276 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



In the Southwest, however, no attention was given to this subject 

 until some years after the war, and even in the Eastern states 

 the proportion of fertihzed land was insignificant. 



The failure of the cotton planter to use fertilizers he did not 

 atone for by adopting any other measures for the prevention of 

 soil exhaustion. Rotation of crops was almost unknown at the 

 South where the one-field system of cultivation had come down 

 from colonial days. The one great object was to raise cotton, 

 and the land was planted in this crop for a succession of years, 

 until it refused longer to bring forth a remunerative yield and was 

 then "turned out" to grow up in briars, sassafras and scrub 

 pines. " A purchaser looking for land, if he found a field without 

 a stump, considered that fact prima facie evidence that it was 

 worn out." 



The suitableness of cotton for slave labor and the high prices 

 which this staple often brought on the market stimulated the 

 planters to raise cotton almost exclusively, and to raise it on lands 

 which were better suited to other crops. The high prices of 

 provisions compelled many of the planters, especially in the 

 Eastern states, to alternate corn with cotton, thus making a two- 

 field system of cultivation. But such a change was of little value 

 in preventing the wearing out of the lands, for it violated the first 

 principles of rotation introduced into agricultural science by the 

 old three-field system of cultivation, which prescribed that crops 

 of the same nature should not be planted in succession, but that 

 a winter crop should succeed a summer crop, with the land lying 

 fallow the third year. Both Indian corn and cotton were summer 

 crops, were cultivated in the same manner, and although their 

 chemical analysis was imperfect, seemed to draw the same ingre- 

 dients from the soil. Yet as late as i860 this was the only 

 regular rotation pursued on any large scale in the cotton belt. 



Drainage and various systems of sub-soiling were measures 

 often recommended for deferring, if not preventing, the exhaustion 

 of the soil. The Tullian or Lois Weeden system, which combined 

 fallowing with sub-soiling, was for some time a theme much 

 discussed by " theoretical " agriculturists, but not many " practi- 

 cal " farmers had heard of it, much less made use of it. Deep 



