COTTON SUPPLY AND WHITE LABOUR IN THE COTTON CLIMATE.
Mr. Russell,[40] although he clearly sees the calamity of the South,
fully accepts the cotton planter’s opinion, that, after all, the system
of slavery is a necessary evil attending upon the great good of cheap
cotton. He says: “If the climate had admitted of the growing of cotton
on the banks of the Ohio, we should have seen that slavery possessed
as great advantages over free labour in the raising of this crop as it
does in that of tobacco.” If this is so, it is important that it should
be well understood why it is so as precisely as possible.
In his Notes on Maryland, Mr. Russell (p. 141) says: “Though a slave
may, under very favourable circumstances, cultivate twenty acres of
wheat and twenty acres of Indian corn, he cannot manage more than two
acres of tobacco. The cultivation of tobacco, therefore, admits of the
concentration of labour, and thus the superintendence and management
of a tobacco plantation will be more perfect and less expensive than a
corn one.” And this is the only explanation he offers of the supposed
advantage of slave labour in the cultivation of tobacco (and of
consequence in the cultivation of cotton). The chief expense of raising
Indian corn is chargeable to planting and tillage, that of tobacco
to the seedbed, the transplanting and nursing of the young plants
(which is precisely similar to the same operation with cabbages),
the hand-weeding, the hoeing after the plant has “become too large
to work without injuring the leaves by the swingle-trees of a horse
plough;”[41] “the topping,” “the suckering,” the selection and removal
of valueless leaves, and “the worming,” all of them, except hoeing,
being operations which can be performed by children and child-bearing
women, as they usually are in Virginia.[42]
The chief expense of raising cotton, as of Indian corn, is that of
planting and tillage. The principal difference between the method of
tillage of cotton and that of Indian corn is occasioned by the greater
luxuriance of weeds in the Southern climate and the slow growth of the
cotton plant in its early stages, which obliges the tillage process
to be more carefully and more frequently performed. For this reason,
the area of cotton cultivated by each labourer is less than of corn.
The area of corn land to a hand is much over-estimated by Mr. Russell.
On the other hand, the only mention he makes of the area of cotton
land to a hand (being the statement of a negro) would lead to the
conclusion that it is often not over three acres, and that five acres
is extraordinary. Mr. De Bow says,[43] in an argument to prove that
the average production per acre is over-estimated, “In the real cotton
region, perhaps the average number of acres per hand is ten.”
Mr. Russell observes of worming and leafing tobacco: “These
operations can be done as well, and consequently as cheaply, by women
and children as by full-grown men.” (Page 142.) After reading Mr.
Russell’s views, I placed myself, through the kindness of Governor
Chase, in communication with the Ohio Board of Agriculture, from which
I have obtained elaborate statistics, together with reports on the
subject from twelve Presidents or Secretaries of County Agricultural
Societies, as well as from others. These gentlemen generally testify
that a certain amount of labour given to corn will be much better
repaid than if given to tobacco. “Men are worth too much for growing
corn to be employed in strolling through tobacco fields, looking
for worms, and even women can, as our farmers think, find something
better to do about the house.” Children, too, are thought to be, and
doubtless are, better employed at school in preparing themselves for
more profitable duties, and this is probably the chief reason why
coarse tobacco[44] cannot be cultivated with as much profit as corn in
Ohio, while the want of intelligent, self-interested labour, is the
reason why the corn-field, among the tall broad blades of which a man
will work during much of its growth in comparative obscurity, cannot be
cultivated with as much profit on soils of the same quality in Virginia
as in Ohio. In short, a class of labourers, who are good for nothing
else, and who, but for this, would be an intolerable burden upon those
who are obliged to support them, can be put to some use in raising
tobacco, and, therefore, coarse tobacco continues to be cultivated
in some of the principal slaveholding counties of Virginia. But this
class of labourers is of no more value in cotton culture than in corn
culture. Mr. De Bow says: “The South-west, the great cotton region,
is newly settled, and the number of children, out of all proportion,
less than in negroes [regions?] peopled, by a natural growth of
population.[45] Weak women and children are, in fact, not at all wanted
for cotton culture, the cotton planter’s inquiry being exclusively for
‘prime boys,’ or ‘A 1 field-hands.’”
