140 COTTON CULTURE. 



sections, where the better plan can be adopted at the first, 

 some such arrangement is earnestly recommended. 



The plan of acting by association in the ginning 

 and manufacture of plain fabrics from the crop of each 

 neighborhood, will be found especially suited to the small 

 producer, the farmer, who, by his own labor and that of 

 liis children, plants and harvests ten or fifteen bales of 

 cotton each year. It enables him to enter upon the busi- 

 ness of cotton growing with as small an outlay as will 

 enable him to engage in the cultivation of potatoes, or 

 onions, or hops. He needs no gin or gin-house, nothing 

 but a yoke of oxen with which to haul his seed cotton to 

 the factory, where one bale will make cloth enough for his 

 family for a year, and the balance will be ginned, classed, 

 packed, pressed and covered, hooped and branded, with as 

 much care and thoroughness as the five hundred bales of 

 his opulent neighbor, and thus goes to market in a much 

 better condition and with greater probabilities of com- 

 manding a just price. 



The only difficulty to be overcome in order to the es- 

 tablishment of an effective and adequate system of manu- 

 factures for the South, is that of population. Operatives 

 are wanting, and not only so, the class from ichich opera- 

 tives are produced. The inhabitants of the cotton States 

 prefer agriculture to any other pursuit; and while the 

 population is so sparse that in most neighborhoods there 

 are thirty acres of land to every person, no considerable 

 number of the original stock will be, by any social neces- 

 sity, driven from the soil into the mills. 



For this reason, nothing but a large immigration of 

 people, not wedded to the culture of the soil, will enable 

 the South to do more than manufacture her own cloths. 

 The outlay and the enterprise to enable her to do this, 

 are so moderate, that the immense advantages to be se- 

 cured by such a course must be forced upon the attention 



