Vol. LXVIII No. 3098. 
NEW YORK, JUNE 12, 1909. 
WEEKLY, $1.00 PER YEAR. 
FARMING ON THE MISSISSIPPI DELTA. 
New Crops and Large Operations. 
As almost everyone knows, there exist in t he 
lower part of the great Mississippi Basin large areas 
of low-lying lands that were made from the accumu¬ 
lation of silt deposited by the great river in its an¬ 
nual inundations during ages past. Beginning with 
the confluence of the Ohio with the Mississippi these 
lands increase in ex¬ 
tent, widening out below 
Vicksburg into the great 
Yazoo Delta on the east¬ 
ern side and on the west 
the Mississippi Delta 
proper. This reaches to 
the Gulf of Mexico and 
into it, where now the 
greater proportion of the 
silt is forced to pass, by 
the artificial means that 
man has interposed, by 
building levees along 
the river from the hills 
of Missouri and Tennes¬ 
see to its mouth. Per¬ 
haps there is no body of 
land in the world that 
equals this Delta region 
for the extent of its 
richness and depth 
of soil, and certainly 
none excels it. A large 
part of the State of 
Louisiana and much of 
Mississippi is included 
in this rich alluvial 
delta. It has long been 
famous for its produc¬ 
tion of cotton, sugar 
cane and rice, and with¬ 
in the last ten years the 
production of rice has 
greatly increased and 
been extended into 
southern Texas. 
Cotton has been the 
main crop over the 
northern portion of this 
territory and to such a 
degree that nearly all 
other farm crops have 
been neglected. Even 
grain and forage, which 
might have been grown 
to good advantage on the 
plantations, along with 
cotton as the main 
money crop, have only 
received the most trif¬ 
ling notice from plant¬ 
ers They have bought 
corn, oats and hay by 
the boatload and train¬ 
load to be fed to their 
mules and horses which 
were used in cultivating 
cotton to sell to pay for the feed. They have done 
the same about other plantation supplies, such as 
meat, meal and flour. Scarcely one-hundredth part 
of all these supplies has been produced in the Delta 
legion, for at least many years past. During the 
time of American slavery there was more attention 
given to producing plantation supplies than since 
then, as the old millstones and unused smokehouses 
gi\e mute evidence. The modern planter has been 
cotton crazy. He has tried to make money out 
of cotton to sell to buy everything else with, even 
to meats, canned vegetables and fruits for his own 
table. Scarcely a mule or horse was raised, but all 
bought from the more prosperous fanners of the 
States to the northward. In the older days, “befo’ 
de wall,” the flatboats that came down the great river 
from a thousand tributaries, brought the things they 
needed. My father built four such boats and loaded 
them with the products of the old farm in Ohio, on 
which I was born; from the water mill that he ran at 
night and on rainy days and boiled cider and apple- 
butter made from the trees under which I played 
when a child. 
In later times the railroads have been kept busy 
hauling plantation supplies south and their cotton 
back north to be made into goods to be returned, in 
part, to clothe the people who raised, picked, ginned 
and baled the crude fibre. It is estimated that 65 
per cent of the money received by cotton planters has 
gone north to buy bread and meat for themselves 
and their workhands, and feed for their animals. I do 
not doubt it. 
Since I have been a cotton planter by force of cir¬ 
cumstances, -in growing farm crops between the pe¬ 
can trees of a big orchard, this matter has come 
home to me in the most forceful way. We have 
paid in cash over $4000 
for mule feed alone 
within a single year. 
Like the rest, we have 
been cotton crazy. And 
why so? Because it was 
the custom of the land. 
“The nigger and the 
mule” have been about 
“the whole thing.” They 
have been the one main 
factor in the real pro¬ 
duction of cotton. With¬ 
out them the Delta 
farmer thought he could 
do nothing, and under 
the past and present 
condition this is about 
true. The negro ha4 
been trained to “make 
cotton” and lie and the 
white planter, too, have 
thought they could do 
nothing else with profit. 
But, to tell the real 
truth, there has been 
very little net profit in 
cotton planting, one year 
after another. The 
whole system has been 
and is now wrong. The 
big planter (and about 
all Delta plantations are 
large—sometimes very 
large), did not make 
enough ahead one year 
to buy his supplies for 
the next, so he was 
obliged to go to some 
merchant who could and 
would supply him on 
credit. This factor had 
to make himself secure, 
so he took a mortgage on 
the coming crop and on 
the planters’ land and 
his mules, tools, etc., 
besides. Perhaps he paid 
out and had a little left, 
perhaps not. He was 
gambling with nature, 
and the elements may 
have turned against him. 
This they did last year, 
and left the planters of 
the whole Delta region 
in a most deplorable 
condition. Our planta¬ 
tion was “in it.” When I left there the last 
of May we had in 700 acres of cotton and some 300 
acres of corn, and nothing else of consequence besides 
the pecan and fig trees in the orchard rows and nur¬ 
sery, and I never saw a better prospect. The first 
few cotton blooms were out, and about 200 people 
and 75 mules working all they were able to stand, 
and with a good old Scotchman of long experience 
on the plantation to guide them. But it rained, and 
WORKING SCENE ON A MISSISSIPPI PECAN FARM. Fig. 255. 
