SOUTHERfS CULTIVATOR. 
75 
the property of Georgia and South Carolina equally 
among the people of these States, excluding slaves, and 
each will have from two and half to three times more pro- 
perty than the people of the wealthy State of New lork by 
a similar division. 
In his late Report, the Secretary of the Treasury adds a 
fraction over 15 per cent, to the census valuation of 1850 
to obtain the present value of the real and personal pro 
perty of the several States, By this official estimate every 
man, woman and child in Georgia, exceeding servants 
for life, would have, an equal division, S'1,065. A similar 
division in South Carolina gives S 1,203. In Rhode Island 
which is the wealthiest, fcr capita., of the Northern States, 
a like division gives $'6-28. Massachusetts has 60G ; and 
New York about S400 ; or one-third as much as South 
Carolina. 
With such creditable and undeniable facts in their favor, 
should not South Carolina and Georgia be thankful to a 
good Providence, and content with the advantages which 
they now enjoy I The climate of New' It ork will not 
compare with that of the Cotton growing States for agri- 
cultural purposes; and the South still has ten times more 
land than laborers either black or white. Sagacious 
Southerners see the necessity of having more cultivators 
of the soil, and the only practical question is w'hether 
they shall be black or white, bond or free. 
Looking mainly to the laws of Nature for instruction 
and guidance, I venture to suggest that laborers of a tro- 
pical origin will ever be found best for the cultiv'ation of tro- 
pical plants grown in the strictly tropical “sunny South.” 
The fact should be borne in mind that the demand for these 
plants or their constituents increases much faster than popu- 
lation in Europe, and in all other parts of the world, and is 
likely to do so for one or two centuries at least. It should 
also be remembered that the Southern States contain over 
six hundred million acres of land, and after persons ot 
European extraction cultivate with tree labor all the 
ground they can be persuaded to cultivate, there will re- 
main Cotton, Rice and Sugar lands enough to give em- 
ployment to twenty million negroes. This fact indicates 
an agricultural power in the Southern Atlantic and Gulf 
States which no one has to my knowledge laid before the 
public. Time, however, will disclose the whole truth in 
reference alike to the Labor, the climate and the soil of 
the South. All that relates to its agriculture you will be 
expected to understand when you leave the University, so 
far as science and literature can inform you on the sub- 
ject. 
Here at Athens, although sufficiently elevated above 
the ocean to give us in part a Northern clim.ate, we are 
able to grow a crop of w'^inter wheat, and one of maize on 
the same land in the course of a year. Wheat and maize 
are the most valuable bread plants known ; and while our 
climate is so favorable as to bring both to full maturity, 
succession, in twelve months, that of England is too 
cold to mature corn in any part of the year, and barely 
suffices to ripen one crop of wheat. At an elevation ot 
1300 feet above the sea, wheat does not fully ripen in Great 
Britain. 
Georgia contains 58,000 square miles, or 37,120,000 
acres. Of these, the census of 1850 returns 6,378,479 as 
under improvement. Taking the permanent fertility of the 
land into consideration as well as immediate returns for 
Labor, there can be no question that better results would 
be obtained if our best skill, labor and other available 
means were concentrated on half the surface now gone 
over. In truth we have an agricultural force barely ade- 
quate to the proper cultivation of three million of our 
thirty-seven million acres This is one reason why our 
extraordinary advantages of cZiTTioic are so little appreci- 
ated both at home and abroad. Its agricultural capacity 
is about twice that of New England ; and the surplus 
fruits of our planting industry, over and above consump- 
tion, are probably four times larger tlian those of the 
farming industry of the most Northern States. Such is 
the dilTerence in climate, soil and markets, that an amount 
of labor v/hich in one place barely commands a comfort- 
able subsistence, in another, secures a foitune in addition 
to a good living. 
Regarded as a whole, the climate of Georgia is ad|mir- 
ably adapted to both white and colored laborers — to plant- 
ing and farming. There is ample room for the profitable 
employment of all kinds of agricultural industry; and it 
will unquestionably pay better at present than either com- 
mercial or manufacturing industry. N sparse population 
scattered over a million square miles need hardly under- 
take every branch of the labor carried on in den.sely po- 
pulated countries, and expect to excel in all. So long as 
land shall be in excess of occupants, the self multiplying 
power of agricultural plants and the animals will give to 
Southern tillage and stock husbandry, advantages more in- 
viting and valuable than any which are likely to be found 
in other branches of productive labor. Wlien the planter 
by putting one seed of corn into the ground gets two ears 
from it, and from one to two thousand seeds in return. 
Nature assists his Labor by the vital force in the parent 
seed, in a way and to a degree, without a parallel in any 
other department of the whole circle of industrial arts. 
Animal vitality is no less the ffiiend and laborer of the 
skilful husbandman. It is, however, rny duty to say now, 
and illustrate hereafter, that neither animal nor vegetable 
vitality confers upon agriculture, and through it upon 
mankind at large, a tithe of the benefits both will confer 
when Labor and Science are equally honored, fostered and 
understood by the American people. 
In these college halls you are learning from experience , 
something of the labor of science ; hereafter the science of 
labor will doubtless claim no inconsiderable share of your 
attention. It is indeed a profound aii.d interesting de- 
partment of knowledge, simple and common as human 
labor, whether physical or mental, appears to the feeble 
thinker. The most advanced science teaches man that he 
must labor in harmony with Nature, or her antagonism 
will, sooner or later, defeat his best laid schemes for the 
improper acquisition of food, raiment, wealth, or power. 
Is it consistent with the laws of Nature that the least cul- 
tivated Africans, as well as the more intelligent Asiatics 
and Europeans, shall be civilized by due personal efforts, 
and the 'proper instruction and care of civilized communi- 
ties. 
I know no other opposition to the industrial education 
of negroes by the cultivation of cotton, lice and sugar in 
this country, except that which attaches to, and arises 
from the apprentice system of planting. Great pains 
have been taken to prejudice the hundreds of thousands of 
European laborers who have recently emigrated to the 
United States, against the South as a field for the successful 
exercise of their skill and industy. This, and the com- 
mommon notion that a white man needs an umbrella 
over his head while working in a cotton field, to lessen 
the depressing influence of solar heat, are likely long to 
keep most Europeans from attempting to compete with 
negroes in the production of cotton and other tropical 
plants. Other branches of industry, and other kinds of 
agriculture, more European in character and associations, 
will hardly fail to command a preference, where the labor- 
er is free to gratify his taste, and tum his previously ac- 
quired agricultural knowledge to an immediate use and 
profit. Nor is the daily exposure from morning till night 
to the direct rays of a burning sun, while at work, very 
inviting to a white person born and raised in a Southern 
Atlantic or Gulf State. Hence, the never-ceasing de- 
mand for colored laborers in the large cotton growing dis- 
tricts. and their continuous migration from the tobacco 
