I 12 



vested it all goes to the storekeeper, and the farmer is a 

 little in debt beside. 



In time he mortgages his farm and eventually the store- 

 keeper gains possession and some of them become owners 

 of immense tracts of land in this way. 



Before tlic war it was much the same way, but when the 

 farmer got in debt, he would sell a slave to save further 

 indebtedness and save the farm. The usual crop of cotton 

 to the acre is about half a bale or 250 pounds; from three 

 to five dollars worth of fertilizer is applied to the acre, and 

 a slack process of ploughing and hoeing gone through with. 

 By doubling the amount of fertilizer per acre they could 

 more than double their crop. 



The cotton grows ordinarily about eighteen or twenty 

 inches in height, but with more fertilizer and better culture 

 would grow to three or four feet. The houses of many of 

 the farmers are mere hovels of logs with the chincks plas- 

 tered with mud. 



A revolution is destined to be worked in the use of fer- 

 tilizer for cotton through the utilization of steel slag and 

 crushed cotton seed. The slag is rich in phosphoric acid 

 and is ground to a fine meal for use, while the cotton seed 

 hulls contain a very powerful concentrated potash. Cotton 

 seed was formerly a waste but an oil is now obtained from 

 it that easily passes for olive oil and is also used for the 

 adulteration of lard, while the pressed and ground hulls 

 yield us our cotton seed meal. The soil is of great fertility. 

 The speaker had seen one hundred bushels of shelled corn 

 raised to the acre in one place, though ten to twenty bushels 

 is more often the crop. The speaker met one man that 

 owned a nursery in Georgia and the growths of some of tlie 

 stocks were remarkable. The growth of one year from the 

 bud of a pear was eight feet in height and one iach in 

 diameter; enormous fruit and hay crops can be raised, and 

 the price of milk is double what it is here. The outlook 

 for southern agriculture is good, and the local market is 

 rapidly extending. 



