SOUTHERN AGRICULTURE, 1790-1860 287 



bales for market. Those among them who had any ambition to 

 advance in the world purchased a slave as soon as they were able. 

 With one slave secured, it was easy to purchase another on credit. 



Yet even with this poor grade of white labor, a considerable 

 quantity of cotton was produced for market, and something is to 

 be said for it if it could afford to raise cotton on lands on which 

 slave labor was not profitable. Even Mr. Russell recognized that 

 slave labor was only suited to the rich lands, and that in the pine 

 barrens, under the small farming system, free white labor had the 

 advantage. For, in spite of the competition of the large planters, 

 it was by the cultivation of cotton that these small farmers made 

 their profits. 



But the best example of the advantages of free labor in the 

 cotton fields, the only example, in fact, which should be taken to 

 fairly compare the two systems, was the cultivation of cotton by the 

 German settlers around New Braunfels, on the plains of Texas. 

 Mr. Russell failed to take account of this, probably because he did 

 not believe that Texas was destined to become a great cotton- 

 producing region. This comparison between free and slave labor 

 is eminently fair to slavery, for the two systems here competed 

 on virgin soil, on which slave labor was always employed with its 

 maximum advantage. The small farms worked by the whites were 

 under many disadvantages, due to larger proportional expenses for 

 fencing, for farm implements and animals, and for ginning. The 

 small farmer was also obliged to sell his cotton through middle- 

 men, while the larger planter dealt directly with the exporter. 



Notwithstanding these disadvantages the Germans prospered in 

 the cultivation of cotton, and although they were only a mere hand- 

 ful in number, they were able to send ten thousand bales of cotton 

 to market in a single year. Their fields were cleaner picked and 

 the workers showed more skill and intelligence at their work than 

 the slaves who had been reared in the cotton field. The cotton 

 which they sent to market was also better cleaned and baled and 

 was worth from one to two cents more per pound than the cotton 

 cleaned by slave labor. Their methods of cultivation, their lands 

 and farm improvements and their standard of living were far 

 better than those of their wealthy slave-owning neighbors. 



