SOUTHERN AGRICULTURE. 259 



used simply by young men desiring the shortest cut, and hence an 

 inferior preparation, to a professional career, and the real agricultural 

 interests of the state in question remain almost completely untouched. 

 The 'agricultural' college in which the student can pursue a course 

 largely non-agricultural is a monstrosity, but, unhapppily, not a 

 curiosity. 



Louisiana among southern states seems to have succeeded best in 

 agricultural education, though she lacks much of a complete system. 

 She has a number of schools distributed among sections of the state 

 differing in soil, climate, topography and latitude, in which nothing 

 but agricultural sciences and practical farm work are taught, and in 

 which the sons of millionaire sugar planters, along with all others, are 

 compelled to work, not to help pay their expenses, but in order to 

 learn farming. 



Diversification. 



To urge the uneducated farmer to diversify crops is to make de- 

 mands beyond his preparation. Tell him that it will render life more 

 interesting, and you are talking into his deaf ear; inform him that it 

 will preserve the fertility of the land, and he will not believe you; 

 point out that though the fruit and vegetable crop is only 2 per cent, of 

 the acreage, it is 8.3 per cent, of the value of all crops of the country; 

 and he will forget it ; remind him of the fact that his well-to-do neigh- 

 bor plants cereals extensively, raises hogs and has a fine flock of sheep, 

 and he will explain that his neighbor can do these things because he is 

 rich, and will stubbornly decline the theory that his neighbor is rich, 

 in part at least, because he does these things. Agricultural education 

 brings agricultural diversification as inevitably as general education 

 produces diversity of professions, and nothing else ever can secure it. 



Agricultural Credit. 



And lastly the southern farmer needs better facilities for obtaining 

 credit. 



Figures for the whole south are not at hand, but those for the 

 state of South Carolina indicate that banking capital is less abundant 

 now than before the war of secession, notwithstanding the rapid mul- 

 tiplication of banks all over the south during the last ten years. The 

 capital, surplus and circulation of banks in South Carolina to-day is 

 $11,802,584, of $8.81 per capita; whereas in 1861 these items for the 

 twenty banks then in existence aggregated $21,031,522, equaling $29.88 

 per capita; while in 1850 the per capita rate for the same items was 

 $32.73. The disreputable character of much ante-bellum banking 

 necessitates my stating that there was not a single bank failure in 

 South Carolina from the Eevolution to 1861; her bankers won the 

 commendation of the most exacting critics, and their notes passed 



