THE PIEDMONT REGION. 157 



pounds of lint cotton, worth one hundred dollars, for the rent of tliirty 

 acres of land. This would be three dollars and thirty-three cents rental 

 per acre, whitdi is the interest at seven per cent, on a capital of forty-seven 

 dollars and fifty cents. Taking seven per cent, as the standard rate of 

 interest, this may be taken as the intrinsic value at present of the arable 

 lands of this region. As, however, only twenty-eight per cent, of the 

 lands are under the plow, this amounts only to an average minimum 

 valuation of all the land tilled and untilled at thirteen dollars and thirty 

 cents per acre. As stated in the returns of the 10th United States Census, 

 which may be considered as fairly up to the actual average market values, 

 the lands with all farm improvements are put at an average of four dol- 

 lars and eighty-seven cents an acre. At this valuation, placed upon them 

 by their owners, these lands are paying dividends not less than twenty- 

 eight per cent, per annum, not taking into account that more than two- 

 thirds of these values are wholly unemployed, and that the remaining 

 one-third are operated mainly by the poorest and most ignorant class of 

 the community, where want of means alone would prevent them from 

 obtaining such returns as good culture would give. If the artificial ab- 

 surdities, inherited from the dark ages and feudalism, which enslave land 

 even under this free government, and burden its transmission from one 

 owner to another, could be abolished, if titles to this species of property 

 could be made commercial j^aper, and as convertible as the titles to prop- 

 erty in railroads and factories are through the medium of bonds and 

 stocks, such paradoxes as the above would be impossible, and that funda- 

 mental value, held to be the source of all others, land would be free to 

 furnish its full quota towards suj^plying human wants and assisting in 

 human progress. 



TILLAGE AND IMPROVEMENT. 



The usual depth of tillage is four inches on the land side of the furrow. 

 In Abbeville, Spartanburg, and portions of Chester, it is generally only 

 three inches. In parts of Fairfield it is only two inches, but in some 

 parts of Chester it is six inches to eight inches. 



The draft employed is almost always one horse ; in a very few in- 

 stances two horses are used. 



Subsoiling has only been practiced on a small scale, chiefly as an ex- 

 periment, generally with excellent results. 



Fall plowing is very little practiced ; it is opposed to what is known as 

 the " David Dickson method of culture," which is the prevalent one, the 

 opinion being, that lands broken up in the fall become tightly packed by 

 the winter rains, an evil not counterbalanced by the disintegrating in- 



