SOUTHERN AGRICULTURE. 249 



a certain reserve capital beyond the necessities of each day's living. 

 To save one dollar is better than to earn ten. An indispensable pre- 

 requisite to the progress of any people is their learning, by self-denial, 

 to save from this year's consumption something of this year's product. 

 Those farmers who learned this lesson have emerged to a greater or 

 less degree from the shackles of the usurious lien system, and in many 

 instances what formerly went in 80 per cent, interest to the advancing 

 merchant is now drawing 4- per cent, in the savings bank. 



Some explanation is necessary of the southern people's continuing 

 a system so bad. It is favored by a large class who could, by proper 

 exertions, live without it, but whose indolence deters them from the 

 supreme effort which would assure their ultimate prosperity; and by 

 a still larger class, generally tenants, whose unfitness to manage farms 

 would require them to become hired laborers if they could not get sup- 

 plies in advance under the lien law. Thus the system is an evil in 

 three ways : it puts land under the management of earth butchers 

 who destroy the natural resources of the country and reduce its pro- 

 duction of wealth; it leads men capable of better into a system of 

 indolence, destroys their credit and self-respect, and robs them of in- 

 terest in their lifework; and lastly, it proves a terrible master to the 

 man who has once fallen into its subtle, tightening embrace, and who 

 desires independence and progress. 



Systems of Farm Tenure. 



The development of farm tenures in the south has been from simple 

 to complex. Before the war the system of ownership was dominant; 

 but within that there were two classes — owners who attended to their 

 estates and owners who committed them to salaried managers. Mana- 

 gers, once so common, now operate less than one in a hundred farms 

 in the south — a smaller proportion than in any other section of the 

 union. A southern farmer who is sufficiently trustworthy to have 

 extensive lands committed to his care will give his employer no rest 

 until he consents to sell ; or failing in that direction, he buys some old 

 plantation whose proprietor family has either become extinct or moved 

 away in their itching for town life. 



The impoverishment of the large ■ planters and the disorganization 

 of the labor force by the war of secession necessitated large plantations 

 being broken up into units sufficiently small to be operated on a limited 

 capital and with a minimum of laborers. Between 1868 and 1873 in 

 Georgia, 32,824 small farms were thus created, and the same process 

 was in operation throughout the south. Thus the immediate tendency 

 of the war was to the distribution of the land in small tracts into more 

 hands; and in this was cause for gratulation; for not only did it 

 open immense new possibilities of social progress and industrial in- 



