THE TRUE COTTON REGION. 237 



THE TRUE COTTON REGION. 



To John S. Pkocner, Editor of The Farmers' Library : 



Sir : When I wrote the hasty article on the Culture of Cotton in South Caro- 

 lina and Eastern Georgia, for your July number, it Avas very far from ray inten- 

 tion to provoke a discussion of the Tariff, or to elicit a comparison between the 

 productive capacity of this reijion and the valleys of the Mississippi and Red 

 Rivers. Your correspondent X. Y. Z. in your September Journal has, however, 

 made issues with me on these topics, and I trust you will indulsje me in a few 

 words by way of reply. As the Tariff has been materially modified, and will 

 never again be increased, it is, perhaps, more a matter of curiosity than real in- 

 terest to'refer to its past provisions, and it would be a waste of your valuable 

 space to discuss them to any length. The amount and cost of clothing which 

 X. Y. Z. allows to a plantation of 50 hands I do not except to. But he has by no 

 means enumerated all the articles used on such a plantation that are subject to 

 duly, nor even the major part of them. He should have mentioned iron, and 

 manufactures of iron, which items alone cost me about as much as negro cloth- 

 ing. Cotton bagging, rope and twine cost fully as much more. Then ihere is 

 leather, used extensively for other purposes than shoes ; salt, sugar, molasses, 

 and many other articles, all of prime necessity, which were heavily taxed. I 

 will venture to say, if X. Y. Z. keeps an account of his plantation expenses, that 

 after deducting what he pays his overseer, his physician, and for his provisions 

 not raised at home, he will find a balance of $,20 to $25 of cash expended for 

 each hand in articles subject to duty. And it so happens that the duties imposed 

 on these articles are generally the very heaviest in the old seven in the new 

 Tariff. I hazard nothing in saying that, under the act of 1842, they averaged 50 

 per cent, ad valorem ; and I could prove it, if necessary, by a reference to the 

 items. It follows, then, that even at the lowest rate of $2U per hand expended 

 for dutiable articles, the amount of tax directly imposed bv that Tariff was $6 66 

 on each hand, or $333 on 50 hands, instead of $109 20 ; or $4,329,000 on the 

 650,000 hands which I presume are engaged in cotton culture; or $11,984,000 

 on the 1,800,000 working slaves of the South, supposing the rest to consume no 

 more than those on cotton plantations. If the six millions of free persons of all 

 ages and classes in the South consumed no more each than the effective slave 

 on a cotton plantation, the tax on their consumption under the Tariff of 1842 was 

 $39,960,000, and the aggregate tax on the whole population of the Slave States, 

 white and black, was $51,944,000, estimated at these exceedingly moderate rates. 

 And this enormous tax was paid by them as consumers only. The additional 

 loss to them as produces and exporters I will not undertake to estimate. Nor 

 will I make a point of it in this communication, since some political economists 

 (and I presume X. Y. Z. thinks with them) deny that there is any loss in ex- 

 changing oar productions for articles subject to heavy duty, rather than for those 

 not subject to duty. I will only say, en passant, that the Tariff men think dif- 

 ferently, whatever they may say, since they refused to allow any duty to be im- 

 posed on tea and coffee, for which articles almost the entire amount of manufac- 

 tured cottons exported from the United States are exchanged in China, Brazil, 

 and a few other places. I do not, by any means, intend to say that the tax thus 

 paid by the South goes into the Treasury of the Union. Far from it. Perhaps 

 one-fifth may go there. The other four-fifths go to protect " home industry.^" 

 Not that " home industry," indeed, which goes to make and improve a "home" 

 on the broad and fertile lands of our heaven-favored country, which shall be a 

 perpetual fixture on our soil, and never-failing source of wealth, strength and 

 happiness to our republican people ; but the " home industry " that labors within 

 walls reared and sustained by capital, which is here to-day and there to-mor- 

 row, and belongs to anv country and to any institutions that will bid highest 

 for it. 



But X. Y. Z. contrasts the productive capacity of our region with his own. — 



(477) 



