18 AGRICULTURAL AND COMMERCIAL 



Since the year '39, the cotton crop is comparatively 

 stationary in quantity; and it is seen that the cotton 

 crop realized more in dollars for five years from '35 to 

 '40 than it has in the two following periods, that is 

 from '40 to '45, and from '45 to '50. Therefore, if the 

 population be taken at the period of '35 of the same eight 

 States, it will be found, while the amount of dollars re- 

 alizable has fallen off in the two last periods from the 

 first in the amounts of $100,723,040 and $25,324,400, 

 that the population has increased from 2,466,528 to 

 4,373,000 increase, 1,956,000 persons : wherefore, so 

 far as cotton goes, there has been a decline in the last 

 ten years of $126,047,440, compared with the former 

 five ; therefore the means that four persons enjoyed from 

 '35 to '40, has been diminished one-sixth by lowness of 

 price, and, on the other hand, they have to divide that 

 diminished means with three other persons ; and this de- 

 crease is in the UNITED STATES ONE GREAT STAPLE ! 

 This is a bad state of things ; and young people have 

 now little opening for their energy and abilities : and 

 young men must necessarily rush into every desperate 

 undertaking that holds out to them a.ny dim prospect of 

 support ; if not, to pass their best days in the miserable 

 professional look-out for a brief, a patient, or some official 

 employment, to afford them a poor pittance. 



Therefore, this all-important staple cotton admits 

 of no further immediate increase for the employment of 

 additional hands. Are they then to turn to rice cultiva- 

 tion ; that has receded both in quantity and in price 

 already ; or to sugar cultivation, that, too, will be found 

 very precarious, and it requires the best lands ? To 

 manufacturing, is it rational to advise some 22,000,000 



