346 TjRAxsACTioys of the American Institute. 



and turns to be a planter, always succeeds far better than tliose who 

 have been brought up professional planters. I well recollect, some 

 thirty -five years ago, on a voyage by steamer through the Sea Islands 

 from Charleston to Savannah, we were obliged to stop for the tide at 

 the plantation of Mr. Seabrook, at Edisto Island. Mr. Seabrook 

 invited the passengers to his elegant mansion. Among them were 

 a large number of planters. John Stonney, a merchant of Charles- 

 ton and a large planter, was among the number. The conversation 

 turned on the successful management of Sea Island cotton planta- 

 tions. The line was strongly drawn between the management of 

 men bred to plantation life, and merchants or business men when 

 retiring from business and becoming planters, and it was conceded bj 

 every planter that the most successful planters were business men 

 who retired from business to agricultural pursuits; that they brought 

 with them close observation ; with method kept accurate accounts 

 with their plantation business as they had done in their business 

 operations. Mr. Seabrook, although brought up with every advantage 

 that education, wealth, and plantation life could give him, remarked 

 that lie and all other planters had learned more from merchant planters 

 in the proper management of negroes, cultivation, and production of 

 a superior quality of Sea Island cotton than they had ever before 

 known ; that the improvement he had made from their example in 

 the quality of cotton raised on his plantation had placed it in the 

 market at 100 to 200 per cent greater value than the market price, 

 wdiich was at that time twenty -five to thirty cents per pound, while 

 he had refused seventy-five cents for his entire crop. Mr. Seabrook's 

 success was not an isolated case. Mr. Seabrook named a planter who 

 had sold his cotton at two dollars per pound. One of the passengers 

 in the party, who had just returned from Europe, said that he was in 

 the manufactory at Manchester when that cotton was used, and said 

 that the manufacturer told him that it was the most profitable cotton, 

 at that price, of any he had ever used ; that he could manufacture 

 fabrics from it of so fine a texture that they would pay him a larger 

 profit than any cotton of an inferior quality and corresponding price 

 as to quality. The same rule will almost universally apply to all 

 business men, who have had method and energy enough in their 

 business transactions to acquire fortunes, and retire not too bookish 

 and scientific for practical working men. They learn the proper use 

 and value of all fertilizers, use the most approved agricultural imple- 

 ments, keep them and all their farm stock well housed, not forgetting 