Thus in every way cotton culture more resembles corn culture than
it does tobacco culture. The production of corn is larger in the
aggregate, is considerably larger per man engaged in its cultivation,
and is far larger per acre in Ohio than in Virginia.[46] I should,
therefore, be inclined to reverse Mr. Russell’s statement, and to say
that if the climate had admitted of the growing of cotton on both banks
of the Ohio, we should have seen that free-labour possessed as great
advantages over slavery in the cultivation of cotton as of corn.
Mr. Russell echoes also the opinion, which every cotton planter is
in the habit of urging, that the production of cotton would have
been comparatively insignificant in the United States if it had not
been for slave labour. He likewise restricts the available cotton
region within much narrower limits than are usually given to it,
and holds that the slave population must soon in a great measure be
concentrated within it. As these conclusions of a scientific traveller
unintentionally support a view which has been lately systematically
pressed upon manufacturers and merchants both in Great Britain and the
Free States, namely, that the perpetuation of slavery in its present
form is necessary to the perpetuation of a liberal cotton supply, and
also that the limit of production in the United States must be rapidly
approaching, and consequently that the tendency of prices must be
rapidly upward, the grounds on which they rest should be carefully
scrutinized.
Mr. Russell says, in a paragraph succeeding the words just now quoted
with regard to the supposed advantages of slave labour in raising
tobacco:
“The rich upland soils of the cotton region afford a profitable
investment for capital, even when cultivated by slaves left to the
care of overseers. The natural increase of the slaves, from two to
six per cent., goes far to pay the interest of the money invested
in them. The richest soils of the uplands are invariably occupied
by the largest plantations, and the alluvial lands on the banks
of the western rivers are so unhealthy for white labourers that
the slaveowners occupy them without competition. Thus the banks
of the western rivers are now becoming the great cotton-producing
districts. Taking these facts into consideration, it appears
that the quantity of cotton which would have been raised without
slave labour in the United States would have been comparatively
insignificant to the present supply.”[47]
The advantages of slave-labour for cotton culture seem from this to
have been predicated mainly upon the unwholesomeness to free or white
labourers of the best cotton lands, especially of the alluvial lands
on the banks of rivers. Reference is made particularly to “the county
of Washington, Mississippi State [which] lies between the Yazoo and
Mississippi rivers. * * * The soil is chiefly alluvial, though a
considerable portion is swampy and liable to be flooded.”[48]
Mr. Russell evidently considers that it is to this swampy condition,
and to stagnant water left by floods, that the supposed insalubrity of
this region is to be chiefly attributed. How would he explain, then,
the undoubted salubrity of the bottom lands in Louisiana, which are
lower than those of the Mississippi, exposed to a more southern sun,
more swampy, and which were originally much more frequently flooded,
but having been dyked and “leveed,” are now inhabited by a white
population of several hundred thousand. I will refer to the evidence of
an expert:—
“Heat, moisture, animal and vegetable matter, are said to be
the elements which produce the diseases of the South, and yet
the testimony in proof of the health of the banks of the lower
portion of the Mississippi river is too strong to be doubted.
Here is a perfectly flat alluvial country, covering several
hundred miles, interspersed with interminable lakes, lagunes,
and jungles, and still we are informed by Dr. Cartwright, one of
the most acute observers of the day, that this country is exempt
from miasmatic disorders, and is extremely healthy. His assertion
has been confirmed to me by hundreds of witnesses; and we know,
from our own observation, that the population presents a robust
and healthy appearance.” (Statistics are given to prove a greater
average length of life for the white race in the South than in
the North.)—ESSAY ON THE VALUE OF LIFE IN THE SOUTH, by Dr. J. C.
Nott, of Alabama.
To the same effect is the testimony of a far more trustworthy
scientific observer, Darby, the surveyor and geographer of Louisiana:—
“Between the 9th of July, 1805, to the 7th of May, 1815,
incredible as it may appear to many persons, I actually travelled
[in Southern Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and, what is
now, Texas] twenty thousand miles, mostly on foot. During the
whole of this period, I was not confined one month, put all
my indispositions together, and not one moment by any malady
attributable to climate. I have slept in the open air for weeks
together, in the hottest summer nights, and endured this mode of
life in the most matted woods, perhaps, in the world. During my
survey of the Sabine river, myself, and the men that attended
me, existed, for several weeks, on flesh and fish, without bread
or salt, and without sickness of any kind. That nine-tenths of
the distempers of warm climate may be guarded against, I do not
harbour a single doubt.
