30 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
ket. Madder, I am confident, would find its most con¬ 
genial climate and soil here. It is a native of a southern 
dime, and requires just such a warm, light soil as we can 
here furnish it with. 
Bread, meat and clothing, every cotton plantation should 
and can furnish for its own consumption, alid even for 
sale, and yet grow as much cotton as should be grown. 
In fact, there is not a doubt, but if such a system could 
be generally introduced, cotton would again command a 
remunerative price. Other items should be included— 
comforts instead of blankets; leather for shoes and har¬ 
ness; tobacco for the negroes; bagging made at home, 
of cotton; hay grown for stock and for sale; all the 
mules and horses needed, raised at home; a flock of 
sheep kept, sufficient not only to clothe the negroes, but 
to afford a considerable return for wool anil mutton; but¬ 
ter made for sale, the buttermilk being decidedly more 
wholesome for the negroes, young and old, than sweet 
milk, especially in summer, and auy tidy old woman can 
easily make more in the dairy than in the field; and ma¬ 
ny other wajrs in which hands cam be employed to at least 
as great advantage and profit as in the cotton crop—with 
the very great additional advantage of thereby lessening 
the ruinous over-production of'ihat staple. 
I have already written you, thus far, a most egotistical 
letter; too much so; and yet k do not see how I can so 
well sustain my assertion, as u the practicability of this 
change in our system of farn-v,ig, as by giving my own 
experience. True, this oxp .Lienee has not been great— 
but it has this advantage, that though but of three years 
standing, it has been acquired in the face of serious dif¬ 
ficulties. I had every thing to buy but corn—and even 
some little of that. So, with your leave, I will continue 
as I have begun, and give you a little more of Ego !— 
premising, that in good and economical management, I 
am far, far behind many of the planters of this region, as 
yet. 
Corn can be grown here quite as well as inNew-York, 
notwithstanding the opinion of that enlightened southern 
gentleman , who made such wonderful discoveries relative 
to the climate of the south—see the garbled edition of 
Johnson’s Farmers’ Encyclopedia. I am now offering 
2,000 bu. of corn for sale, being my surplus of this year’s 
crop, over the requisite supply for that plantation. 
Wheat, also, will do well at least two seasons in three; 
i'f we had a sort sufficiently early to ripen before exces¬ 
sive warm weather, I do not believe this crop would be 
any more subject to failure than with you. The “ Val¬ 
paraiso,” of which I received a small quantity of seed 
through the Patent office, was entirely destroyed, this 
year, by rust. It tillered well, and the heads when com¬ 
ing in bloom, were very large. I mean to secure a sup¬ 
ply of all of Mr. Harmon’s sorts against another season. 
Egyptian or winter oats do remarkably well. They are 
sown in September or October, and afford capital pasture 
all winter, and a fine yield of grain, ripe early in May. 
Forty bushels is spoken of as a good, fair crop; one bu¬ 
shel sown produced me twenty. I prefer this grain to 
rye. It commands readily from sixty cents to a dollar, 
according to the supply. My pea crops, with the glean¬ 
ings of the sweet potatoe lots, will fatten my hogs this 
year—a trifling quantity of corn may be needed. Of 
sweet potatoes, turneps, Irish potatoes, white beans, rice, 
hay, fodder, pindars, &c., I have hitherto found no diffi¬ 
culty in growing in abundance. 
Cattle, unless where the range is extensive and good, 
or where the planter has formed good Bermuda pastures, 
I do not consider profitable stock here—at all events, by 
no means as much so as sheep, hogs or mules. To raise 
one’s own meat, requires a good deal of care and atten¬ 
tion—but it can be done profitably and advanlageouslv on 
any cotton plantation. A little over two years ago, I 
commenced operations with eight thorough bred Berk¬ 
shire sows, as many good common ones, and two or 
three fine boars, of different families of Berkshires, in¬ 
cluding imported Newberry. This fall I will kill a fair 
supply of meat, and offer some thirty or forty fine young, 
in-pig sows for sale, being unwilling to kill them while 
they are so much needed in the south. I offer them at 
less than the price of a barrel of pork each—$10. I lost, 
last spring, over one hundred pigs and shoats of a disease 
in the throat, caused, I believe, by their eating young 
cuckle-bur plants. Such, too, is the opinion of my over¬ 
seer who had charge of them—Mr. Hamilton—a very in¬ 
telligent, observing man. When turned out of the field 
where these grew, the hogs ceased dying and got well — 
when put back there they became sick again, and many 
died off. In addition to this, I have lost, in spite of ev¬ 
ery precaution, a good many through my own and my 
neighbors’ negroes—no matter how much meat they may 
get, both salt and fresh, the negroes have a particular 
liking for fresh pig, killed and cooked on the sly, as 
school-boys say. All this, however, can be prevented. 
