University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XII
THE COTTON RÉGIME

IT would be hard to overestimate the predominance of the
special crops in the industry and interest of the Southern
community. For good or ill they have shaped its development
from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. Each
characteristic area had its own staple, and those districts which
had none were scorned by all typical Southern men. The several
areas expanded and contracted in response to fluctuations in the
relative prices of their products. Thus when cotton was exceptionally
high in the early 'twenties many Virginians discarded
tobacco in its favor for a few years,[1] and on the Louisiana lands
from Baton Rouge to Alexandria, the planters from time to
time changed from sugar to cotton and back again.[2] These were
local variations also in scale and intensity; but in general the
system in each area tended to be steady and fairly uniform. The
methods in the several staples, furthermore, while necessarily
differing in their details, were so similar in their emphasis upon
routine that each reinforced the influence of the others in shaping
the industrial organization of the South as a whole.

At the height of the plantation system's career, from 1815 to
1860, indigo production was a thing of the past; hemp was of
negligible importance; tobacco was losing in the east what it
gained in the west; rice and sea-island cotton were stationary;
but sugar was growing in local intensity, and upland cotton was
"king" of a rapidly expanding realm. The culture of sugar,
tobacco and rice has been described in preceding chapters; that
of the fleecy staple requires our present attention.

The outstanding features of the landscape on a short-staple

cotton plantation were the gin house and its attendant baling
press. The former was commonly a weatherboarded structure
some forty feet square, raised about eight feet from the ground
by wooden pillars. In the middle of the space on the ground
level, a great upright hub bore an iron-cogged pinion and was
pierced by a long horizontal beam some three feet from the
ground. Draught animals hitched to the ends of this and driven
in a circular path would revolve the hub and furnish power for
transmission by cogs and belts to the gin on the floor above.

At the front of the house were a stair and a platform for unloading
seed cotton from the wagons; inside there were bins for storage,
as well as a space for operating the gin; and in the rear
a lean-to room extending to the ground level received the flying
lint and let it settle on the floor. The press, a skeleton structure
nearby, had in the center a stout wooden box whose interior
length and width determined the height and thickness of the
bales but whose depth was more than twice as great as the
intended bale's width. The floor, the ends and the upper halves
of the sides of the box were built rigidly, but the lower sides
were hinged at the bottom, and the lid was a block sliding tap
and down according as a great screw from above was turned to
left or right. The screw, sometimes of cast iron but preferably
of wood as being less liable to break under strain without warning,
worked through a block mortised into a timber frame above
the box, and at its upper end it supported two gaunt beams which
sloped downward and outward to a horse path encircling the
whole. A cupola roof was generally built on the revolving apex
to give a slight shelter to the apparatus; and in some cases a
second roof, with the screw penetrating its peak, was built near
enough the ground to escape the whirl of the arms. When the
contents of the lint room were sufficient for a bale, a strip of
bagging was laid upon the floor of the press and another was
attached to the face of the raised lid; the sides of the press
were then made fast, and the box was filled with cotton. The
draught animals at the beam ends were then driven round the
path until the descent of the lid packed the lint firmly; whereupon
the sides were lowered, the edges of the bagging drawn into

place, ropes were passed through transverse slots in the lid and
floor and tied round the bale in its bagging, the pressure was
released, and the bale was ready for market. Between 1820 and
1860 improvements in the apparatus promoted an increase in
the average weight of the bales from 250 to 400 pounds; while:
in still more recent times the replacement of horse power by
steam and the substitution of iron ties for rope have caused the
average bale to be yet another hundredweight heavier. The
only other distinctive equipment for cotton harvesting comprised
cloth bags with shoulder straps, and baskets of three or four
bushels capacity woven of white-oak splits to contain the contents
of the pickers' bags until carried to the gin house to be
weighed at the day's end.

Whether on a one-horse farm or a hundred-hand plantation,
the essentials in cotton growing were the same. In an average
year a given force of laborers could plant and cultivate about
twice as much cotton as it could pick. The acreage to be seeded
in the staple was accordingly fixed by a calculation of the harvesting
capacity, and enough more land was put into other crops
to fill out the spare time of the hands in spring and summer.
To this effect it was customary to plant in corn, which required
less than half as much work, an acreage at least equal to that in
cotton, and to devote the remaining energy to sweet, potatoes,
peanuts, cow peas and small grain. In 1820 the usual crop; in
middle Georgia for each full hand was reported at six acres of
cotton and eight of corn;[3] but in the following decades during
which mules were advantageously substituted for horses and
oxen, and the implements of tillage were improved atid the harvesters
grew more expert, the annual stint was increased to ten
acres in cotton and ten in corn.

