6 tainty to render it worth growing. The southern line is not much more rigidly defined. Cotton cannot compete with the sugar-cane, and does not greatly flourish on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. The growth of cotton in the southern counties of Texas is not considerable; very little is grown within a hundred miles of New Orleans, and though a good deal of seaisland cotton is grown in Florida, it is subject to such catastrophes as that of last year, when the disastrous storms which obliterated the latter portion of the summer nearly destroyed the crop. The United States Department of Agriculture publishes monthly reports from all parts of the Union. Some of these, published during last year's cotton harvest, throw light on the difficulties of the cotton culture. From East Baton Rouge parish, Louisiana, the report said:- Much remains to be picked, and will be gathered, if labourers 'can be retained. Many, however, will be taken off to the 'sugar-plantations, where wages are higher. The probability is 'that much cotton will be left in the fields to waste.' From West Feliciana parish, the report says:- Short crop. In 'spite of all drawbacks, small patches, highly manured and 'well cultivated, have produced splendid crops, showing that it pays to cultivate good land well.' From McLellan County, Texas, the report runs :- The crop all gathered, ginned, and eight-tenths sold, at 12 cents coin per pound; about twothirds of the cost of production. We cannot produce cotton, ' averaging five years, for less than 12 cents per pound coin, yet McLellan is the best cotton county in the State three years out of five. Worms have never damaged a crop here. The want of more thorough culture, and more reliable labour, is the difficulty.' We have already quoted Mr. Wells's statement that the cotton grown under free labour is superior in cleanliness, 'strength, uniformity of fibre, and absence of waste to that 'grown under slavery.' The question is, can it be grown as cheaply? Mr. Wells thinks it can, since the system of slavery required that a large proportion of the net annual profit of 'the South should be spent in labour.' The old estimate of produce was that a bale an acre was an excellent crop, and two bales a very large crop, even on the richest lands; while in Georgia and the Carolinas half a bale, or two hundred and fifty pounds, an acre was considered satisfactory. This latter estimate still holds good. Mr. Somers says that the best crop of cotton he met with in Georgia was on the farm of a recent settler, who, by close attention and farmyard manuring, raised nine bales from thirteen acres. In New Orleans he found that these small growers were believed to raise the best crops, and to deliver the cotton in the best condition; and the most conspicuous fact in the cotton culture at this moment, he says, is, that the larger proportion of the annual expansions of the cotton crop since the war is due to the energy, on small farms, in gardens, and in crops taken on waste and unoccupied plantations, of white labour.' On the other hand, Mr. Somers gives, as a remarkable proof of the progress made towards better management under free labour, the fact that Mr. Gordon, the owner of a large estate in Mississippi, • lost 24,000 dollars by his cotton crops the year after the war, when the price was high; but has been making it better every year since, under declining values.' He has probably made a handsome profit under the increasing values of the present year. What the South wants is the application of capital to the soil. Thorough culture, trustworthy labour, and such a price as will remunerate the labourer, are the needs of the cotton culture. The question of price is, however, even more a matter for the English buyer than for the American seller. A few cents a pound may make all the difference between the stoppage of a hundred thousand Lancashire looms and the building of a hundred new factories. We can find markets for cotton goods somewhat in proportion to the cheapness with which we can procure the raw material. Our spinners prefer American cotton to any other. During the cotton famine much machinery was adapted to the shorter staple of the Surat cotton; but since the close of the war in America only one-half of the cotton sent from India to this country is manufactured here. In 1868 there was an importation of Surat amounting to 1,038,925 bales, of which 821,000 bales were sold for home manufacture, and 720,000 bales were sent abroad. In the same year 1,262,060 bales of American cotton were imported, of which only 197,000 bales were re-exported and more than a million were retained. The present embarrassed condition of the cotton manufacture is almost entirely due to a continuous rise in the price of the raw material. It is probable that we should scarcely hear of a glut in the market if cotton could be got sufficiently cheap for Manchester to clothe all mankind in cotton fabrics. The ideal of a Lancashire spinner is American cotton at sixpence a pound. Mr. Somers was told in North Carolina that 15 cents a pound at the gin is the lowest price at which cotton can be produced, as 15 cents now go in the United States. According to the report from Texas quoted above, the spinner's ideal of sixpence is just about what it costs to pro duce it in the best cotton-producing county of that State; and last year's crop, though it brought 12 cents a pound, was, owing to an exceptionally bad yield, sold at about twothirds of the cost of production.' In looking over the reports of last year's crop, we find it continually stated that the acreage planted had decreased without any decrease in the yield; the largely increased area planted this year is therefore all the more hopeful as a sign of the restoration of prosperity. A bale of cotton weighs five hundred pounds, and many experiments have proved that it is possible to raise from one to two and even to four bales an acre. Yet the average production is only half a bale to the acre; and last year Travis County, Texas, reported an average yield of not more than forty pounds of lint to the acre;' Johnson County, Arkansas, reported an average of 175 pounds; while Uvalde County, Texas, reported 333 pounds of lint to the acre. 6 The average Yet yield over eleven States was only 160 pounds the acre. even in last year's chequered crop most encouraging results were attained in many parts. In Cherokee County, Georgia, it was reported: A few farmers make 400 pounds of lint to 'the acre, but many acres yield at the rate of 100 or 200 pounds only. Much larger results were obtained in the Carolinas. In Kershaw County, South Carolina, it is said in the report: Notwithstanding the drought, thorough culture and a liberal, not excessive, use of fertilisers, even on lands most susceptible to the drought, have secured 400, 500, and even 600 pounds of lint to the acre. Such treatment has 'been exceptional.' In Beaufort County, North Carolina, the report is that good farmers will average 300 or 400 pounds; general average, 200 pounds.' From Hartford County it is reported: Many farmers in this county will produce 1,000 pounds of seed cotton per acre.' One thousand pounds of seed cotton is about equivalent to from 300 to 400 pounds of lint; and it must be remembered that this produce was raised in the most unfavourable season there has been for thirty years. The first effort of the cotton-growers is, therefore, to increase their yield by improving their systems of culture; and the diminished size of estates has greatly promoted this effort. An extensive experiment was made last year in the introduction of Egyptian cotton; but of four-and-twenty reports from various parts of the South only two or three were favourable. It requires rather a longer season than the American climate will give it. The experiment is regarded as having failed, though in one or two exceptional counties it showed sufficient promise to be tried again this year. An attempt was made to grow Chinese cotton in Harrison County, Indiana; but it failed. Some experiments in the growth of cotton in Merced County,. California, proved so successful, that the California Cotton Growers' Association has bought 20,000 acres of land near Bakersfield, Kern County, which will be planted with cotton this year. The yield last year was 375 pounds of ginned cotton to the acre; and it was believed that had the crop been irrigated, or had there been anything like an average rainfall, 750 pounds to the acre would have been raised. Mr. Somers points out that loss is sustained by the bad ginning of the cotton, and by the absence of any means on the plantations of compressing the bales. As the cotton arrives at the seaport the bulk is three times what it is when it leaves the port; and there would be considerable saving in packing material were the compression done where the bale is first packed. Another saving will be made when the planter is no longer under any necessity of mortgaging his crop. Firms in New York send down agents who sell goods at a profit of from 100 to 200 per cent. to the more needy class of farmers and planters, and advance cash at high interest on a mortgage of the cotton crop. A single firm in New York is said to make half a million dollars a year by this business. The necessity of sending the cotton to New York or to some other port, and selling it there to exporters, is being superseded by a system of through bills of lading. When Mr. Somers was at Memphis, in Tennessee, he found that cotton could be sent through to Liverpool at seven-eighths of a penny a pound for freight and carriage, and three-quarters per cent. for insurance, for the whole distance. An English merchant or spinner may, therefore, buy his cotton direct from the grower or the grower's agent in Memphis and get it delivered at Liverpool at less than a penny a pound more than the grower received for it. If even now it can be grown for 12 cents a pound, may we not say that, with improved culture, larger yield, developed means of carriage, and all the savings and improvements we have indicated, it may even yet be delivered in Liverpool at the ideal price of the Lancashire spinner? The prospect of a larger production of cotton in the South, and of something very nearly approaching its old monopoly of the English market, may at least be said to lie open before us. The South has every natural advantage in its favour. Its disadvantages are chiefly political; but being political they are capable of removal, and are actually being removed.. When the war was over, it left the whole mass of Southern society tossing and seething like the sea after a storm. The negroes were wild in their new freedom, half believing that the social order had been inverted, and that it was their turn to own and rule. The white population were enraged at their defeat, and doubly angry because the North was resolved to push its victory home by conferring the franchise on the blacks. In this political and social struggle which succeeded to the war, the country suffered almost as much as it did in the actual conflict of arms. It was justly boasted that there were no proscriptions, no exiles, no executions after the suppression of one of the greatest rebellions in history; but there were at least most extensive and vindictive disfranchisements. A Congress in which the Southern States were denied representation enfranchised the freedmen and disfranchised their masters. Seven years have passed since the rebellion was suppressed, but a large portion of the white population of the eleven rebellious States is suffering the penalty of rebellion in the loss of political rights. The consequence of this disfranchisement has been that the leadership of the enfranchised freedmen has fallen intothe hands of carpet-baggers '-political adventurers from the Northern States who go south, not as permanent residents, but as mere seekers of fortune. In nearly every Southern State these adventurers have succeeded in getting into office by securing the negro vote. They control the local legisla-tures, and enrich themselves out of the State funds. In all the rebel States except Virginia and Tennessee the State debts have greatly increased since the war.. Alabama owed five million dollars in 1866; it owes twenty-four millions in 1872.. North Carolina was reconstructed' in 1868. Its debt was then twenty-four millions, ten millions more than it had been in 1860; its debt is now thirty-four millions. A Mississippi. planter told a Committee of Congress that it took his whole crop of cotton last year to pay his taxes. In Kershaw County, S. Carolina, with a population of 11,000, tax executions were issued in 3,600 cases. It is officially stated that in two years nearly a million and a quarter dollars have been paid out of the State treasury, for which no vouchers can be found; while the expenditure on offices and salaries,' which was 123,800 dollars in 1860, had become 581,640 dollars in 1871. A minority report of a Committee of Congress which has been inquiring into the condition of the South states that at this moment the disbursements of the South Carolina treasury exceed the ap-propriations by 170,683 dollars. The coloured The coloured representatives, who form a large majority of the House of Representatives in the State though they are a minority in the Senate, are repre 6 |