And even supposing that from ten good sows, one hand 
devoting his entire time and attention to them and their 
produce, 50 hogs of 200 lbs. each can be killed per an¬ 
num, that hand is doing a fourfold better business than at 
growing cotton. Moreover, the hogs being during the 
picking season in the pea field, the services of the hand 
can be had at that time, when they are most valuable. 
I think I can have two hands supply the slaughter pen 
with three hundred fine fat hogs, each year, „and attend 
to the breeding and stock hogs also. I feed much cot¬ 
ton seed, thoroughly cooked, and a small proportion of 
meal, with salt and ashes added, and occasionally pump¬ 
kins and turneps, boiled with it—and with decided eco¬ 
nomy and advantage. For sheep, as I have often assert¬ 
ed, this is the finest country I have ever seen, and I 
think myself tolerably good authority in the matter. 
This, however, may very fairly form the subject of a 
separate article. 
Clothing—this too, requires time and attention; but 
there is nothing else needed to enable any force of ne¬ 
groes to manufacture the material for their own clothing, 
with profit to their owners. During winter the women 
cannot be so well employed in any way as in spinning up 
the wool—particularly where a carding machine is ac¬ 
cessible. One woman, keeping a spinning machine and 
a loom going all the year, would spin the warp and 
weave the cloth for a very large place. Those spinning 
machines are a great convenience—they spin six threads 
at a time—the gin saws taking the cotton from the seed 
—the brush placing it on the cards when ginned, where 
it is carded, and then spun direct from the cards, all at 
one operation. Mine was made by Pearce & Co., Cin¬ 
cinnati, and cost $130. We have now, in Natchez, a 
very excellent manufactory established, and now in the 
hands of a most energetic business man—Mr. McAllister, 
of the firm of McAllister & Watson—who is proving 
that such a concern will succeed in the south, afford a 
profit to the manufacturer, and be a great source of con¬ 
venience and economy to the planter. Linsey, jeans, all 
kinds of cotton goods, including bagging and sacking, 
bale rope and twine, &c. &c. Also burring and carding 
wool at so much per pound. Mr. McA. began by pledg¬ 
ing himself that he would manufacture for the planter, 
from his own cotton and wool, fabrics of any kind to 
cost him, at least, no more than he could buy it for of 
northern manufacture, allowing a fair price for the raw 
material. The cotton bagging, made for Mr. Isaac Dun¬ 
bar, out of most indifferent cotton, worth perhaps one 
or two cents per pound, is a very superior article—bet¬ 
ter, in the opinion of many, than the hemp article. I 
have little doubt that the cotton shipped from Natchez 
will be, half of it, put up next year in bagging of cotton— 
if the planters consult their own interest they will do so. 
If all the cotton made in the Union was packed in this 
material, we would have tho crop lessened or consumption 
increased rather, to the amount of 22,500,000 pounds, or 
56,250 bales—being five yards of bagging, weighing 9 
pounds, for two and a half millions of bales. Bale rope 
and twine would swell the amount to over 70,000 bales. 
Mrs. A. is just finishing off a lot of over 50 double 
and single comforts for the negroes, in place of blankets, 
which cost an average of about $1.12 each—not count¬ 
ing the labor of making, which in fact may be so much 
wet weather time of the women’s labor saved, and it is 
well repaid in the difference in the cost of blankets. 
Had we not made comforts, I would have required over 
45 pairs of blankets—difference, to pay for the making 
of the comforts, at least $120. This has been our first 
experiment in comforts, though some planters here have 
