72 
THE SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
Sljc 0outliern €ulti«ator. 
AUGUSTA, GA. 
THURSDAY, MAY 1, 1845. 
Correspondents. 
It would not be a ver}" difficult task to make 
the Cultivator a scientific paper, filling it with 
the speculations of philosophy, and extracts from 
Chaptal, Davy, Liebig, Johnston, Boussingault, 
and others. But this is not what the country 
wants ju.st now. A paper so made up would not 
find many readers, simply because what would 
be offered to be read, would be too far remo- 
ved from the every day business of the planter. 
What we want now, is a plain account of the 
experiments of men of plain common sense. 
There are now but few persons engaged in till- 
ing the soil who do not believe that old processes 
may be varied with certain benefit to the crop 
and profit to its owner : and thus believing, they 
are very likely to make experiments of some 
sort or other, and note the results. When they 
meet their neighbors on public occasions, the.se 
experiments and their results are the subject of 
conversation, unless party politics should hap- 
pen to exclude every thing else. It would not 
be much trouble, of a long winter night, or a 
rainy day, to write out an account of these ex- 
periments for publication in the Cultivator. 
Now, this is just what we want; that our plan- 
ters shall enlarge the sphere of their conversa- 
tion, and besides talking with their immediate 
neighbors, shall talk through the pages of the 
Cultivator with men engaged in the same pur- 
suit, one hundred miles distant; that the plan- 
ter on the Savannah River shall talk and com- 
pare notes with the planter on the Chattahoochee, 
and he of the mountains with him of the sea 
coast, without leaving their own firesides. But, 
you say you can’t write. You can talk, though ; 
and all you have to do is to banish the idea so 
prevalent, that when you take pen in hand you 
must get on stilts, and go hunting big words in 
the Dictionary, wherewith to construct high 
sounding sentences: thus trying to write in a 
style and manner altogether diflferent from that 
you use when talking to your neighbor. Banish 
this notion altogether; take your pen, and put 
down on paper, just what you would say to your 
neighbor— Just as you would say it when speak- 
ing of your experiments, and you will then suc- 
ceed to a certainty. If there should be some 
errors in spelling and grammar, never mind 
that — we will take care to have every thing right 
in that respect. 
When the country shall have become deeply 
interested in the results of experiments thus de- 
tailed, then will be the time to bring forward the 
.science of the matter; then men will begin to 
be anxious to know the plain why and because 
of these results. Then we may venture to in- 
troduce a larger portion of philosophy into the 
pages of the Cultivator. But, for the present, 
tor the great mass of our readers, we w’ant just 
such articles as our paper of to-day contains, 
over the signatures of our correspondents ; these 
we can saiely recommend asspecimensof what 
planters should write about, and of the w'ay in 
which it should be %^ritlen. 
W hen we shall he able, with the Albany Cul. 
tivator, to boast of having three hundred corres- 
pondents, most of them practical, working plan- 
ters, and shall have such a subscription list as 
will warrant our incurring the expense neces- 
sary to make the Cultiv'ator, in other respects, 
what we wish it to be, we shall feel that we have 
not lived altogether in vain. 
Silk. 
We have received the specimens of domestic 
silk referred to in the letter of our correspondent, 
Mr. Cassidey, in another column. They are 
deposited in the store of Messrs. Newton & 
Lucas, Athens, for the inspection of those per- 
sons who take an interest in such matters. All 
who have seen them, pronounce them to be very 
beautiful. 
We have on hand, and shall insert soon, per- 
haps in our next number, “ A brief History of 
the Silk Culture in Georgia,” by the Rev. Wm. 
B. Stevens, of the University of Georgia. It is 
a very interesting account of the efforts of the 
Trustees to establish that culture in Georgia; 
and having the advantage of being compiled 
from the records of the Colony, every statement 
in it may be received with implicit confidence 
in its accuracy. 
The Agricultural Press. 
