16 ADDEESS TO THE FAEMEES OF TEXAS. 



or bogs should hesitate to have them surveyed by competent engineers 

 and the best means of drying them ascertained and reported. 

 Knowledge will almost inevitably lead to practical, decisive action 

 with regard to these nurseries of fever, these magazines of disease 

 and death. 



Bear with a few suggestions xipon a standing topic of debate 

 among Southern cultivators. 



I am not young, as you see ; yet I cannot remember a time when 

 the South did not affirm and deplore an excessive addiction of her 

 people to Cotton. That eminent scholar and statesman, Hugh S. 

 Legare, alluded to it as a venerable grievance, thirty-odd years ago. 

 Beforq as well as since, every one remonstrated with every one 

 against the fatuity which impelled Southrons to plant so much 

 Cotton ; exhorted all to retrench and reform ; and then slid away to 

 plant a few more acres than ever before. For generations, it was 

 reiterated as an axiom that Cotton culture depended on Slavery ; 

 yet Slavery is dead, and we produced nearly One Million tons of 

 Cotton in 1870 — more than in any former year, with the excep- 

 tions of 1859 and 1860. Yet, in this year of grace 1871, we have 

 the old cry from millions of throats — " Plant less (Jotton ! " — and 

 I presume with the old result. The army-worm, the boll-worm, 

 may diminish the Cotton-crop ; expostidation, I judge, will not. 

 I know no more striking illustration of what St. Pavil terms " the 

 foolishness of preaching" than this incessant yet fruitless clamor 

 against growing so much Cotton. 



Do\ibtless, the remonstrants are i"ight, as remonstrants are apt 

 to be. But, after two generations of incessant deprecation, the 

 passion for cotton-planting seems as intense and pervading as ever. 

 The owner of a thousand ai*able acres, after hearing all that is to be 

 said against it, plants almost exclusively Cotton. The poorest negro, 

 who owns or rents a dozen acres, puts in his field of Cotton, and 

 takes his chance for bread. He has endured less preaching on the 

 subject than his old master ; but, had he been lectured from infancy 

 on the madness of cotton-planting, he would have planted all the 

 same. 



And this for a most obvious reason. Cotton is Money, and 

 Money is Power. Cotton is of such moderate bulk in proportion 

 to its value that it bears transportation far better than Wheat, or 

 Corn, or Fruit, or Vegetables. It endures tropic suns and arctic 

 frosts without injury ; it neither molds, nor rots, nor rusts, nor 



