THE OLD AND THE NEW. 15 



THE OLD AND THE NEW. 



[From an Address before the Union Society.] 



BY WASHINGTON GLADDEN. 



Between the agriculture of tlie Revolutionary period and 

 the agriculture of to-day, the difference was less marked, of 

 course, than that in the methods of communication ; for agri- 

 culture is the oldest of the arts, and many of its methods ad- 

 mit of little improvement. Still, if the farmer of that period 

 were to revisit the glimpses of the moon, he would see some 

 sights that would cause liim to open his eyes wide. He would 

 not find many new kinds of staples growing on our farms ; 

 for I believe, that, of those agricultural products reported as 

 staples in the last census, all but one, sorghum, was cultivated 

 in this country a hundred years ago. Some of the things that 

 are staples now were not, however, staples then ; cotton, for 

 example, which was raised, to some trifling extent, in gardens, 

 even here in New England, but which, on account of the 

 cost of preparing it for market by hand-labor, was not a 

 profitable crop. It was the invention of the cotton-gin in 

 1793, ten years after the close of the war, that led Cotton 

 forth from liis nook in the corner of the kitchen-garden, and 

 crowned him king. The story of this cotton-j^lant is one of 

 the surprises of the century. It was cotton that perpetuated 

 slavery, by furnishing a great commercial staple that could 

 be raised and prepared for market by ignorant and imbruted 

 labor. It was cotton, that, by wasting the land on which 

 it was planted year by year, made an extension of slave ter- 

 ritory necessary to the existence of the slave system. And 

 thus it was the edict of King Cotton that the North was 

 roused to resist, when the cry of " No more slave States ! " was 

 heard. That was the cry that sent Abraham Lincoln to the 



