SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
43 
acres continually increasing and the production diminish- 
ing. These facts demonstrate what it is unpleasant to be- 
lieve, and yet more unpleasant to say, that the farmers of 
Massachusetts, of that period, could not as a class be called 
good farmers. Good culture benefits land — bad culture 
exhausts it. 
“During the ten years to which our statistics refer, the 
culture of the State was bad. Land reclaimed from ihe 
water and the forest was not used to increase production, 
but its native fertility was required to supply those crops 
which our exhausted and abused fields refused to furnish. 
The process of our agriculture was that of a corporation 
which uses its capital in dividends, or of a merchant who 
lives beyond his means, and it tended to the same result — 
bankruptcy. The idea that ci’opping land necessarily 
exhausts it is an erroneous one, and it is, moreover, a re- 
flection upon the Creator, who has provided for the sup- 
port of his children, and not for their extinction by the ex- 
haustion of the powers of nature. 
“I beg, in concluding this part of my address, to pre- 
sent an aggregate of the wastes to which I have already 
called your attention ; 
1st. The annual income from the growth of 
wood on 360,855 acres of land more than 
was necessary to the crop of 1850 S 540,000 
■2d, Loss of labor in cultivating this excess of 
land 1,000,000 
3d. Loss of land per year by exhausting cul- 
ture 1,581,572 
Total $3,121,572 
It has often been a theme of reproach to Southern agri- 
cultural labor, that it impoverishes the soil on which it 
operates; but we doubt whether the same number of 
operatives south of Mason and Dixon’s line damage the 
land over $3, 121 ,.572 a year. After carefully studying 
this important question for years in both the slaveholding 
and non-slaveholding States, we became satisfied that the 
relations subsisting between employers and employed in 
any quarter of the Union, had little or nothing to do with 
it. Being mainly a scientific problem, the popular under- 
standing, both North and South, will fail to solve it, and 
act as wisdom dictates, so long as the scientific principles 
of agriculture are disregarded in the common school edu- 
cation of the sons and daughters of American farmers. 
“ As the twig is bent the tree is inclined.” 
One looks in vain into our most cherished institutions 
of learning for a single text book, designed to teach the 
true balance of Organic Nature, between cultivated plants 
and cultivated animals, and between both and the land 
that supports them. Nothing about the starving of plants 
and animals by the exhaustion of fertility and the killing 
of land, commands the patronage of Congress and oi 
State Legislatures. Not one of these bodies has ever given 
a dollar, to our knowledge, to found an agricultural school 
of any kind. L, 
SYSTEM AND ROTATION IN COTTON CTTLTirRE. 
The object of this article is to show that some such 
system as this, producing the same results, is essential 
to the renovation of our already exhausted fields — 
to retain and improve the productive quality of our 
new lands, and to secure at the same time the rais 
ingat home of sufficient provisions, with planiutiim teams, 
enabling us entirely within ourselves to carry fiirward the 
prosperous production of our cotton. In every other sec- 
tion of this country. North, East, and West, tlie proceeds 
of the productive industry of the people, in the grand ag- 
gregate, are retained at home, while we, tlie planters (tr 
the South, producing annually, from a single one of our 
crops, $150,000,000, pay out the grand aggregate to oth- 
ers for bread, bacon and mules, all of which we may, under 
a proper system of plantation economy, grow at home, 
and thus we may retain at home also this large sum of 
gold, the substance of our fields, to be expended in home 
improvements. 
It is an entirely fallacious political economy that sup- 
poses for a moment, that we are to, make so much cotton 
annually, at the sacrifice of our personal and national in- 
terest; audit is as equally fallacious to argue, as many 
do, that it is our true policy to buy bread, bacon and mules 
of Olliers — though we may be able to raise them — that 
they may be induced to buy our cotton. There are other 
arguments for this ruinous policy too frivolous to detain, 
you with. 
Now, I insist upon it boldly, that this whole barter poli'» 
cy is at fault. It is one of dependence and slavishness. 
With a climate and soil peculiarly adapted to the produc- 
tion of cotton, our country is also equally favorable to the 
production of all the necessary cereals, and as remarkably 
favorable to the perfect development of the animal econ- 
omy, in fine horses, fine active mules, good milch cattle, 
superior sheep, and fat hogs, and for fruit of every variety 
(not tropical) it is eminently superior. If this condition 
of things be fact, and T assert it to be such, why is it that 
we find so many wealthy cotton planters, whose riches 
consist entirely of their slaves and worn out plantations'? 
I desii e to show', and I shall prove it in practice, that a 
judiciously arranged system of plantation economy will 
secure upon the plantation sufficient grain, bacon, and 
mules to supply its wants ; and a cotton crop, unencum- 
bered by these absolute necessaries, that will realize a 
handsome dividend upon the capital and labor of the 
planter. In this cycle of rotation and shift of crops that 
I practice, there is afforded, in the first place, every neces- 
sary means for improving the fertility of the land. An- 
other striking feature about it, and not the least recom- 
mendatory of it, is the amount of rich pasturage that it af- 
fords for stock, I regard this as among its highest re- 
commendations. Stock cannot be raised successfully or 
advantageously without pasturage in addition to well filled 
cribs of grain. This crop should always belaid by early, 
and peas, the common cow-pea, or some of its varieties, 
sowed broadcast over the land and ploughed or harrowed 
in, which adds very materially to the value of the pastur- 
age, as well as improves the condition of the land. It is 
argued by planters generally that grazing land injures it 
more than the stock are benefitted by the jiasturage. The 
argument is too often illegitimate. The land is first 
ruined by the one-crop practice of cotton, cotton, &c., 
till the vegetable mould and inorganic salts of the surface 
and plowed soil are exhausted, it is then turned out to 
pasture. It soon runs together, of course, produces little 
grass, an 1 sustains poor stock. The difficulty is not so 
much ill the injury which the hungry stock did m grazing 
die pasture, as the ruinous system of culture that prevent- 
ed any pasture at all. Land under an improving system 
of culture is not thus affected. Bich land, upon which wa- 
ter is not permitted to run, whether naturally rich or made- 
so by art, furnishes a wdlderness of grazing, when turned 
to pastu'-age, which not only greatly improves the condi- 
tion of the stock, but retains a sufficiency of refused vege- 
table matter, which after the plow, keeps up the loose 
and friable condition of the land. It is in this view of the 
subject, that we see this a self sustaining system of plant- 
ation economy. Undei' tliis system, or any one like it, 
furnisliing the amount and value of par.: ,age that it 
does, the raising and kecphig of stock, mules, hogs, and 
cal tie necessary to suppi; the wants of 'he plantation, 
become a source of alisolute profit — the land is made rich 
and continues improving in the production of the ele- 
mi-nts of fertility — the compost ma..ure is made valuable, 
liecause it is trod up and mixed with the excrements of 