“If climate operates extensively upon the actions of human
beings, it is principally their amusements that are regulated by
proximity to the tropics. Dancing might be called the principal
amusement of both sexes, in Louisiana. Beholding the airy sweep of
a Creole dance, the length of time that an assembly will preserve
in the sport, at any season of the year, cold or warm, indolence
would be the last charge that candour could lodge against such a
people.”[49]
“Copying from Montesquieu,” elsewhere says Mr. Darby, himself a
slaveholder, “climate has been called upon to account for stains on the
human character, imprinted by the hand of political mistake. No country
where Negro Slavery is established but must have parts in the wounds
committed on nature and justice.”
The unacclimated whites on the sea coast and on the river and bayou
banks of the low country, between which and the sea coast there is much
inter-communication, unquestionably suffer much from certain epidemic,
contagious, and infectious pestilences. This, however, only renders
the fact that dense settlements of whites have been firmly established
upon them, and that they are remarkably exempt from miasmatic disease,
one of more value in evidence of the practicability of white occupation
of the upper bottom lands. There are grounds for doubting the common
opinion that the negroes at the South suffer less from local causes of
disease than whites. (See “Seaboard Slave States,” p. 647.) They may
be less subject to epidemic and infectious diseases, and yet be more
liable to other fatal disorders, due to such influences, than whites.
The worst climate for unacclimated whites of any town in the United
States is that of Charleston. (This, together with the whole of the
rice coast, is clearly exceptional in respect of salubrity for whites.)
It happens fortunately that the most trustworthy and complete vital
statistics of the South are those of Charleston. Dr. Nott, commenting
upon these, says that the average mortality, during six years, has
been, of blacks alone, one in forty-four; of whites alone, one in
fifty-eight. “This mortality” he adds, “is perhaps not an unfair test,
as the population during the last six years has been undisturbed by
emigration, and acclimated in greater proportion than at any previous
period.” If the comparison had been made between native negroes and
native or acclimated whites alone, it would doubtless show the climate
to be still more unfavourable to negroes.[50]
Upon the very district to which Mr. Russell refers, as offering an
extreme case, I quote the testimony of a Mississippi statistician:—
“The cotton-planters, deserting the rolling land, are fast pouring
in upon the ‘swamp.’ Indeed, the impression of the sickliness of
the South generally has been rapidly losing ground [_i. e._ among
the whites of the South] for some years back, and that blessing
[health] is now sought with as much confidence on the swamp lands
of the Yazoo and the Mississippi as among the hills and plains of
Carolina and Virginia.”—(De Bow’s “Resources,” vol. ii., p. 43.)
Dr. Barton says:—
“In another place I have shown that the direct temperature of
the sun is not near so great in the South (during the summer) as
it is at the North. I shall recur to this hereafter. In fact,
the climate is much more endurable, all the year round, with our
refreshing breezes, and particularly in some of the more elevated
parts of it, or within one hundred miles of the coast, both in and
out of doors, at the South than at the North, which shows most
conspicuously the folly of the annual summer migrations, to pursue
an imaginary mildness of temperature, which is left at home.”
Mr. Russell assumes that slave labour tends, as a matter of course, to
the formation of large plantations, and that free labour can only be
applied to agricultural operations of a limited scope. Of slaves, he
says: “Their numbers admit of that organization and division of labour
which renders slavery so serviceable in the culture of cotton.” I find
no reason given for this assertion, except that he did not himself see
any large agricultural enterprises conducted with free labour, while
he did see many plantations of fifty to one hundred slave hands. The
explanation, in my judgment, is that the cultivation of the crops
generally grown in the Free States has hitherto been most profitable
when conducted on the “small holding” system;[51] the cultivation of
cotton is, as a general rule, more profitable upon the “large holding”
system.[52] Undoubtedly there is a point below which it becomes
disadvantageous to reduce the farm in the Free States, and this varies
with local circumstances. There is equally a limit beyond which it is
acknowledged to be unprofitable to enlarge the body of slaves engaged
in cotton cultivation under one head. If cotton were to be cultivated
by free labour, it is probable that this number would be somewhat
reduced. I have no doubt that the number of men on each plantation, in
any case, would, on an average, much nearer approach that which would
be most economical, in a free-labour cotton-growing country than in a
country on which the whole dependence of each proprietor was on slaves.