At the Christmas holiday when the old year's harvest was
nearly or quite completed, well managed plantations had their preliminaries
for the new crop already in progress. The winter
months were devoted to burning canebrakes, clearing underbrush
and rolling logs in the new grounds, splitting rails and

mending fences, cleaning ditches, spreading manure, knocking
down the old cotton and corn stalks, and breaking the soil of the
fields to be planted. Some planters broke the fields completely
each year and then laid off new rows. Others merely "listed"
the fields by first running a furrow with a shovel plow where
each cotton or corn row was to be and filling it with a single furrow
of a turn plow from either side; then when planting time
approached they would break out the remaining balks with
plows, turning the soil to the lists and broadening them into
rounded plant beds. This latter plan was advocated as giving a
firm seed bed while making the field clean of all grass at the
planting. The spacing of the cotton rows varied from three to
five feet according to the richness of the soil. The policy was to
put them at such distance that the plants when full grown would
lightly interlace their branches across the middles.

In March the, corn fields were commonly planted, not so much
because this forehandedness was better for the crop as for the
sake of freeing the choicer month of April for the more important
planting of cotton. In this operation a narrow plow
lightly opened the crests of the beds; cotton seed were drilled
somewhat thickly therein; and a shallow covering of earth was
given by means of a concave board on a plow stock, or by a
harrow, a roller or a small shallow plow.

Within two or three weeks, as soon as the young plants had put
forth three or four leaves, thinning and cultivation was begun.
Hoe hands, under orders to chop carefully, stirred the crust along
the rows and reduced the seedlings to a "double stand," leaving
only two plants to grow at each interval of twelve or eighteen
inches. The plows then followed, stirring the soil somewhat
deeply near the rows. In another fortnight the hoes gave another
chopping, cutting down the weaker of each pair of plants,
thus reducing the crop to a "single stand"; and where plants
were missing they planted fresh seed to fill the gaps. The
plows followed again, with broad wings to their shares, to break
the crust and kill the grass throughout the middles. Similar alternations
of chipping and plowing then ensued until near the

end of July, each cultivation shallower than the last in order that
the roots of the cotton should not be cut.[4]

When the blossoms were giving place to bolls in midsummer,
"lay-by time" was at hand. Cultivation was ended, and the labor
was diverted to other tasks until in late August or early September
the harvest began. The corn, which had been worked
at spare times previously, now had its blades stripped and bundled
for fodder; the roads were mended, the gin house and press
put in order, the premises in general cleaned up, and perhaps a
few spare days given to recreation.

The cotton bolls ripened and opened in series, those near the
center of the plant first, then the outer ones on the lower branches,
and finally the top crop. If subjected unduly to wind and rain
the cotton, drooping in the bolls, would be blown to the ground or
tangled with dead leaves or stained with mildew. It was expedient
accordingly to send the pickers through the fields as early
and as often as there was crop enough open to reward the labor.

Four or five compartments held the contents of each boll; from
sixty to eighty bolls were required to yield a pound in the seed;
and three or four pounds of seed cotton furnished one pound of
lint. When a boll was wide open a deft picker could empty all
of its compartments by one snatch of the fingers; and a specially
skilled one could keep both hands flying independently, and still
exercise the small degree of care necessary to keep the lint fairly
free from the trash of the brittle dead calyxes. As to the day's
work, a Georgia planter wrote in 1830: "A hand will pick or
gather sixty to a hundred pounds of cotton in the seed, with ease,
per day. I have heard of some hands gathering a hundred and
twenty pounds in a day. The hands on a plantation ought to
average sixty-five pounds."[5] But actual records in the following
decades made these early pickers appear very inept. On
Levin Covington's plantation near Natchez in 1844, in a typical

week of October, Bill averaged 220 pounds a day, Dred 205
pounds, Aggy 215, and Delia 185; and on Saturday of that week
all the twenty-eight men and boys together picked an average of
160 pounds, and all the eighteen women and girls an average of
125.[6] But these were dwarfed in turn by the pickings on J. W.
Fowler's Prairie plantation, Coahoma County, Mississippi, at the
close of the ante-bellum period. In the week of September 12
to 17, 1859, Sandy, Carver and Gilmore each averaged about
three hundred pounds a day, and twelve other men and five women
ranged above two hundred, while the whole gang of fifty-one men
and women, boys and girls average 157 pounds each.[7]

The picking required more perseverance than strength. Dexterity
was at a premium, but the labors of the slow, the youthful
and the aged were all called into requisition. When the fields
were white with their fleece and each day might bring a storm
to stop the harvesting, every boll picked might well be a boll
saved from destruction. Even the blacksmith was called from
his forge and the farmer's children from school to bend their
backs in the cotton rows. The women and children picked steadily
unless rains drove them in; the men picked as constantly except
when the crop was fairly under control and some other
task, such as breaking in the corn, called the whole gang for a
day to another field or when the gin house crew had to clear the
bins by working up their contents to make room for more seed
cotton.

