SOUTHERN AGRICULTURE NEEDS FARM ANIMALS 43 



planters should produce nearly everything that 

 they and their slaves required, because they were 

 generally far removed from centers of population, 

 railroads had not been built, and there was little 

 or no opportunity for extensive importation of food- 

 stuffs and feed for their live stock. Every well- 

 managed plantation was a principality of its own 

 where everything the inhabitants ate, drank or 

 wore was produced. The slaves even made shoes 

 and hats. If a planter desired to build a house, he 

 manufactured his own brick, and the construction 

 was done by his slaves, under his supervision. 



The war put an end to this independent condi- 

 tion for all time and drove the southern farmers to 

 a one-crop basis, at the same time developing a 

 credit system which has effectually succeeded ever 

 since in keeping the South upon this one-crop foun- 

 dation. For 40 years the southern planter has pur- 

 chased from the North and West nearly all his 

 corn, which he could easily produce at one-quarter 

 the cost. He has purchased all his flour at $6 per 

 barrel which he could produce upon his own land 

 for $2; all his meat at 10 cents a pound, which he 

 could raise for 2 or 3 cents, and nearly all of the 

 thousands of mules necessary to his operations 

 have been brought from the North at $200 a head, 

 when he could just as well have raised them for $75. 



The one-crop idea has been responsible for all 

 this purchase of the necessaries of life, while at the 

 same time everything the southern farmers pro- 

 duced was shipped away in the form of tobacco, or 

 cotton to the mills and factories of the North and 

 of Europe. In all these 40 years the southern 

 farmer, as a class, has annually shipped away 

 thousands of tons of the raw material produced 

 upon his land and has returned little or nothing 