Is not this conclusion irresistible when we consider that the planter,
if he needs an additional slave hand to those he possesses, even if
temporarily, for harvesting his crop, must, in most cases, employ at
least a thousand dollars of capital to obtain it?
Mr. Russell has himself observed that—
“The quantity of cotton which can be produced on a [slave-worked]
plantation is limited by the number of hands it can turn into the
field during the picking or harvesting of the crop. Like some
other agricultural operations, this is a simple one, though it
does not admit of being done by machinery, as a certain amount of
intelligence must direct the hand.”
The same is true of a wheat farm, except that much more can be done
by machinery, and consequently the extraordinary demand for labour at
the wheat harvest is much less than it is on a cotton plantation. I
have several times been on the Mississippi plantation during picking
time, and have seen how everything black, with hands, was then pressed
into severe service; but, after all, I have often seen negroes
breaking down, in preparation for re-ploughing the ground for the next
crop, acres of cotton plants, upon which what appeared to me to be a
tolerable crop of wool still hung, because it had been impossible to
pick it. I have seen what was confessed to be many hundred dollars’
worth, of cotton thus wasted on a single Red-River plantation. I much
doubt if the harvest demand of the principal cotton districts of
Mississippi adds five per cent. to their field-hand force. In Ohio,
there is a far larger population ordinarily engaged in other pursuits
which responds to the harvest demand. A temporary increase of the
number of agricultural labourers thus occurs of not less than forty per
cent. during the most critical period.
An analogous case is that of the vintage in the wine districts of
France. In some of these the “small holding” or _parcellement_ system
is carried to an unfortunate extreme under the influence of what are,
perhaps, injudicious laws. The parcels of land are much smaller, on
an average, than the smallest class of farms ordinarily cultivated by
free labour in the United States. But can any one suppose that if the
slave labour system, as it exists in the United States, prevailed in
those districts, that is to say, if the proprietors depended solely on
themselves, their families, and their regular servants, as those of
Mississippi must, at the picking time, there would not be a disastrous
falling off in the commerce of those districts? Substitute the French
system, unfortunate as in some respects it is, for the Mississippi
system in cotton growing, and who will doubt that the cotton supply of
the United States would be greatly increased?
Hop picking and cotton picking are very similar operations. The former
is the more laborious, and requires the greater skill. What would the
planters of Kent do if they had no one but their regular labourers to
call upon at their harvest season?
I observed this advantage of the free labour system exemplified
in Western Texas, the cotton fields in the vicinity of the German
village of New Braunfels having been picked, when I saw them, far
closer than any I had before seen, in fact, perfectly clean, having
been undoubtedly gleaned, by the poor emigrants. I was told that some
mechanics made more in a day, by going into the field of a slaveowner
and picking side by side with his slaves, being paid by measure,
than they could earn at their regular work in a week. The degree of
intelligence and of practice required to pick to advantage was found to
be very slight, less, very much, than in any single operation of wheat
harvesters. One woman was pointed out to me who had, in the first year
she had ever seen a cotton field, picked more cotton in a day than any
slave in the county.
I am reminded, as this page is about to be stereotyped, by observing
the letter of a cotton planter in the New Orleans Price Current, of
another disadvantage for cotton production, of slave labour, or rather
of the system which slavery induces. In my volume on Texas, I stated
that I was informed by a merchant that the cotton picked by the free
labour of the Germans was worth from one to two cents a pound more
than that picked by slaves in the same township, by reason of its
greater cleanliness. From the letter referred to, I make the following
extracts:—
“DEAR SIR: * * * There are probably no set of men engaged in any
business of life who take as little pains and care to inform
themselves with regard to the character and quality of their
marketable produce as the cotton-planter. Not one in a thousand
knows, nor cares to know, whether the cotton he sends to market is
ordinary, good ordinary, or middling. Not one in a hundred spends
one hour of each day at his gin in ginning season; never sees
the cotton after it is gathered, unless he happens to ride near
the scaffold and looks from a distance of a hundred yards, and
declares the specimen very white and clean, when, perhaps, it, on
the contrary, may be very leafy and dirty. * * *
“I have often seen the hands on plantations picking cotton with
sacks that would hardly hold stalks, they were so torn and full
of holes; these sacks dragging on the ground and gathering up
pounds of dirt at every few steps. The baskets, too, were with
scarcely any bottoms remaining, having been literally worn out,
the cotton lying on the ground. Indeed, some overseers do not
forbid the hands emptying their cotton on the ground when their
sacks are full, and they some distance from their baskets. When
this cotton is taken up, some dirt must necessarily come with it.
