274 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



a very simple order. Machinery was not used at all in the cultiva- 

 tion of Southern crops. The tools employed were usually the work 

 of the neighborhood blacksmith, or were made on the plantation, 

 " in a style which was the excess of bungling." Such were the 

 "scooter" or "bull tongue," a strip of four-inch bar iron, pointed 

 and bent, used for opening the furrow in which the seed was 

 sown ; the " sweep," an implement having two wide-cutting 

 blades forming two sides of a triangle, and used for cleaning the 

 grass or weeds from the rows; and the "scraper" already de- 

 scribed, used for covering the furrow in which the seed had been 

 sown. These tools, together with the clumsy all-iron breaking 

 plows and turning plows, and the hoe, " the rudest, the least 

 effective and the most exhaustive to strength and patience of any 

 tool largely used," were about the only implements that were in 

 use on the Southern plantations before the war. Even " cotton 

 planters " were not widely used. Seabrook reports that as late as 

 1844 the plow was unknown to the growers of the long-staple 

 cotton, except " in the breaking up of the soil, and as an assist- 

 ant in forming the ridge." The slight expenditure for agricul- 

 tural implements is illustrated by the statement of De Bow that 

 on a South Carolina plantation of 4200 acres, 2700 of which 

 were under cultivation, and where 254 slaves were employed, the 

 capital invested in all plantation tools and implements, including 

 wagons, was only equal to $ 1 262, and on an Alabama plantation 

 of 1 100 acres, with 120 slaves, the implements were valued at $500. 

 Much was written by Southern agriculturists and editors pre- 

 vious to i860 on the subject of fertilizers for cotton. Neverthe- 

 less, the use of this artificial means for restoring fertility to the 

 soil was a very limited one. In 1808 Ramsay wrote of the South 

 Carolina planters as follows : " The art of manuring land is little 

 understood and less practiced. The bulk of the planters, relying 

 on the fertility of the soil, seldom planting any but what is good, 

 and changing land when it begins to fail for that which is fresh, 

 seldom give themselves the trouble to keep their fields in heart." 

 Although there were thousands of acres of pasture lands which 

 could have been utilized for raising stock or for raising hay to 

 feed the cattle in winter, although there were numerous beds of 



