52 AGRICULTURE IN THE UNITED STATES. 



value of the laborer and the land. For, with increase in value, 

 division of the land naturally follows. Great plantations would 

 become small ones, each of which would yield more than is now 

 yielded by the whole. Small farms would come, cultivated by 

 negro tenants, who step by step are becoming free, while their 

 masters are becoming rich.&quot; 



But this peaceful solution was not to be. To the blighting 

 effects of a mistaken policy, was added the scourge and desola 

 tion of war! All honor to the noble spirits, north and south, 

 who labored with their might to hold a united country to the 

 pursuits of peace; and, failing in this, waited for the cloud to 

 pass, ready to rebuild the waste places, and lay the foundations 

 of an everlasting commonwealth. In this glorious work the 

 Grange is to-day the most efficient helper. The South is of 

 vast extent and resources. Hard as it is to restore land with 

 out animals, and hard as it is to obtain forage upon land that is 

 thin and poor, &quot; there is life in the old land yet;&quot; its hills are 

 seamed with iron and coal; it has gold and lead, limestone and 

 salt. Above all it has children, than whom none are more no 

 ble; with great memories of a brilliant past, and everything to 

 hope for in the future. 



Louisiana, whose sugar industry was her strength, who has 

 suffered so much from the war, is still enduring an almost total 

 eclipse of productive energy. The want of capital, and the 

 want of confidence, are serious obstacles, to which the want of 

 labor may be added. Her late slave population forsook the 

 country for the towns and cities; the planters were forced to 

 employ imported Chinese laborers in their place. Add to this 

 the wasteful system of manufacture of the cane sugar which 

 M. Boucherau believes to result in the actual burning up of a 

 hundred millions of sugar annually, and we can realize the 

 relations of social order to progress, in any direction. The 

 acreage of sugar production is now small not more than one 

 hundred and fifty thousand acres; Louisiana might supply the 

 whole United States. Her condition is one which every State 

 in the Union is interested in improving, especially those to 

 whom she offers facilities for building up a vast interior com 

 merce. 



Texas, the largest State in area, is yet small enough in pop 

 ulation to offer a camping-ground for half the discontented na 

 tions of Europe. Lands as good as the sun shines upon may 



