Cotton and the Negro.
Our Statesmen tell us in one breath that the salvation of the South is in the planting of less cotton and getting more for it and, in the very next breath, they say that immigration will save us. They invite the yankee to come, and the German, and the Irish, and the Scandinavian and even the Italian.
If it be true that we are planting enough cotton, even too much, and it is true, wherein will the South be benefited by having thousands of the foreigners settle here to raise more cotton? There is but one answer. We don’t need any more cotton planters.
But it is contended that foreign immigration will settle the race question. Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t. The cotton patch negro hasn’t given us any trouble, nor will he, and he isn’t going to leave either. He is satisfied, his landlord is satisfied, and a German or a Scandinavian upon the scene will mean two cotton patches instead of one, one for him and one for the negro.
True, there are many of our ambitious farmers who can’t secure enough laborers to make enough cotton to get rich as fast as they would, but they’ll get rich quick enough in using our present available labor, thereby raising less cotton, getting more for it, and, at the same time, either resting their lands or sowing it in small grain. And when these wealthy farmers plant less cotton, they benefit every poor fellow, standing between the plow handles, in the entire South.
And this one or two horse farmer is the ideal citizen, anyway. The best communities are those made up of small farmers. The churches, schools and social conditions in a community, in which one man owns all the land and runs forty plows, are not as good as one with forty land owners. Oglethorpe county would, no doubt, be a better county today, if Jim Smith had never been born, and this is not said with the spirit of criticising a single act of his life, either.
It’s all right for immigrants to build our cities, our railroads, our manufacturing enterprises or to labor in the cities, on the railroads, in the factories or even take servants’ places, but the South doesn’t need any more cotton raisers.—Gwinnett (Ga.) Journal.