When gathering in wet weather, the hands get into their baskets
with muddy feet, and thus toss in some pounds of dirt, in this way
making their task easier. These things are never, or rarely, seen
by the proprietor: and, consequently, when his merchant writes him
that his cotton is a little dusty, he says how can it be? you are
surely mistaken.
“Now, sir, for all this there is one simple, plain remedy; let the
planter spend his time in ginning season at his gin; let him see
every load of cotton as it comes from the field and before it goes
through the gin. But, says the man of leisure, the gin is a dirty,
dusty place. Yes, sir, and always will be so, until you remedy the
evil by staying there yourself. You say your overseer is hired to
do this dirty work. _Your overseer is after quantity, sir, and the
more extra weight he gets in your cotton, the more bales he will
have to brag of having made at the end of the year. Don’t trust
him at the gin._ * * *
“Probably he has a conditional contract with his employer: _gets
so many dollars for all he makes over a certain number of bales;
thus having every inducement to put up as much leaf and dirt, or,
if he is one of the dishonest kind, he may add stones, if they
should abound in the neighbourhood_.
“Why will not the cotton-planter take pride in his own production?
The merchant prides himself on his wares; the mechanic on the work
of his hands. All seem to pride themselves on the result of their
labour except the cotton-planter.” * * *
It cannot be admitted that the absence in the Free States of that
organization and division of labour in agriculture which is found on a
large slave-worked plantation is a necessity attending the use of free
labour. Why should it be any more impossible to employ an army of free
labourers in moving the ground with an agricultural design than with
the intention of constructing a canal or a road, if it were profitable
to so employ the necessary capital? A railroad contractor in one of the
best cotton districts of the United States told me, that having begun
his work with negroes, he was substituting Irish and German labourers
for them as rapidly as possible, with great advantage (and this near
midsummer). But if I were convinced with Mr. Russell upon this point,
I should still be inclined to think that the advantages which are
possessed in a free labour state of society equally by the great
hop-planters at picking time and the _petits proprietaires_ at vintage,
which are also found in our own new States by the wheat farmer, and
which are not found under the present system anywhere at the South, for
cotton picking, would of themselves be sufficient to turn the scale in
favour of the free-labour cotton grower.
The error of the assumption by Mr. Russell, that large gangs of
unwilling labourers are essential or important to cotton production in
the United States, is, I trust, apparent. And as to the more common and
popular opinion, that the necessary labour of cotton tillage is too
severe for white men in the cotton-growing climate, I repeat that I
do not find the slightest weight of fact to sustain it. The necessary
labour and causes of fatigue and vital exhaustion attending any part,
or all, of the process of cotton culture does not compare with that of
our July harvesting; it is not greater than attends the cultivation
of Indian corn in the usual New England method. I have seen a weakly
white woman the worse for her labour in the cotton field, but never a
white man, and I have seen hundreds of them at work in cotton fields
under the most unfavourable circumstances, miserable, dispirited
wretches, and of weak muscle, subsisting mainly, as they do, on corn
bread. Mr. De Bow estimates one hundred thousand white men now engaged
in the cultivation of cotton, being one ninth of the whole cotton
force (numerically) of the country.[53] I have just seen a commercial
letter from San Antonio, which estimates that the handful of Germans in
Western Texas will send ten thousand bales of cotton, the production
of their own labour, to market this season. If it should prove to be
but half this, it must be considered a liberal contribution to the
needed supply of the year, by those who, following Mr. Russell, have
considered Western Texas out of the true cotton region, and taking
the truth of the common planters’ assertion for granted, have thought
Africans, working under physical compulsion, the only means of meeting
the demand which could be looked to in the future of the United States.