In the Piedmont where the yield was lighter the harvest was
generally ended by December; but in the western belt, particularly
when rains interrupted the work, it often extended far into
the new year. Lucien Minor, for example, wrote when traveling
through the plantations of northern Alabama, near Huntsville,
in December, 1823: "These fields are still white with cotton,
which frequently remains unpicked until March or April,
when the ground is wanted to plant the next crop."[8] Planters

occasionally noted in their journals that for want of pickers the
top crop was lost.

As to the yield, an adage was current, that cotton would promise
more and do less and promise less and do more than any
other green thing that grew. The plants in the earlier stages
were very delicate. Rough stirring of the clods would kill them;
excess of rain or drought would be likewise fatal; and a choking
growth of grass would altogether devastate the field. Improvement
of conditions would bring quick recuperation to the surviving
stalks, which upon attaining their full growth became quite
hardy; but undue moisture would then cause a shedding of the
bolls, and the first frost of autumn would stop the further fruiting.
The plants, furthermore, were liable to many diseases and
insect ravages. In infancy cut-worms might sever the stalks at
the base, and lice might sap the vitality; in the full flush of
blooming luxuriance, wilt and rust, the latter particularly on older
lands, might blight the leaves, or caterpillars in huge armies reduce
them to skeletons and blast the prospect; and even when the
fruit was formed, boll-worms might consume the substance
within, or dry-rot prevent the top crop from ripening. The
ante-bellum planters, however, were exempt from the Mexican
boll-weevil, the great pest of the cotton belt in the twentieth century.

While every planter had his fat years and lean, and the yield
of the belt as a whole alternated between bumper crops and short
ones, the industry was in general of such profit as to maintain a
continued expansion of its area and a never ending though sometimes
hesitating increase of its product. The crop rose from
eighty-five million pounds in 1810 to twice as much in 1820; it
doubled again by 1830 and more than doubled once more by
1840. Extremely low prices for the staple in the early 'forties
and again in 1849 prompted a campaign for crop reduction; and
in that decade the increase was only from 830,000,000 to l,000,000,000
pounds. But the return of good prices in the 'fifties
caused a fresh and huge enlargement to 2,300,000,000 pounds in
the final census year of the ante-bellum period. While this was
little more than one fourth as great as the crops of sixteen million

bales in 1912 and 1915, it was justly reckoned in its time; at
home and abroad, a prodigious output. All the rest of the world
then produced barely one third as much. The cotton sent abroad
made up nearly two thirds of the value of the gross export trade
of the United States, while the tobacco export had hardly a tenth
of the cotton's worth. In competition with all the other staples,
cotton engaged the services of some three fourths of all the country's
plantation labor, in addition to the labor of many thousands
of white farmers and their families.

The production and sale of the staple engrossed no less of the
people's thought than of their work. A traveler who made a zigzag
journey from Charleston to St. Louis in the early months of
1827, found cotton "a plague." At Charleston, said he, the
wharves were stacked and the stores and ships packed with the
bales, and the four daily papers and all the patrons of the hotel
were "teeming with cotton." At Augusta the thoroughfares were
thronged with groaning wagons, the warehouses were glutted, the
open places were stacked, and the steamboats and barges hidden
by their loads. On the road beyond, migrating planters and
slaves bound for the west, "'where the cotton land is not worn
out,'" met cotton-laden wagons townward bound, whereupon
the price of the staple was the chief theme of roadside conversation.
Occasionally a wag would have his jest The traveler
reported a tilt between two wagoners: "'What's cotton in Augusta?'
says the one with a load. . . . 'It's cotton,' says the other.
'I know that says the first, 'but what is it?' 'Why,' says the
other, 'I tell you it's cotton. Cotton is cotton in Augusta and
everywhere else that I ever heard of.' 'I know that as well as
you,' says the first, 'but what does cotton bring in Augusta?'
'Why, it brings nothing there, but everybody brings cotton.'"
Whereupon the baffled inquirer appropriately relieved his feelings
and drove on. At his crossing of the Oconee River the traveler
saw pole-boats laden with bales twelve tiers high; at Milledgeville
and Macon cotton was the absorbing theme; in the
newly opened lands beyond he "found cotton land speculators
thicker than locusts in Egypt"; in the neighborhood of Montgomery
cotton fields adjoined one another in a solid stretch for

fourteen miles along the road; Montgomery was congested beyond
the capacity of the boats; and journeying thence to Mobile
he "met and overtook nearly one hundred cotton waggons travelling
over a road so bad that a state prisoner could hardly walk
through it to make his escape." As to Mobile, it was "a receptacle
monstrous for the article. Look which way you will you
see it, and see it moving; keel boats, steamboats, ships, brigs,
schooners, wharves, stores, and press-houses, all appeared to fee
full; and I believe that in the three days I was there, boarding
with about one hundred cotton factors, cotton merchants and
cotton planters, I must have heard the word cotton pronounced
more than three thousand times." New Orleans had a similar
glut.

