planters
and jobbers. A sum of from fifteen to twenty millions of dollars is required
to be paid in taxes before the staple can reach its ultimate destination.
That this tax in the present prostrate condition of the South operates as a
serious check to the forward movement of the crop cannot be doubted.
Then again the crop, according to law, cannot be removed from the respective collection districts without prepayment of the tax duly certified and
stamped on the bales by government collectors. Steamboat proprietors and
railroad companies and transportation agents are prohibited from removing
cotton out of the district until the tax has been duly paid, and until the cotton has been stamped and marked. A bale of untaxed, unstamped cotton
for example, cannot reach Mobile from any district in Georgia outside of
that city. This is a very great hardship. The Southern Revenue districts
are remote and sparsely settled, and in many places the light draught steamers only ascend the rivers once a year to carry away the crop. If the cotton
is not ready for delivery through failure or inability to procure the attendance of a government officer to receive the tax and stamp the bales, the
chances of a market are often indefinitely postponed.
This delay is to be deprecated also in view of the changed labor system
of the South. The cotton crop has been to a considerable extent raised on
shares, the freedmen and the planters receiving a certain proportion of the
proceeds. According to orders from the Freedman's Bureau, wages are to
be a lien on the crops, and cotton cannot be removed until the freedmen
have received their wages on shares in cash. Waving all consideration respecting the motives or object of this order, it is apparent that in many
cases it will probably result injuriously to workmen and employers, as only
a very limited number of planters are likely to be in a position to pay for
the labor in advance of the sale of the staple. It will probably be found
that the majority of planters are this year dependent upon the sales of the
crops to pay the wages of their hands and other expenses of production.
Any delay in the payment to the freedmen is to be specially deprecated on
account of the unfavorable effect it will have upon them in making labor
contracts for the current year. Planters must therefore resort to the precarious operation of borrowing money at interest to raise funds for the payment of taxes, wages and other expenses. This course must of course diminish their profits, tending as it does to increase the cost of cultivating the
staple. A mere recital of these facts show some of the difficulties the Southern planter labors under in endeavoring to conmpete with other countries in
raising cotton.
A correspondent in New Orleans desires us to give him statistics of re