It would not surprise me to learn that the cultivation of cotton by
the German settlers in Texas had not, after all, been as profitable
as its cultivation by the planters employing slaves in the vicinity.
I should attribute the superior profits of the planter, if any there
be, however, not to the fitness of the climate for negro labour, and
its unfitness for white labour, but to the fact that his expenses for
fencing, on account of his larger fields and larger estate, are several
hundred per cent. less than those of the farmer; to the fact that his
expenses for tillage, having mules and ploughs and other instruments to
use at the opportune moment, are less than those of the farmer, who,
in many cases, cannot afford to own a single team; to the fact that he
has, from experience, a better knowledge of the most successful method
of cultivation; to the fact that he has a gin and a press of his own in
the midst of his cotton fields, to which he can carry his wool at one
transfer from the picking; by which he can put it in order for market
expeditiously, and at an expense much below that falling upon the
farmer, who must first store his wool, then send it to the planter’s
gin and press and have it prepared at the planter’s convenience,
paying, perhaps, exorbitantly therefor; and, finally, to the fact that
the planter deals directly with the exporter, while the farmer, the
whole profit of whose crop would not pay his expenses in a journey
to the coast, must transfer his bale or two to the exporter through
two or three middle-men, carrying it one bale at a time, to the local
purchaser. Merchants will never give as good prices for small lots as
for large. There are reasons for this which I need not now explain. I
consider, in short, that the disadvantages of the farmer in growing
cotton are of the same nature as I have before explained with those
which long ago made fire-wood of hand-looms, and paupers of those who
could be nothing else but hand-loom weavers, in Massachusetts. Exactly
how much is gained by the application of labour with the advantage
of capital and combination of numbers over its isolated application
as directed by individuals without capital in a slaveholding region,
I cannot estimate, but no one will doubt that it is considerable.
Nevertheless, in all the cotton climate of the United States, if a
white farmer has made money without slaves, it will be found that
it has been, in most cases, obtained exclusively from the sale of
cotton. If cotton is a plant the cultivation of which by free or white
labour is especially difficult, how is it that, with the additional
embarrassments arising from a lack of capital, his gains are almost
exclusively derived from his cotton crop?
But I may be asked, if combination is what is needed to make cotton a
source of more general prosperity at the South, why is there no such
thing as a joint-stock cotton plantation in Mississippi, as there are
joint-stock cotton mills in Massachusetts, the stock in which is in
large part owned by those employed in them? I ask, in reply, how is
it that the common way of obtaining breadstuffs in Northern Alabama
is to sow three pecks of seed wheat on hard stubble ground, plough
it under with unbroken bullocks, led with a rope, and a bull-tongue
plough, and finally to garner rarely so much as six bushels from an
acre? How is it that while in Ohio the spinning-wheel and hand-loom
are curiosities, and homespun would be a conspicuous and noticeable
material of clothing, half the white population of Mississippi still
dress in homespun, and at every second house the wheel and loom are
found in operation? The same influences which condemn the majority of
free labourers in Alabama to hand-looms, homespun, and three hundred
pounds of wheat to the acre, as the limit of production, also condemn
them to isolated labour, poor soil, poor tools, bad management, “bad
luck,” small crops, and small profits in cotton culture.
The following passages from a letter published in the _New York Times_
present convincing evidence that it is no peculiarity of the Western
Texas climate, but only the exceptional social condition with which
its people are favoured, that enables free white labour to be employed
in increasing the cotton production of the country. I have ascertained
that the author of the letter is known to the editor of the _Times_,
and is esteemed a gentleman of veracity and trustworthy judgment.
“I am well acquainted with Eastern Mississippi, south of Monroe
county, and there are few settlements where my name or face is
unknown in the following counties, over the greater part of which
I have ridden on horseback, to wit: Loundes, Oktibleha, Choctaw,
Carroll, Attalla, Winston, Noxubee, Kemper, Nashoba, Leake, Scott,
Newton, Lauderdale, Clarke, Smith, and Jasper. After four years’
travel through these counties, transacting business with great
numbers of their inhabitants, stopping at their houses, conversing
much with them, and viewing their mode of living, I unhesitatingly
answer that white men can and do labour in the cotton field, from
Christmas to Christmas following; and that there, as elsewhere,
prudence, industry, and energy find their universal reward:
success and wealth.
