26 



vrelopments ot God's will expressed in the works 

 of nature. 



It is from this usually conservative, contented 

 class, principally, that we hear now the cry of 

 reform. 



Why is this ? Is it due solely to maladministra- 

 tion and corruption in official circles ? Is it due to 

 defects in the financial system of the country? 

 Is it due to the failure of the general govern- 

 ment to afford by internal improvements proper 

 facilities for the cheap transportation of the 

 products of the farm and the mine to market ; 

 or is it due to a failure of individuals to realize 

 changes of circumstances which necessitate 

 changes of policy and practice which have not 

 been made, because of a reckless speculative 

 spirit engendered by the extreme fluctuations of 

 values resulting from the late civil war? It is 

 due, perhaps, in part to each one of these causes, 

 but mainly to misdirected individual enterprise, 

 speculative farming, and a ruinous credit system. 

 We are prone to look abroad for faults and errors 

 rather than to ourselves. 



It is useless to deny the fact that a general 

 want of thrift and consequent depression per- 

 vade the tillers of the soil in our country. They 

 are not accumulating money the balance is too 

 often on the wrong side of the sheet at the end 

 ot the year's labor. A scarcity of money is felt 

 even in the centres of trade. Its cause is dis- 

 cussed in the club, the Grange and on the street 

 corner. Its discussion has even invaded the 

 halls of the National Congress. Large leaks 

 have been discovered in high official quarters; 

 reckless expenditures of the peoples' money 

 have doubtless been made. The fostering care 

 of national and state goverments has not been 

 sufficiently devoted to the two nursing breasts of 

 the nation's wealth, agriculture and mining. 



There should be reform in all of these respects 

 these large leaks should be stopped, but that 

 will not remedy the evils which surround us. 

 The leaks on the farm must be stopped before 

 there can be any substantial prosperity for in- 

 dividual, state or nation. The farm must be 

 made more than self-sustaining the balance of 

 trade must be in its favor. 



To accomplish this, brains must control mus- 

 cle, and machinery be substituted for the latter 

 whenever practicable. Restless, speculative 

 farming must be abandoned for a more conser- 

 vative, frugal and cautious system conducted 

 upon a solid cash basis. 



Credit and high rates of interest have been 

 and are still the bane of Southern agriculture. 

 Left in 1865 with nothing but his land, the plant- 

 er was compelled to resort to the disastrous ex- 

 pedient of borrowing money at extortionate 

 rates of interest to defray the current expenses 

 of the farm. To meet the demands of his cred- 

 tors he devoted his attention to the production 

 of cotton as the most marketable product to the 

 neglect of supply crops. This necessitated a 

 repetition of the same system year after year, 

 which, with wasteful, unreliable and uncontrol- 

 able labor has been extremely difficult to discard. 

 Indeed, as long as our chief staple sold as high 

 as twenty cents per pound, some money was 

 made even under this unnatural system. As 

 cotton fell in price, the fallacy of the system of 

 purchasing supplies with which to make it, be- 

 came more and more apparent, and individuals 

 began to search more diligently for the " leaks 

 on the farm." 



The true magnitude of the leaks were not fully 

 realized until they were aggregated by the Geor- 

 gia State Department of Agriculture, which 

 commenced its investigations during the fall of 

 1874.. 



Taking Georgia as a representative of the Cot- 

 ton states, the facts developed there demon- 



strate the necessity of reform in that entire 

 section. From statistics collected in Georgia we 

 find that labor is forty per cent, less efficient than 

 it was fifteen years ago that the average farm 

 laborers devote only 4.7 days of each week to 

 their crops. This is substantiated by the facts of 

 cotton production since that period; notwith- 

 standing the natural increase in the laboring 

 population, and the extension of the cotton area 

 by the more extended use of commercial fertili- 

 zers, no more cotton is produced now than was 

 produced fifteen years ago. 



From partial railroad statistics collected last 

 year, it is estimated that the farmers of Georgia 

 purchased on a cash basis $39,434,013 worth of 

 farm supplies, exclusive of live stock, sugar, 

 coffee and dry goods from April 1st, 1874 to the 

 same date in 1875. 



They paid in interest on the supplies which 

 they purchased, four and a quarter millions of 

 dollars. They wasted in one year, 1875, by the 

 injudicious purchase and use of fertilizers, $2,- 

 176,998, by paying from fifty to seventy dollars 

 per ton for commercial fertilizers to be used 

 alone ; when an expenditure of ten dollars for 

 material necessary to make a ton of compost, 

 using home manures in combination with acid 

 phosphates would produce better results in pro- 

 duction of crops. That is fully attested by the 

 results of practical experiment and chemical 

 analysis. 



They have bought corn and oats at more than 

 twice the cost of raising them at home. They 

 have bought horses and mules at twice the cost 

 of raising them. All of these were bought for 

 what? Why to make cotton which brings on the 

 market what it cost to produce it. 



Was not reform necessary here, and was not 

 the individual farm the place to apply it? Never 

 in the history of any agricultural people has re - 

 form been more earnestly and vigorously applied 

 than by the farmers of Georgia to-day. The 

 leaks on the farm have been pointed out to them 

 and they are vigorously applying the remedies. 

 They are using every available means of making 

 their farms self-sustaining. They are cultivating 

 less area in cotton, but improving the prepara- 

 tion and cultivation of the soil and cheapening 

 fertilization. They have nearly doubled the oat 

 crop, and largely increased the area in corn. 

 They are giving more attention to the produc- 

 tion of clover, lucerne, the grasses and other for- 

 age crops, and are devoting more attention to 

 raising stock. In no state in the Union have 

 farmers advanced more rapidly in a knowledge 

 of the true principles of soil culture and fertili- 

 zation than have those of Georgia within the 

 last few years. Nowhere are they learning more 

 rapidly the application of science to agriculture. 

 Nowhere are they more determined to use wise- 

 ly the advantantages of soil and climate which 

 the God of Nature has so bountifully bestowed 

 upon them. 



Other Cotton States are not moving so rapidly 

 because they have not used the same instru- 

 mentalities for collecting and disseminating in- 

 formation among their farmers ; but they will 

 soon wheel into line and make cotton a surplus 

 crop, the proceeds of which may be devoted to 

 practical development and productive enter- 

 prise. 



The South must produce her supplies without 

 diminishing her cotton crop, leaving the surplus 

 grain of the West to swell our exports till com- 

 bined with our shipments of cotton and tobacco, 

 we shall regain our foreign commerce, turn the 

 balance of trade in our favor, stop the exporta- 

 tion of gold from our ports, and turning the tide 

 again in this direction bring prosperity and con- 

 tentment to all classes of our. people. 

 . Until cheaper transportation can be afforded, 

 more of the corn of the Northwest must be put 

 into the more compact form of meat, and the 

 unlimited water power of the South must, as it 

 inevitably will in a quarter of a century, be util- 