On the journey up the Mississippi the plaint heard by this traveler
from fellow passengers who lived at Natchitoches, was that
they could not get enough boats to bring the cotton down the
Red. The descending steamers and barges on the great river
itself were half of them heavy laden with cotton and at the head
of navigation on the Tennessee, in northwestern Alabama, bales
enough were waiting to fill a dozen boats. "The Tennesseeans,"
said he, "think that no state is of any account but their own;
Kentucky, they say, would be if it could grow cotton, but as it
is, it is good for nothing. They count on forty or fifty thousand
bales going from Nashville this season; that is, if they can get
boats to carry it all." The fleet on the Cumberland River was
doing its utmost, to the discomfort of the passengers; and it was
not until the traveler boarded a steamer for St. Louis at the middle
of March, that he escaped the plague which had surrounded
him for seventy days and seventy nights. This boat, at last,
"had not a bale of cotton on board, nor did I hear it named more
than twice in thirty-six hours. . . . I had a pretty tolerable
night's sleep, though I dreamed of cotton."[9]

This obsession was not without its undertone of disquiet.
Foresighted men were apprehensive lest the one-crop system
bring distress to the cotton belt as it had to Virginia. As early

as 1818 a few newspaper editors[10] began to decry the régime;
and one of them in 1821 rejoiced in a widespread prevalence of
rot in the crop of the preceding year as a blessing, in that it
staved off the rapidly nearing time when the staple's price would
fall below the cost of production.[11] A marked rise of the price
to above twenty cents a pound at the middle of the decade, however,
silenced these prophets until a severe decline in the later
twenties prompted the sons of Jeremiah to raise their voices again,
and the political crisis procured them a partial hearing. Politicians
were advocating the home production of cloth and foodstuffs
as a demonstration against the protective tariff, while the
economists pleaded for diversification for the sake of permanent
prosperity, regardless of tariff rates. One of them wrote
in 1827: "That we have cultivated cotton, cotton, cotton and
bought everything else, has long been our opprobrium. It is time
that we should be aroused by some means or other to see that
such a course of conduct will inevitably terminate in our ultimate
poverty and ruin. Let us manufacture, because it is our best
policy. Let us go more on provision crops and less on cotton,
because we have had everything about us poor and impoverished
long enough. . . . We have good land, unlimited water powers,
capital in plenty, and a patriotism which is running over in some
places. If the tariff drives us to this, we say, let the name be
sacred in all future generations."[12] Next year William Ellison
of the South Carolina uplands welcomed even the low price of
cotton as a lever[13] which might pry the planters out of the cotton
rut and shift them into industries less exhausting to the soil.

But in the breast of the lowlander, William Elliott, the depression
of the cotton market produced merely a querulous complaint
that the Virginians, by rushing into the industry several years
before when the prices were high, had spoiled the market. Each
region, said he, ought to devote itself to the staples best suited
to its climate and soil; this was the basis of profitable commerce.
The proper policy for Virginia and most of North Carolina was

to give all their labor spared from tobacco to the growing of
corn which South Carolina would gladly buy of them if undisturbed
in her peaceful concentration upon cotton.[14] The advance
of cotton prices throughout most of the thirties suspended the
discussion, and the régime went on virtually unchanged. As an
evidence of the specialization of the Piedmont in cotton, it was
reported in 1836 that in the town of Columbia alone the purchases
of bacon during the preceding year had amounted to three
and a half million pounds.[15]

The world-wide panic of 1837 began to send prices down, and
the specially intense cotton crisis of 1839 broke the market so
thoroughly that for five years afterward the producers had to
take from five to seven cents a pound for their crops. Planters
by thousands were bankrupted, most numerously in the inflated
southwest; and thoughtful men everywhere set themselves
afresh to study the means of salvation. Edmund Ruffin, the
Virginian enthusiast for fertilizers, was employed by the authority
of the South Carolina legislature to make an agricultural survey
of that state with a view to recommending improvements.
Private citizens made experiments on their estates; and the newspapers
and the multiplying agricultural journals published their
reports and advice. Most prominent among the cotton belt
planters who labored in the cause of reform were ex-Governor
James H. Hammond of South Carolina, Jethro V. Jones of Georgia,
Dr. N. B. Cloud of Alabama, and Dr. Martin W. Philips of
Mississippi. Of these, Hammond was chiefly concerned in
swamp drainage, hillside terracing, forage increase, and livestock
improvement; Jones was a promoter of the breeding of improved
strains of cotton; Cloud was a specialist in fertilizing;
and Philips was an all-round experimenter and propagandist.
Hammond and Philips, who were both spurred to experiments
by financial stress, have left voluminous records in print and
manuscript. Their careers illustrate the handicaps under which
innovators labored.

