REPORT OF THE STATISTICIAN. 116 



With an assured market, constantly enlarging with the augmenting 

 requirements of extending civilization, the American cultivator is by 

 no means uniformly happy. Protesting that the demand could never 

 be supplied under existing demoralization of labor, he has seen the 

 price decline 37 per cent, by an increased product in a single year of 38 

 per cent. Declaring that 3,000,000 bales could never again be produced, 

 4,500,000 appear before his wonder at the rapid recuperation has grown 

 old. He has learned, if an apt scholar, that 10,000,000 can be attained 

 within ten years, if such a quantity shall be needed for the world's con- 

 sumption. He should know that, when restorative culture shall take 

 the place of exhaustive cropping so long in vogue, such a crop can 

 easily be had upon an area not greatly larger than that now cultivated. 



As no one can doubt the ability of this country to supply all that may 

 be needed for a period running far into the future, the important point 

 of profitable culture is to be settled. For ten years past it has been the 

 constant endeavor of this Department to aid the thinking, progressive 

 cultivators of cotton in their endeavor to break up the spoliating prac- 

 tice of exclusive and continuous growing of " white crops," of corn and 

 cotton. Not that cotton in itself is necessarily an exhausting crop, if its 

 stalk and seed are returned to the soil; but in a climate with sunlight 

 so intense, with the clean culture essential to the growth of cotton, 

 there is waste by the decomposition of organic matters sufficient in a 

 single season to feed several crops. Pease in light soils, red clover in 

 clays, or lucerne in deep, rich, well-drained lands, would supply essential 

 parts of a rotation that would give a wealth of animal products and a 

 nearly doubled yield of cotton, derived from animal manures, the green 

 manuring of vegetable decomposition, and the saving of much of the 

 serious waste of valuable humus in continuous clean culture. 



THE RECENT INVESTIOATION. 



Few are aware of the rapidity of the recuperation in cotton produc- 

 tion since the prostration of the war period. It is not generally known 

 that the aggregate product since 1865 exceeds that of a similar period 

 prior to 1861. If we include the crop of 1876, the excess of its produc- 

 tion in the period of twelve years, from 1849 to 1860 inclusive, over the 

 former period, is about 2,000,000 bales. 



Leaving out the large crop of last year, the statistics of which are not 

 yet complete, similar periods of eleven years make a comparison also 

 favoring the jDroduction of the later. The aggregate of the crop move- 

 ment of the former is 36,169,117 bales, or 15,869,176,615 pounds, averag- 

 ing 3,288,101 bales per annum, or 1,442,652,419 pounds. A similar state- 

 ment for 1865 to 1875, inclusive, reads, 36,331,682 bales, or 15,939,344,833 

 pounds, averaging 3,302,871 bales per annum, or 1,449,031,348 pounds. 

 An average increase of nearly 15,000 per annum. The great crop of 

 1859 was but 2 per cent, larger than that of 1875. Three crops since 

 the war are each larger than any prior to it, with the above single excep- 

 tion ', these are, in order of size, 1875, 1870, 1873. The crop of 1872 was 

 larger than that of 1858, and every crop preceding the latter is sur- 

 passed by every crop of the seven past years, with one exception, 1871. 

 This is a remarkable result, which is a surprise to planters themselves, 

 and an indication of what can be accomplished in the future when the 

 cotton area shall be an essential part of a rotation, and fertilizers shaH 

 be not the least important product of the plantation, and two bales are 

 made to grow where one grew before, as can easily be accomplished oa 

 many acres of present slovenly cultivation. 



