SOUTHERN AGRICULTURE, 1790-1860 295 



farmer, however, provided he had already secured means to pur- 

 chase one slave for cash. The possession of one slave seemed to 

 be a guarantee that the owner would be able to pay for a second 

 one. The desire to increase slave property was a frequent cause of 

 the planter running in debt. " The majority of planters would 

 always run in debt to the extent of their credit for negroes, what- 

 ever was asked for them, without making any calculation of the 

 reasonable prospect of their being able to pay their debts. When 

 any one made a good crop, he would always expect that his next 

 one would be better, and make purchases in advance upon such 

 expectation. When they were dunned, they would attribute their 

 inability to pay to accidental short crops, and always were going 

 ahead risking everything in confidence that another year of luck 

 would favor them and a big crop make all right." In addition to 

 their slaves, it was customary for a large part of the planters to 

 buy on credit the provisions and clothing for the negroes and the 

 tools and stock needed on the plantation. The factors at the port 

 towns where the cotton was sold were usually the money lenders, 

 although sometimes the merchants of New York made advances 

 on the growing crops. The merchants in the Southern cities sold 

 their goods on credit, charging necessarily much higher prices 

 than when they sold for cash. Even then the risks were so great 

 that in 1855 the Southern Commercial Convention recommended 

 the chambers of commerce and commission merchants of the 

 Southern and Southwestern cities, " to adopt such a system of 

 laws and regulations as will put a stop to the dangerous practice 

 heretofore existing of making advances to planters in anticipation 

 of their crops a practice entirely at variance with everything like 

 safety in business transactions and tending directly to establish the 

 relations of master and slave be'tween the merchant and planter by 

 bringing the latter into the most abject and servile bondage " ; and 

 they also recommended " the legislatures of the Southern and 

 Southwestern states to pass laws making it a penitentiary offense 

 for the planters to ask of the merchants to make such pecuniary 

 advances." Very little seems to be known concerning the rates 

 of interest or discount on loans made to the cotton planters pre- 

 vious to the war. Olmsted was told that farming land in the 