Hammond's estate[16] lay on the Carolina side of the Savannah
River, some sixteen miles below Augusta. Impressed by the depletion
of his upland soils, he made a journey in 1838 through
southwestern Georgia and the adjacent portion of Florida in
search of a new location; but finding land prices inflated, he returned
without making a purchase,[17] and for the time being
sought relief at home through the improvement of his methods.
He wrote in 1841: "I have tried almost all systems, and
unlike most planters do not like what is old. I hardly know
anything old in corn or cotton planting but what is wrong."
His particular enthusiasm now was for plow cultivation as
against the hoe. The best planter within his acquaintance, he
said, was Major Twiggs, on the opposite bank of the Savannah,
who ran thirty-four plows with but fourteen hoes. Hammond's
own plowmen were now nearly as numerous as his
full hoe hands, and his crops were on a scale of twenty acres of
cotton, ten of corn and two of oats to the plow. He was fertilizing
each year a third of his corn acreage with cotton seed,
and a twentieth of his cotton with barnyard manure; and he
was making a surplus of thirty or forty bushels of corn per hand
for sale.[18] This would perhaps have contented him in normal
times, but the severe depression of cotton prices drove him to
new prognostications and plans. His confidence in the staple
was destroyed, he said, and he expected the next crop to break
the market forever and force virtually everyone east of the
Chattahoochee to abandon the culture. "Here and there" he
continued, "a plantation may be found; but to plant an acre that
will not yield three hundred pounds net will be folly. I cannot
make more than sixty dollars clear to the hand on my whole
plantation at seven cents. . . . The western plantations have got
fairly under way; Texas is coming in, and the game is up with
us." He intended to change his own activities in the main to
the raising of cattle and hogs; and he thought also of sending
part of his slaves to Louisiana or Texas, with a view to removing

thither himself after a few years if the project should prove
successful.[19] In an address of the same year before the Agricultural
Society of South Carolina, he advised those to emigrate
who intended to continue producing cotton, and recommended
for those who would stay in the Piedmont a diversified husbandry
including tobacco but with main emphasis upon cereals
and livestock.[20] Again at the end of 1849, he voiced similar
views at the first annual fair of the South Carolina Institute.
The first phase of the cotton industry, said he, had now passed;
and the price henceforward would be fixed by the cost of production,
and would yield no great profits even in the most fertile
areas. The rich expanses of the Southwest, he thought,
could meet the whole world's demand at a cost of less than five
cents a pound, for the planters there could produce two thousand
pounds of lint per hand while those in the Piedmont could
not exceed an average of twelve hundred pounds. This margin
of difference would deprive the slaves of their value in South
Carolina and cause their owners to send them West, unless the
local system of industry should be successfully revolutionized.
The remedies he proposed were the fertilization of the soil, the
diversification of crops, the promotion of commerce, and the
large development of cotton manufacturing.[21]

Hammond found that not only the public but his own sons
also, with the exception of Harry, were cool toward his advice
and example; and he himself yielded to the temptation of the
higher cotton prices in the 'fifties, and while not losing interest
in cattle and small grain made cotton and com his chief reliance.
He appears to have salved his conscience in this relapse
by devoting part of his income to the reclamation of a
great marsh on his estate. He operated two plantations, the one
at his home, "Silver Bluff," the other, "Cathwood," near by.
The field force on the former comprised in 1850 sixteen plow
hands, thirty-four full hoe hands, six three-quarter hands, two

half hands and a water boy, the whole rated at fifty-five full
hands. At Cathwood the force, similarly grouped, was rated at
seventy-one hands; but at either place the force was commonly
subject to a deduction of some ten per cent. of its rated strength,
on the score of the loss of time by the "breeders and suckers"
among the women. In addition to their field strength and the
children, of whom no reckoning was made in the schedule of employments,
the two plantations together had five stable men, two
carpenters, a miller and job worker, a keeper of the boat landing,
three nurses and two overseers' cooks; and also thirty-five
ditchers in the reclamation work.

At Silver Bluff, the 385 acres in cotton were expected to yield
330 bales of 400 pounds each; the 400 acres in corn had an expectation
of 9850 bushels; and 10 acres of rice, 200 bushels. At
Cathwood the plantings and expectations were 370 acres in cotton
to yield 280 bales, 280 in corn to yield 5000 bushels, 15 in
wheat to yield 100 bushels, 11 in rye to yield 50, and 2 in rice
to yield 50. In financial results, after earning in 1848 only
$4334.91, which met barely half of his plantation and family
expenses for the year, his crop sales from 1849 to 1853
ranged from seven to twenty thousand dollars annually in cotton
and from one and a half to two and a half thousand dollars
in corn. His gross earnings in these five years averaged $16,217.76,
while his plantation expenses averaged $5393.87, and his
family outlay $6392.67, leaving an average "clear gain per annum,"
as he called it, of $4431.10. The accounting, however,
included no reckoning of interest on the investment or of anything
else but money income and outgo. In 1859 Hammond put
upon the market his 5500 acres of uplands with their buildings,
livestock, implements and feed supplies, together with 140
slaves including 70 full hands. His purpose, it may be surmised,
was ro confine his further operations to his river bottoms.[22]

