Some Lessons in Geography 



•95 



some new fact is developed on this line. 

 Education never ends and never will. 



What have been the lessons yet to be 

 applied in the cotton states of America ? 

 They are these : The invention of the 

 cotton gin brought the curse of cotton 

 upon the old cotton states, perpetuating 

 slavery for nearly a century, when other- 

 wise its burden might have been peace- 

 fully removed by economic forces. It 

 has led to the devastation of the cotton 

 lands, maintained ignorance and illit- 

 eracy, retarded intellectual and indus- 

 trial progress down to even the last few 

 years. As I once said in a great meet- 

 ing in Georgia, " If the North, having 

 discovered that it was building up a 

 dangerous competition in the arts of 

 which it holds the control, should come 

 down with all its force upon the South 

 to put back the burden of slavery upon 

 you, you would fight longer and more 

 strenuously to keep it off than you ever 

 fought to maintain it, and you would 

 secure your own liberty and the emanci- 

 pation of every person, white or colored, 

 by force of arms, if that were necessary. ' ' 



Now, what have been the sequelae of 

 slavery ? As yet the masses of the cot- 

 ton-growers have little comprehension 

 of the conditions of climate and soil on 

 which they raise their crops. The 

 greatest progress has been made in the 

 Agricultural Department in making the 

 production of cotton an applied science, 

 but as yet it is not widely practiced. 

 When common sense and a small meas- 

 ure of intelligence shall be applied to 

 the existing cotton fields of the South, 

 the crop may be doubled without the 

 addition of a single acre to the area put 

 under the plow, and when the right 

 types of sheep are bred to meet the con- 

 ditions of the soil and the climates of 

 the upland cotton district on the Pied- 

 mont plateau and of the valleys among 

 the hilh, each section may be supplied 

 with its own specific breed, as every 

 county in England and Scotland now is. 

 The sheep folded and fed upon the par- 



tially exhausted cotton lands, the crop 

 will be doubled. Add the wool clip 

 and make that great Piedmont plateau 

 the center of the fine-wool production 

 of the world, as the cotton states have 

 become the center of the cotton pro- 

 duction of the world. 



Such is the picture which is brought 

 before my mind by your undertaking 

 to establish a national geographical so- 

 ciet}', and it is under this influence that 

 I have joined one more society, while 

 withdrawing from many others in which 

 I have heretofore been interested. 



One lesson I learned from this inves- 

 tigation, leading me to conclusions 

 which may not be so acceptable to read- 

 ers at the present time as they would 

 be if each master of any branch of in- 

 dustry would study for himself the 

 geography, geology, and climatology 

 on which his own branch of industry 

 rests. 



I learned certain principles of eco- 

 nomic science — a principle being ' ■ a rule 

 of action, a maxim, an admitted truth 

 requiring no further demonstration," 

 in that respect differing from a policy. 

 I learned to discriminate between the 

 principle of free trade and the policy of 

 protection in which I had been bred and 

 to which the very large majority of my 

 business associates then adhered, that 

 majority having been gradually changed 

 until the balance is nearly the other way, 

 even in the restricted lines of my asso- 

 ciates. 



I learned what I venture to state as 

 another principle of economic science, 

 namely, high wages in money or what 

 money will buy are the complement or 

 correlative of low cost of labor in the 

 unit of product in every branch of in- 

 dustry that has passed beyond that of 

 being a mere handicraft. In the handi- 

 crafts the rate of wages governs or cor- 

 responds to the cost of labor in the unit 

 of product, but in the arts to which 

 science, invention, and mechanism have 

 been applied the cost of labor in the 