“In the counties of Choctaw, Winston, Nashoba, Newton, and
Smith, there are very few large plantations; most of those having
slaves holding but two or three, while those who own none are
in the majority; yet these are all cotton-growing counties, and
the staple of their cotton, poor as their lands are, is equal to
the average sold in the Mobile market. Where the young farmer is
enterprising and go-ahead, his cotton is usually superior. * * *
“The rich lands where white labour, even in small numbers, might
be profitable, are either in the hands of large planters, or too
heavily timbered for a single man. The only thing now preventing
any poor white man in the South from gaining a fair competence,
and even attaining wealth, is his own laziness, shiftlessness, and
ignorance; for the small planters in the counties I have mentioned
are deplorably ignorant. * * *
“There is one case I remember, which is to the point; the man
lives in Choctaw county, and was born in Georgia. He does not own
a negro, but has two boys, one sixteen, the other twelve. With
the assistance of these boys, and the most imperfect agricultural
implements, he made twenty-two bales of cotton, year before
last, plenty of corn, and sufficient small grain for himself and
family, although the season was more than ordinarily bad in his
neighbourhood, while many of his neighbours, with five or six
slaves, did not exceed him, and some made even less. He went on
to his place without ten dollars in his pocket, gave his notes
for eight hundred dollars, payable in one, two, and three years’
time, with interest at six per cent. per annum, and the ensuing
year he purchased another one hundred and sixty acres for seven
hundred and fifty dollars, also on time. This man is, however, far
more intelligent and progressive in farming than those about him;
he does not plant as did his grandfather, because his father did
so, but endeavours to improve, and is willing to try an experiment
occasionally.
“In my own county, in Alabama, there is a woman whose husband died
shortly after the crop was planted, leaving her without a single
servant, and no assistance except from a little son of twelve
years of age: yet she went into the field, ploughed and picked
her cotton, prepared her ground for the coming crop, and raised a
second crop thereon.”
My conclusion, from the various evidences to which I have referred,
must be a widely different one from Mr. Russell’s, from that which is
generally thought to prevail with our leading capitalists, merchants,
and manufacturers, and from that which seems to have been accepted
by the Cotton Supply Associations of Liverpool and Manchester. It is
this: that there is no physical obstacle in the way of our country’s
supplying ten bales of cotton where it now does one. All that is
necessary for this purpose is to direct to the cotton-producing region
an adequate number of labourers, either black or white, or both. No
amalgamation, no association on equality, no violent disruption of
present relations is necessary. It is not even requisite that both
black and white should work in the cotton fields. It is necessary that
there should be more objects of industry, more varied enterprises, more
general intelligence among the people, and especially that they should
become, or should desire to become, richer, more comfortable, than they
are.
The simple truth is, that even if we view in the brightest light
of Fourth of July patriotism, the character of the whites of the
cotton-producing region, and the condition of the slaves, we cannot
help seeing that, commercially speaking, they are but in a very small
part a civilized people. Undoubtedly a large number of merchants have
had, at times, a profitable business in supplying civilized luxuries
and conveniences to the South. The same is true of Mexico, of Turkey,
of Egypt, and of Russia. Silk, cloth, and calico, shoes, gloves, and
gold watches, were sold in some quantity in California, before its
golden coffers were forcibly opened ten years ago. The Southern supply
to commerce and the Southern demand of commerce is no more what it
should be, comparing the resources of the South with those of other
lands occupied by an active civilized community, than is that of
any half-civilized community, than was that of California. Give the
South a people moderately close settled, moderately well-informed,
moderately ambitious, and moderately industrious, somewhat approaching
that of Ohio, for instance, and what a business it would have! Twenty
double-track railroads from the Gulf to the lakes, and twenty lines
of ocean steamers, would not sufficiently meet its requirements. Who
doubts, let him study the present business of Ohio, and ask upon what,
in the natural resources of Ohio, or its position, could, forty years
ago, a prediction of its present wealth and business have been made,
of its present supply and its present demand have been made, which
would compare in value with the commercial resources and advantages of
position possessed to-day by any one of the Western cotton States?[54]