Philips, whom a dearth of patients drove early from the practice
of medicine, established in the 'thirties a plantation which
he named Log Hall, in Hinds County, Mississippi. After narrowly

escaping the loss of his lands and slaves in 1840 through
his endorsement of other men's notes, he launched into experimental
farming and agricultural publication. He procured various
fancy breeds of cattle and hogs, only to have most of them
die on his hands. He introduced new sorts of grasses and
unfamiliar vegetables and field crops, rarely with success.
Meanwhile, however, he gained wide reputation through his
many writings in the periodicals, and in the 'fifties he turned this
to some advantage in raising fancy strains of cotton and selling
their seed. His frequent attendance at fairs and conventions
and his devotion to his experiments and to his pen caused him to
rely too heavily upon overseers in the routine conduct of his
plantation. In consequence one or more slaves occasionally
took to the woods; the whole force was frequently in bad health;
and his women, though remarkably fecund, lost most of their
children in infancy. In some degree Philips justified the prevalent
scorn of planters for "book farming."[23]

The newspapers and farm journals everywhere printed arguments
in the 'forties in behalf of crop diversification, and DeBow's
Review, founded in 1846, joined in the campaign; but the
force of habit, the dearth of marketable substitutes and the
charms of speculation conspired to make all efforts of but temporary
avail. The belt was as much absorbed in cotton in the
'fifties as it had ever been before.

Meanwhile considerable improvement had been achieved in
cotton methods. Mules, mainly bred in Tennessee, Kentucky
and Missouri, largely replaced the less effective horses and oxen;
the introduction of horizontal plowing with occasional balks
and hillside ditches, checked the washing of the Piedmont soils;
the use of fertilizers became fairly common; and cotton seed
was better selected. These last items of manures and seed were
the subject of special campaigns. The former was begun as
early as 1808 by the Virginian John Taylor of Caroline in his
"Arator" essays, and was furthered by the publications of Edmund

Ruffin and many others. But an adequate available
source of fertilizers long remained a problem without solution.
Taylor stressed the virtues of dung and rotation; but the dearth
of forage hampered the keeping of large stocks of cattle, and
soiling crops were thought commonly to yield too little benefit
for the expense in labor. Ruffin had great enthusiasm for the
marl or phosphate rock of the Carolina coast; but until the introduction
in much later decades of a treatment by sulphuric
acid this was too little soluble to be really worth while as a plant
food. Lime was also praised; but there were no local sources of
it in the districts where it was most needed.

Cotton seed, in fact, proved to be the only new fertilizer generally
available in moderate abundance prior to the building of
the railroads. In early years the seed lay about the gins as
refuse until it became a public nuisance. To abate it the village
authorities of Sparta, Georgia, for example, adopted in
1807 an ordinance "that the owner of each and every cotton machine
within the limits of said town shall remove before the first
day of May in each year all seed and damaged cotton that may
be about such machines, or dispose of such seed or cotton so as
to prevent its unhealthy putrefaction."[24] Soon after this a
planter in St. Stephen's Parish, South Carolina, wrote: "We
find from experience our cotton seed one of the strongest manures
we make use of for our Indian corn; a pint of fresh seed
put around or in the corn hole makes the corn produce wonderfully",[25]
but it was not until the lapse of another decade or two
that such practice became widespread. In the thirties Harriet
Martineau and J. S. Buckingham noted that in Alabama the seed
was being strewn as manure on a large scale.[26] As an improvement
of method the seed was now being given in many cases a
preliminary rotting in compost heaps, with a consequent speeding
of its availability as plant food;[27] and cotton seed rose to

such esteem as a fertilizer for general purposes that many planters
rated it to be worth from sixteen to twenty-five cents a
bushel of twenty-five pounds.[28] As early as 1830, furthermore
a beginning was made in extracting cottonseed oil for use both
in painting and illumination, and also in utilizing the by-product
of cottonseed meal as a cattle feed.[29] By the 'fifties the oil was
coming to be an unheralded substitute for olive oil in table use;
but the improvements which later decades were to introduce in
its extraction and refining were necessary for the raising of the
manufacture to the scale of a substantial industry.

The importation of fertilizers began with guano. This material,
the dried droppings of countless birds, was discovered in
the early 'forties on islands off the coast of Peru;[30] and it promptly
rose to such high esteem in England that, according to an American
news item, Lloyd's listed for 1845 not less than a thousand
British vessels as having sailed in search of guano cargoes.
The use of it in the United States began about that year; and
nowhere was its reception more eager than in the upland cotton
belt. Its price was about fifty dollars a ton in the seaports. To
stimulate the use of fertilizers, the Central of Georgia Railroad
Company announced in 1858 that it would carry all manures for
any distance on its line in carload lots at a flat rate of two dollars
per ton; and the connecting roads concurred in this policy.
In consequence the Central of Georgia carried nearly two thousand
tons of guano in 1859, and more than nine thousand tons
in 1860, besides lesser quantities of lime, salt and bone dust.
The superintendent reported that while the rate failed to cover
the cost of transportation, the effect in increasing the amount of
cotton to be freighted, and in checking emigration, fully compensated
the road.[31] A contributor to the North American Review
in January, 1861, wrote: "The use of guano is increasing. The

average return for each pound used in the cotton field is estimated
to be a pound and a half of cotton; and the planter who
could raise but three bales to the hand on twelve acres of exhausted
soil has in some instances by this appliance realized ten.
bales from the same force and area. In North Carolina guano
is reported to accelerate the growth of the plant, and this encourages
the culture on the northern border of the cotton-field,
where early frosts have proved injurious."

