domestic animals fill an important part cannot 

 be questioned, either in the deep prairies of Illi- 

 nois or the rich bottoms of the Missouri valley. 



We are in a transit'on period. The influence 

 of Western lands has modified Eastern agricult- 

 ure, levied upon its best exemplars, discouraged 

 the routine plodders who could not change their 

 crops or their system, and driven the energetic 

 to higher culture and cropping less subject to 

 Western competition. In the future there is to 

 be a higher price for Eastern lands, more money 

 and labor and profit in working them, and a class 

 of farmers who shall combine with hand-work 

 more of head-work. 



In further consideration of mathematics ap- 

 plied to our agriculture, let us briefly consider 

 the peculiar status of 



THE SOUTHERN INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM. 



Statistics teach the cotton grower that an in- 

 crease of a million bales may diminish the value 

 of the crop by forty million dollars, [t decides 

 in the negative the question whether ten states 

 can get rich on a production which averages 

 only $25 to $30 for each inhabitant in gross, and 

 less than $5 in net profit to each. The one-idea 

 rule is bad enough in farming ; but it matters 

 less that one's eggs are all in one basket, than that 

 his basket carries eggs enough to purchase bread 

 for his family. To enrich the cotton region, the 

 simple necessity exists for farm production of 

 at least five times the possible income from the 

 whole cotton crop. With industry, diversity, 

 and a soil fertilized with brains, there is now 

 labor enough easily to realize such a result. 

 When tradition, routine and overseeing yield 

 control to science, machinery and efficient labor, 

 it will be accomplished. The energy wasted in 

 producing twelve hundred thousand additional 

 bales of cotton, which are not only given away, 

 but actually diminish the value of the remain- 

 der by $45,000,000 as in 1070, is worthy of a higher 

 reward. Rightly directed, as in manufacturing 

 a quantity equal to that thrown away, it would 

 have doubled the money returns of the cotton 

 Industry. 



It should be a statistical lesson of easy ap- 

 plication, that the crop of 1875, nearly equaling 

 that of 1860, and the largest of recent years, 

 bears the lowest price and aggregates the small- 

 est value of any since that date. Should the 

 lesson not be fully learned ? let the planters pon- 

 der a problem in proportion. If a crop of two 

 million bales in 1865 is forty-three cents per 

 pound, and one of four and a half millions in 

 1875 brings only twelve cents, what will be the 

 price of seven million bales in 1885 ? 



Statistics have thoroughly exploded the idea 

 of abject inter-independence, by which one sec- 

 tion was to grow nothing but cotton, another 

 corn exclusively, and a third only pumpkins and 

 potatoes, while an army of transporters and a 

 legion of traders should eat and drink up and 

 wear out agricultural production in transits 

 and so promote good fellowship and illustrate 



the freedom and thriftiness of trade and the 

 long suffering of the producing Granger I 



The South has taken one side of this question; 

 California the other. The South is old, Cali- 

 fornia is young ; but the census estimates of 

 rural earnings per man is $266 for the land of 

 cotton, and $1042 for the land of gold. Of this 

 $266, cotton in 1869 yielded $118 to each man en- 

 gaged in agriculture in the Cotton States. The 

 occidental shore was far away, beyond a high 

 and rocky barrier, and self-possession compelled 

 self-feeding; the large proportion of workers 

 engaged in mining created profitable markets, 

 and ambitious thrift demanded further produc- 

 tion for exportation, which became a surplus 

 for saving, not a fund to be transformed into 

 " hog and hominy" and eaten in advance I In- 

 stead of expected semi-starvation while flour 

 was floating around the Horn, five times the 

 requisite home supply can be shipped to the 

 starving of Europe ; wines are forwarded by 

 car loads to New York, are there slightly modi- 

 fled to imitate the color and flavor of foreign 

 vintages, and sold at a marvelous advance un- 

 der European names ; and fruits and wool and 

 other exports increase the hoard of the hus- 

 bandman of the Pacific coast. 



California has imported little, except to satis- 

 fy the lavish extravagance of the rich, and has 

 sent much of her rural production abroad. She 

 has sought out and utilized her resources more 

 actively and perse veringly than any other state, 

 and has illustrated strikingly the benefits which 

 result from a practical union of the several 

 productive industries. The South, on the con- 

 trary, with every variety of soil and climate, 

 has discouraged variety in agricultural produc- 

 tion, neglected ores like those of Pennsylvania, 

 coals equal to the beds of Ohio, water-power 

 unsurpassed in New England. She has spurned 

 the lavished gifts of God and the skill and labor 

 of man, while courting the selfish advances of 

 foreign trade, and hopelessly seeking riches by 

 swapping cotton for everything spontaneously 

 produced by nature or laboriously wrought by 

 human skill. Had her skies been less genial, 

 her clouds less wonderfully propitious, and her 

 soil a little unkind, famine and bankruptcy 

 would long since have claimed a country wed- 

 ded to a false system of economy and rural prac- 

 tice. 



There are signs that a new day is dawning; 

 with self-dependence, home markets, more 

 labor better directed, and profitable use found 

 for every mineral, tree and plant, as well as 

 every human capacity, a new El Dorado will 

 appear to compete with the golden West I 



In this criticism upon so exclusive devotion to 

 a single specialty of an industry followed to 

 the exclusion of all others, let me not be mis- 

 understood. Nowhere else in our country are 

 the intelligence and culture of the couimuniry 

 so generally employed in agriculture. No 

 other farmers can so successfully cultivate 

 their favorite staple. Nowhere is agricultural 



