PATRIOTIC SOUTHERN GOVERNORS. 49 



Daring the same year Gov. Collier, of Alabama, iu his address 

 before the Legislature, said: &quot;We are exhausting our lands 

 without an effort to reclaim them. Alabama grows cotton in 

 abundance, at a profit below the statute rate of interest, while 

 she yields to the manufacturer in Europe or New England, ex 

 clusive of the cost of transporting the raw material, a profit ex 

 ceeding her own of at least two hundred per cent. The North 

 ern States are growing richer, while Alabama, with her delightful 

 climate and her varied resources, is growing poorer; because, 

 instead of bringing the loom to the cotton, we are sending our 

 cotton to the loom. It is a mistake to suppose that the white 

 man is disinclined to labor at the South, on account of the cli 

 mate, or among a different and subordinate class of laborers; 

 the trouble is that labor is not remunerative or sufficiently 

 diversified.&quot; 



An address to the planters of Georgia, by one-of her patriots, 

 sets forth the same facts in even stronger terms: &quot;If we intend 

 to recover our former prosperity, and preserve even the present 

 value of our lands, we must not only understand our present 

 condition, but what it is likely to be in the future. The lands 

 of the Southern States, taken as a whole, including that portion 

 of the Mississippi valley, properly southern, when first settled 

 were more valuable, considering climate, soil, their extent, and 

 that of their sea-coast, than those of any other country. To 

 speak within bounds, they would produce, (with bad tillage,) 

 thirty bushels of Indian corn, and eight or ten hundred pounds 

 of seed cotton to the acre; less than half a century has reduced 

 their productiveness, in the older states, to twelve bushels of 

 corn, and three or four hundred pounds of cotton. Continue the 

 same destructive system, judge of the future by the effects of 

 the past, and our progress to ruin will be accelerated, until we 

 are compelled to abandon the country. But it may be said, 

 and is said by the planter, * I will continue to make cotton, I 

 will move to Arkansas or Texas. Shall we delude ourselves by 

 resorting to this merely temporary expedient ? For in truth it is 

 no remedy; it increases for a time the productiveness of cotton, 

 and by so much the quantity of worn-out lands. Its temporary 

 benefits to the emigrant are at the expense of the Old State. 

 The time is coming with- alarming rapidity when we can neither 

 raise corn nor cotton.&quot; 



Upon the settlement of Georgia the culture of silk was coii- 