Widespread interest in agricultural improvement was reported
by DeBow's Review in the 'fifties, taking the form partly of local
and general fairs, partly of efforts at invention. A citizen of
Alabama, for example, announced success in devising a cotton
picking machine; but as in many subsequent cases in the same
premises, the proclamation was premature.

As to improved breeds of cotton, public interest appears to
have begun about 1820 in consequence of surprisingly good results
from seed newly procured from Mexico. These were in
a few years widely distributed under the name of Petit Gulf cotton.
Colonel Vick of Mississippi then began to breed strains
from selected seed; and others here and there followed his example,
most of them apparently using the Mexican type. The
more dignified of the planters who prided themselves on selling
nothing but cotton, would distribute among their friends parcels
of seed from any specially fine plants they might encounter
in their fields, and make little ado about it. Men of a more
flamboyant sort, such as M. W. Philips, contemning such "ruffle-shirt
cant," would christen their strains with attractive names,
publish their virtues as best they might, and offer their fancy
seed for sale at fancy prices. Thus in 1837 the Twin-seed or
Okra cotton was in vogue, selling at many places for five dollars
a quart. In 1839 this was eclipsed by the Alvarado strain,
which its sponsors computed from an instance of one heavily
fruited stalk nine feet high and others not so prodigious, might
yield three thousand pounds per acre.[32] Single Alvarado seeds
were sold at fifty cents each, or a bushel might be had at $160.
In the succeeding years Vick's Hundred Seed, Brown's, Pitt's,

Prolific, Sugar Loaf, Guatemala, Cluster, Hogan's, Banana
Pomegranate, Dean, Multibolus, Mammoth, Mastodon and many
others competed for attention and sale. Some proved worth
while either in increasing the yield, or in producing larger bolls
and thereby speeding the harvest, or in reducing the proportionate
weight of the seed and increasing that of the lint; but the
test of planting proved most of them to be merely commonplace
and not worth the cost of carriage. Extreme prices for seed
of any strain were of course obtainable only for the first year
or two; and the temptation to make fraudulent announcement
of a wonder-working new type was not always resisted.
Honest breeders improved the yield considerably; but the succession
of hoaxes roused abundant skepticism. In 1853 a
certain Miller of Mississippi confided to the public the fact
that he had discovered by chance a strain which would yield
three hundred pounds more of seed cotton per acre than any
other sort within his knowledge, and he alluringly named it Accidental
Poor Land Cotton. John Farrar of the new railroad
town Atlanta was thereby moved to irony. "This kind of cotton"
he wrote in a public letter, "would run a three million bale
crop up to more than four millions; and this would reduce the
price probably to four or five cents. Don't you see, Mr. Miller,
that we had better let you keep and plant your seed? You say
that you had rather plant your crop with them than take a dollar
a pint. . . . Let us alone, friend, we are doing pretty well—
we might do worse."[33]

In the sea-island branch of the cotton industry the methods
differed considerably from those in producing the shorter staple.
Seed selection was much more commonly practiced, and extraordinary
care was taken in ginning and packing the harvest. The
earliest and favorite lands for this crop were those of exceedingly
light soil on the islands fringing the coast of Georgia and
South Carolina. At first the tangle of live-oak and palmetto
roots discouraged the use of the plow; and afterward the need
of heavy fertilization with swamp mud and seaweed kept the
acreage so small in proportion to the laborers that hoes continued

to be the prevalent means of tillage. Operations were commonly
on the basis of six or seven acres to the hand, half in cotton
and the rest in corn and sweet potatoes. In the swamps on
the mainland into which this crop was afterwards extended, the
use of the plow permitted the doubling of the area per hand;
but the product of the swamp lands was apparently never of the
first grade.

