EVOLUTION OF THE COTTON SYSTEM 39 



cultural production and possesses the characteristics of 

 American extensive farming. Where lands exceed labor 

 supply large scale capitalistic agricultural production 

 may be found in the frontier cattle ranch with its hired 

 cow-hands. Later in the stage of development wheat farm- 

 ing emerges with its use of machinery and casual labor- 

 ers. Slavery and the plantation system differ from 

 serfdom and the manor system in that the slave labor 

 supply is more mobile. Not being attached by law and 

 custom to the land the slave was present with his master 

 in the march of the Cotton Kingdom westward. 



The elements of the plantation system are four: First 

 in order comes a land supply of large acreage of fertile 

 soil, cheap, level or rolling, and to some extent homo- 

 geneous in texture and topography. Prairie lands and 

 river bottoms are suitable for the plantation; there are 

 no records of its being applied to mountainous regions. 

 For such land a labor supply of low social status, docile, 

 and comparatively cheap is desired. In the third place 

 the management required is social as well as economic 

 supervision. And last, the products must be staples, 

 routine crops easily cultivated by set rules; cash crops 

 for which no problem of marketing exists. 



The South has furnished five such crops, routine in 

 production and staple in demand. "It would be hard to 

 over-estimate the predominance of the special crops in 

 the interest and industry of the southern community. 

 For good or for ill they have shaped its development from 

 the seventeenth to the twentieth century. Each character- 

 istic area had its own staple, and those districts which 

 had none were scorned by all typical southern men. The 

 several areas expanded and contracted in response to 