Since our last publication, we have received 
the first number of the “Arkansas Farmer,” 
published, monthly, away over yonder at Little 
Rock, by J. Gish, and edited by an association 
of practical planters. It is a very creditable 
publication, indeed, to all the parties connected 
with the getting of it up ; and if the planters of 
that region will only read it carefully, they can- 
not fail to be very largely benefitted by it. 
Then there is the “ Plow Boy,” a brisk, live- 
ly, good humored little fellow that “comes 
whistling o’er the lea” from Cincinnati. He 
proposes to give you a lecture, monthly, on all 
that appertains to the life, occupation, and well- 
being of a farmer, and asks you only twenty- 
five cents a year lor it. 
And from Cleveland, Ohio, we have the first 
number of “The Western Reserve Magazine 
of Agriculture and Horticulture,” a very neat 
and well filled octavo of 24 pages, monthly, and 
pictures to boot, at one dollar a year, by F. R. 
Elliott. 
The Albany Cultivator acknowledges the re- 
ceipt of thirteen thousand subscribers from 1st 
January to 1st April — just one thousand a week, 
all paying too in advance. This is creditable 
to Northern farmers, and shows clearly that they 
perfectly understand the secret of keeping the 
people of other States who don’t read tributary 
to them, When will Southern planters act 
w'ith so close a regard to their own interest, as to 
extend the like amount of patronage on the 
Southern Cultivator 1 
More Rasping. 
The two pictures in the last number of the 
Cultivator, of Southern planters and their eco- 
nomy, so admirably drawn, resembled the origi- 
nals so exactly, that we are sure our readers 
would like to have more of them. According- 
ly, we have selected another, not a whit inferior 
in point cf accuracy, to the other two. See the 
extract below, from Mr. Gregg’s essay. 
It would be a very interesting matter to ascer- 
tain exactly what has become of the proceeds of 
the cotton crop of Georgia, since it first became 
an article of cultivation here, or even for the 
jast ten years. Suppose that, for the period last 
named, the average crop has been two hundred 
and fifty thousand bales, of three hundred and 
fifty pounds each, and that the average price has 
been ten cents per pound. This would give a 
gross income, for the ten years, of eighty seven 
and an half millions of dollars. Now, what has 
become of this immense amount of wealth, 
created by the culture of cotton in a single 
State 1 It is certainly not to be found among 
ourselves. We must look for it in Kentucky 
and Tennessee, New York, Boston, Lowell, &c. 
Indeed, over the whole of the Northern States 
there may be found decisive evidences of its 
lavish exnenditure. And it would be a very 
curious matter to ascertain exactly how' much 
of it has gone W’'est, how' much North and East, 
and hew very little of it is where it ought to be, 
that is, among ourselves, who created it. 
In this matter of absenteeism, by which so 
large a portion of the product of Southern labor 
is transferred to the North, without a substantial 
equivalent, if there w'ere any reciprocity, be- 
tween the North and the South, the result would 
not be so ruinous to us. But though we go 
North yearly, and spend our money there pro- 
fusely, who ever heard of Northern people com- 
ing South and doing the same thing among us. 
Oh, no— they are too keen for that. Even those 
who are compelled to come South during the 
winter, on account of health, often contrive by 
engaging in some business or other, to return in 
spring better off than when they left home. 
Their plan is to stay at home, unless compelled 
to seek a milder climate in winter; or if they do 
travel for pleasure, to go any where but to the 
South: thus taking care to keep up the drain 
upon our resources, getting from us all they 
can, both by their own efforts and by the system 
of national legislation they have forced upon us, 
and keeping all they get. Nor are they to be 
blamed for all this. They are but obeying the 
dictates of what has always been human nature. 
They are only doing what people have done in 
all ages of the world, since the words “proper- 
ty” and “money” were first known, and the 
things signified by them, understood. It is wm 
of the South, who have been such simpletons 
as to allow ourselves to be fleeced in this man- 
ner, w'ho ought to be scourged from folly. Mr. 
Gregg says : 
“One would not suppose that the South was 
laboring under embarrassment.s, if he were to 
