473 



SOUTHERN AGEICULTURE. 



The Commissioner of Agriculture, accompanied by the statistician of 

 the Department, visited the city of Augusta, Georgia, on the hist week 

 of October, in response to invitations to represent the Department of 

 Agriculture at the convention called as a "Congress of the Cotton 

 States," and to observe the progress of agriculture as indicated by the 

 agricultural exhibition held at Augusta at the same time. 



The convention was largely attended by delegates from societies of 

 all the Southern States ; it was organized by the selection of Hon. H. 

 V. Johnson, of Georgia, as president ; speeches were made upon the 

 necessity of a wider range of i)roduction ; committees were appointed 

 for practical work ad interim ; and Selma, Alabama, was designated as 

 the place for the next annual meeting. 



The exhibition was quite successful, in material and attendance — the 

 stock department alone being comparatively meager in quantity and 

 quality. 



Addresses were made by the president of the Augusta society. Dr. 

 Tutt; by Judge James Lyons, of Richmond, Virginia; by Mr. Comp- 

 ton, of Maryland ; and by Hon. Horace Caprou, Commissioner of Agri- 

 culture. The latter was as follows : 



Mr. Pkesident, and Ladies and Gentlemen : It is with pleasure that I have ac- 

 cepted your iuYitation to be present and to cooperate with you for the deveh)pment of 

 your industry. In the exhibition of the Cotton States Association, as witnessed yes- 

 terday, I see an earnest of the spirit of progress whicli I hope may animate the practi- 

 cal eiforts of that association and of the congress here assembled. In the admirable 

 address of Dr. Tutt, your president, I was delighted to see embodied the iirinciples 

 which underlie true industrial progress, and I heartily commend the practical sugges- 

 tions of the orator of the day, Mr. Compton, looking toward larger production and 

 fewer acres. 



I thank you for this opportunity of presenting, very briefly, a few suggestions con- 

 cerning the immediate pressing agricultural needs of the South. You will permit me 

 to express my convictions plainly, in a spirit of utmost kindness and sympathy. You 

 knew well, and have boasted long, the advantages and resources of the " cotton States ;" 

 the great variety and productive capacity of your soils ; a delightful climate, so A'aried 

 by elevation and configuration of surface as to be adapted alike to the fruits and fibers 

 of the tropics and all the products of the temperate zones ; a wealth of precious and 

 useful metals sufficient to supply for generations the material for the artisans of the 

 world ; an amount of water-power wonderful to contemplate, and the largest supply 

 of timber and wood to be found within the United States. Yet you are constantly and 

 rapidly reducing the fertility of those soils, and turning out farm after farm to swell 

 the area of the hundred million acres of exhausted lands. You ignore the marvelous 

 capabilities of your sunny climate, in neglecting the myriad forms of X)roductiou to 

 which elevation, latitude, situation, soils, and various natural peculiarities con- 

 tribute so munificently. Your minerals are hidden in the bowels of the earth, waiting 

 to respond to the call of enterprise and the magic touch of labor; your water-yjower, 

 in its silent majesty or resistless energy, goes "on forever "in its thousaud lines of 

 march to the sea, occasionally reminding you, as at Richmond or in the Shenandoah, 

 of its mighty capabilities which you have so long permitted to run to waste. 



Your forests are solitudes, unblest with the hum of busy and enriching labor, while 

 your very hoe-handles are often brought from distant States, and your finest timber is 

 remorselessly girdled that your lauds may be cleared by that slow woodman, grim 

 decay. 



You possess a tract of country fit for a mighty empire. It is actually a wilderness, 

 almost a solitude. Its railroads, tiu-npikes, farm improvements, scientific husbandry, 

 manufactories, model school-houses, and churches are yet mainly in the future. All 

 this work is before you. It is true the country is comparatively new and very wide, 

 and the Avorkers are few ; but parts of it have been settled for two hundred years, and 

 yet scrubby pine forests grow where the settlers grew their supply of corn and tobacco. 

 Has improvement been commensurate with your resources and iu proportion to the 

 numbers of the population ; and has pox)ulation kept pace with other less favored por- 

 tions of the country, or made such advances as might reasonably have been expected 

 with these immense resources ? The truth comjjels me to say «o; your consciousness 



