No. 1. 



Bread Stuffs — A Contrast. 



17 



From the Southern Cultivator. 

 Bread-stuffs—A Contrast. 



The knowledge of a disease is said to be lialf a cure. 

 We cheerfully send abroad the followiiifr plain etate- 

 nients, with a hope that wherever they may be really 

 applicable, they maj' prove advantageous. — Ed. 



Any one who has occasion to vi-sit the 

 Northern States, observes, on returning- 

 homeward, a tact that startles him, in the 

 difference presented to the eye, in the two 

 sections of country. There, he sees an ap- 

 pearance of comfort; men of very moderate 

 means live in neat houses; those of greater 

 wealth in splendid ones; there seems to be 

 a place for everything, and everything is in 

 its place. Here, the picture is altogether 

 different; people seem to regard their places 

 of abode as necessary evils, and pay as little 

 attention to making them either neat or 

 comfortable as possible. They seem to es- 

 teem a house and its fi.xtures like an Arab 

 does his tont, as something that is to be oc- 

 cupied for only a brief moment, and any 

 pains and expense in adapting it to com- 

 fortable living, as an unnecessary waste of 

 time and money. As to ornamenting the 

 grounds around it, with trees and shrubbery, 

 such an idea does not seem to have occurred 

 to the occupant. 



There, if you have occasion to stop at a 

 house in the country, you find at the table 

 food prepared properly; and butter, milk, and 

 seasonable vegetables are set before you. 

 Here, you have that perpetual dish — fried ba- 

 con, or pork, if it is winter, swimming in 

 grease, " and nothing else," except '* long 

 collards" and bread. The owner may have 

 his principal wealth in cattle, to the amount 

 of many hundred, as is the case in some 

 places, and if it is winter or spring, he has 

 not an ounce of butter to offer you, and 

 rarely even milk enough to put in your 

 coffee. 



Inquire the price of building a house there, 

 and the amount is small. Here, the cost is 

 so great, as to deter any one from building a 

 good one any where else than in a large 

 town. It would be thought extravagance 

 to entertain the idea in the country. 



There is a cause for this disparity in the 

 condition and appearance of these two sec- 

 tions of the same country. What is that 

 cause T This question has been often asked 

 in our presence, and the answer has always 

 involved some abstrusity wholly irrelevant 

 to the subject, in our view of the case. Are 

 we less intelligent than our neighbours? 

 Has a genial sun rendered us less capable 

 of the use of our mental faculties than they"! 

 This will hardly be admitted. The real 

 cause, from its very obviousness, seema to 



have been overlooked in searching after re- 

 mote ones. It is because they produce 

 bread and meat in abundance, and we do 

 not. That there are other auxiliary causes, 

 in the way of unequal revenue laws, &c., 

 which tend to raise one section and depress 

 another, we doubt not; but the radical cause 

 is the one we have stated. 



In order to see its effect readily, let us 

 suppose you have a house to build. You 

 must have lumber, brick and lime; a car- 

 penter is to be employed to build the house, 

 a bricklayer to make the chimnies and plas- 

 ter the walls. The sawyer asks you a price 

 for the lumber that appears high, when taken 

 in connection with tiie plenty and cheapness 

 of water power and pine timber, but he 

 solves the difficulty very soon, by telling 

 you the price he has to pay for corn, to sub- 

 sist himself, his hands, and his mules, which 

 haul the stocks to the mill and thd lumber 

 away from it. Each mule, purchased from 

 a Kentuckian, costs him Jij>75 or S80, aod 

 the corn to feed them costs him, to assume 

 the current rates in Macon at this date, 

 75 cents per bushel. It is easy to see the 

 effect of this on lumber. The same reasons 

 apply with the brick-maker and lime-burner, 

 precisely. Then go to the carpenter and 

 brick-layer, and tell them the price of build- 

 ing a house and a chimney, and of plaster- 

 ing at the North, and ask them why they 

 cannot afford to work at tlie same rates. 

 They will tell you that living is cheap at 

 the North, it is dear here. And you have a 

 solution of the whole mystery, and build 

 your house at twice the cost which would 

 be necessary, if you lived in a country where 

 provisions were plenty and cheap. 



But here the farmer turns upon us, and 

 asks, what is to become of me if I can get 

 but 25 cents for my cornl We answer, 

 that with an abundance of corn at that price, 

 and every thing else at a proportionate rate, 

 you will live more plentifully, more com- 

 fortably and independently in every respect; 

 yourself, and the whole face of the country 

 and its population, from the pettifogger to 

 the pig, inclusively, will be better off and 

 happier. What is the difference to the 

 farmer in dollars and cents, if he gets 25 

 cents for his corn, and can build a house for 

 8400, or if he gets 75 cents, and the house 

 costs him $1200] It is as broad as it is 

 long, so far as cost is concerned. But as to 

 his comfort and the general prosperity of 

 the country, there is a great difference. 



There is this essential difference in the 

 habits of a Northern and a Southern man. 

 The one, whether in Connecticut or in 

 Georgia, if he removes here permanently, 

 thinks in the first place of making himself, 



