The Relation of Wool Growing to the Cotton Crop. 31 



which may be pastured in winter. The native crab grass, which everywhere 

 springs up in the stubble after the small grains have been harvested, and the 

 Japan clover rapidly taking possession of uncultivated places in South Caro- 

 lina and other states, are highly relished and a good pasture for sheep, while 

 the Bermuda grass and other luxuriant and strong growths, long considered 

 the pests of the plantation, have come to be highly appreciated by the best cul- 

 tivators of the South. Of the Bermuda grass, which though not a winter 

 grass is the best of all Southern grasses, Dr. Little the State Geologist of 

 Georgia says : 



"When the value of Bermuda grass is appreciated by farmers, and the thin and waste por- 

 tion of their farms are clothed with it, which seems to have been intended especially for sheep, 

 Georgia will sustain a sheep to every acre of territory, and 37,000,000 of sheep would be worth to 

 their owners in the aggregate $37,000,000, net, per annum, nearly double the present gross 

 value of the cotton crop of the state." 



Mr. C. W. Howard, himself a practical farmer of Georgia, and other writers, 

 have declared the fitness of the South for the successful cultivation of valuable 

 grasses ; though, as in all countries, there are portions of the South where grass 

 will not grow. By aid of winter grasses it is perfectly practicable throughout 

 a large portion of the South to raise sheep without other cost than interest on 

 the land, and the value of the salt. 



Dismissing, as we may safely do at this point, the general food question in 

 Southern sheep raising, as thus being too strongly established to be disputed, 

 we pass to the most important of agricultural questions now being presented 

 in the South, and by her own leading minds, 



THE RELATION OF WOOL GROWING TO THE COTTON CROP, 



which promises, in the language of another, " to enthrone Queen Wool beside 

 King Cotton." It is not necessary to reassert the ground frequently taken and 

 most strongly by Southern men, that wool growing at the South is far more 

 profitable than cotton culture, and involves far less labor, though it calls for 

 unremitting attention. Many, indeed, of the most intelligent men of the South 

 believe that the exclusive cultivation of cotton has been a scourge, instead 

 of a blessing, to their country ; that in one state, Georgia, with a crop over 

 500,000 bales of cotton (worth, at 15 cents a pound, $75 per bale), its agri- 

 cultural population, as a whole, were poorer at the end than at the begin- 

 ning of the year ; that labor on a cotton plantation where a fall crop is planted, 

 is without intermission and that it is excessive in the quantity required, often 

 exceeding in cost the whole salable value of the plantation. 

 Says Mr. Howard of Georgia, before quoted : 



" More than thirty years ago, the writer, walking with a gentleman of far-reaching mind, and 

 observing the gullied and excoriated condition of the soil near Milledgeville, inquired : ' What 

 is to restore its fertility to the worn out portion of Georgia ?' The answer was promptly given : 

 ' Sheep and Bermuda grass.' There was profound wisdom in the reply. A large portion of old 

 Georgia must become a sheep-walk, before it can be restored to fertility, and the land-owners 

 realize the full benefits of their land." 



" Mr. Eobert C. Humber, of Putnam County, in Middle Georgia, keeps 

 one hundred and thirty-eight sheep, of the cross between the merino and the 

 common sheep. He says they cost nothing, except the salt they eat ; while 

 they pay one hundred per cent, on the investment, in mutton, lambs and wool. 

 They yield an average of three pounds of wool per head, which he sells at the 

 very low price of twenty-five cents, less than the market price. It costs 

 him nothing, except the shearing. His sheep range on Bermuda grass, old 

 fields in summer, and the plantation at large, embracing the fields from which 

 crops have been gathered, and the cane bottoms in winter," 