The fields were furrowed at five-foot intervals during the
winter, bedded in early spring, planted in late April or early
May, cultivated until the end of July, and harvested from September
to December. The bolls opened but narrowly and the
fields had to be reaped frequently to save the precious lint from
damage by the weather. Accordingly the pickers are said to
have averaged no more than twenty-five pounds a day. The
preparation for market required the greatest painstaking of all.
First the seed cotton was dried on a scaffold; next it was whipped
for the removal of trash and sand; then it was carefully sorted
into grades by color and fineness; then it went to the roller gins,
whence the lint was spread upon tables where women picked out
every stained or matted bit of the fiber; and finally when gently
packed into sewn bags it was ready for market. A few gin
houses were equipped in the later decades with steam power; but
most planters retained the system of a treadle for each pair of
rollers as the surest safeguard of the delicate filaments. A plantation
gin house was accordingly a simple barn with perhaps a
dozen or two foot-power gins, a separate room for the whipping,
a number of tables for the sorting and moting, and a round hole
in the floor to hold open the mouth of the long bag suspended for
the packing.[34] In preparing a standard bale of three hundred
pounds, it was reckoned that the work required of the laborers
at the gin house was as follows: the dryer, one day; the whipper,
two days; the sorters, at fifty pounds of seed cotton per day for

each, thirty days; the ginners, each taking 125 pounds in the
seed per day and delivering therefrom 25 pounds of But, twelve
days; the moters, at 43 pounds, seven days; the inspector and
packer, two days; total fifty-four days.

The roller gin was described in a most untechnical manner by
Basil Hall: "It consists of two little wooden rollers, each about
as thick as a man's thumb, placed horizontally and touching each
other. On these being put into rapid motion, handfulls of the
cotton are cast upon them, which of course are immediately
sucked in. . . . A sort of comb fitted with iron teeth . . . is
made to wag up and down with considerable velocity in front
of the rollers. This rugged comb, which is equal in length to
the rollers, lies parallel to them, with the sharp ends of its teeth
almost in contact with them. By the quick wagging motion
given to this comb by the machinery, the buds of cotton cast
upon the rollers are torn open just as they are beginning to be
sucked in. The seeds, now released . . . fly off like sparks to
the right and left, while the cotton itself passes between the rollers."[35]

As to yields and proceeds, a planter on the Georgia seaboard
analyzed his experience from 1830 to 1847 as follows: the harvest
average per acre ranged from 68 pounds of lint in 1846 to
223 pounds in 1842, with a general average for the whole period
of 137 pounds; the crop's average price per pound ranged from
14 cents in 1847 to 41 cents in 1838, with a general average of
23 ½ cents; and the net proceeds per hand were highest at $137
in 1835, lowest at $41 in 1836, and averaged $83 for the eighteen
years.[36]

In the cotton belt as a whole the census takers of 1850 enumerated
74,031 farms and plantations each producing five bales
or more,[37] and they reckoned the crop at 2,445,793 bales of four
hundred pounds each. Assuming that five bales were commonly
the product of one full hand, and leaving aside a tenth of the
gross output as grown perhaps on farms where the cotton was
not the main product, it appears that the cotton farms and plantations

averaged some thirty bales each, and employed on the
average about six full hands. That is to say, there were very
many more small farms than large plantations devoted to cotton;
and among the plantations furthermore, it appears that
very few were upon a scale entitling them to be called great, for
the nature of the industry did not encourage the engrossment of
more than sixty laborers under a single manager.[38] It is true
that some proprietors operated on a much larger scale than this.
It was reported in 1859, for example, that Joseph Bond of Georgia
had marketed 2199 bales of his produce, that numerous
Louisiana planters, particularly about Concordia Parish, commonly
exceeded that output; that Dr. Duncan of Mississippi had
a crop of 3000 bales; and that L. R. Marshall, who lived at
Natchez and had plantations in Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas,
was accustomed to make more than four thousand
bales.[39] The explanation lies of course in the possession by such
men of several more or less independent plantations of manageable
size. Bond's estate, for example, comprised not less than
six plantations in and about Lee County in southwestern Georgia,
while his home was in the town of Macon. The areas of
these, whether cleared or in forest, ranged from 1305 to 4756
acres.[40] But however large may have been the outputs of exceptionally
great planters, the fact remains on the other hand that
virtually half of the total cotton crop each year was made by
farmers whose slaves were on the average hardly more numberous
than the white mernBers of their own families. The plantation
system nevertheless dominated the régime.

The British and French spinners, solicitous for their supply
of material, attempted at various times and places during the
ante-bellum period to enlarge the production of cotton where it
was already established and to introduce it into new regions.
The result was a complete failure to lessen the predominance of
the United States as a source. India, Egypt and Brazil might
enlarge their outputs considerably if the rates in the market were

raised to twice or thrice their wonted levels; but so long as the
price held a moderate range the leadership of the American cotton
belt could not be impaired, for its facilities were unequaled.
Its long growing season, hot in summer by day and night; was
perfectly congenial to the plant, its dry autumns permitted the
reaping of full harvests, and its frosty winters decimated the insect
pests. Its soil was abundant, its skilled managers were in
full supply, its culture was well systematized, and its labor adequate
for the demand. To these facilities there was added in
the Southern thought of the time, as no less essential for the permanence
of the cotton belt's primacy, the plantation system and
the institution of slavery.