“Now, sir, for all this there is one simple, plain remedy; let the planter spend his time in ginning season at his gin; let him see every load of cotton as it comes from the field and before it goes through the gin. But, says the man of leisure, the gin is a dirty, dusty place. Yes, sir, and always will be so, until you remedy the evil by staying there yourself. You say your overseer is hired to do this dirty work. Your overseer is after quantity, sir, and the more extra weight he gets in your cotton, the more bales he will have to brag of having made at the end of the year. Don’t trust him at the gin. * * *
“Probably he has a conditional contract with his employer: gets so many dollars for all he makes over a certain number of bales; thus having every inducement to put up as much leaf and dirt, or, if he is one of the dishonest kind, he may add stones, if they should abound in the neighbourhood.
“Why will not the cotton-planter take pride in his own production? The merchant prides himself on his wares; the mechanic on the work of his hands. All seem to pride themselves on the result of their labour except the cotton-planter.” * * *
It cannot be admitted that the absence in the Free States of that organization and division of labour in agriculture which is found on a large slave-worked plantation is a necessity attending the use of free labour. Why should it be any more impossible to employ an army of free labourers in moving the ground with an agricultural design than with the intention of constructing a canal or a road, if it were profitable to so employ the necessary capital? A railroad contractor in one of the best cotton districts of the United States told me, that having begun his work with negroes, he was substituting Irish and German labourers for them as rapidly as possible, with great advantage (and this near midsummer). But if I were convinced with Mr. Russell upon this point, I should still be inclined to think that the advantages which are possessed in a free labour state of society equally by the great hop-planters at picking time and the petits proprietaires at vintage, which are also found in our own new States by the wheat farmer, and which are not found under the present system anywhere at the South, for cotton picking, would of themselves be sufficient to turn the scale in favour of the free-labour cotton grower.
The error of the assumption by Mr. Russell, that large gangs of unwilling labourers are essential or important to cotton production in the United States, is, I trust, apparent. And as to the more common and popular opinion, that the necessary labour of cotton tillage is too severe for white men in the cotton-growing climate, I repeat that I do not find the slightest weight of fact to sustain it. The necessary labour and causes of fatigue and vital exhaustion attending any part, or all, of the process of cotton culture does not compare with that of our July harvesting; it is not greater than attends the cultivation of Indian corn in the usual New England method. I have seen a weakly white woman the worse for her labour in the cotton field, but never a white man, and I have seen hundreds of them at work in cotton fields under the most unfavourable circumstances, miserable, dispirited wretches, and of weak muscle, subsisting mainly, as they do, on corn bread. Mr. De Bow estimates one hundred thousand white men now engaged in the cultivation of cotton, being one ninth of the whole cotton force (numerically) of the country.[53] I have just seen a commercial letter from San Antonio, which estimates that the handful of Germans in Western Texas will send ten thousand bales of cotton, the production of their own labour, to market this season. If it should prove to be but half this, it must be considered a liberal contribution to the needed supply of the year, by those who, following Mr. Russell, have considered Western Texas out of the true cotton region, and taking the truth of the common planters’ assertion for granted, have thought Africans, working under physical compulsion, the only means of meeting the demand which could be looked to in the future of the United States.
It would not surprise me to learn that the cultivation of cotton by the German settlers in Texas had not, after all, been as profitable as its cultivation by the planters employing slaves in the vicinity. I should attribute the superior profits of the planter, if any there be, however, not to the fitness of the climate for negro labour, and its unfitness for white labour, but to the fact that his expenses for fencing, on account of his larger fields and larger estate, are several hundred per cent. less than those of the farmer; to the fact that his expenses for tillage, having mules and ploughs and other instruments to use at the opportune moment, are less than those of the farmer, who, in many cases, cannot afford to own a single team; to the fact that he has, from experience, a better knowledge of the most successful method of cultivation; to the fact that he has a gin and a press of his own in the midst of his cotton fields, to which he can carry his wool at one transfer from the picking; by which he can put it in order for market expeditiously, and at an expense much below that falling upon the farmer, who must first store his wool, then send it to the planter’s gin and press and have it prepared at the planter’s convenience, paying, perhaps, exorbitantly therefor; and, finally, to the fact that the planter deals directly with the exporter, while the farmer, the whole profit of whose crop would not pay his expenses in a journey to the coast, must transfer his bale or two to the exporter through two or three middle-men, carrying it one bale at a time, to the local purchaser. Merchants will never give as good prices for small lots as for large. There are reasons for this which I need not now explain. I consider, in short, that the disadvantages of the farmer in growing cotton are of the same nature as I have before explained with those which long ago made fire-wood of hand-looms, and paupers of those who could be nothing else but hand-loom weavers, in Massachusetts. Exactly how much is gained by the application of labour with the advantage of capital and combination of numbers over its isolated application as directed by individuals without capital in a slaveholding region, I cannot estimate, but no one will doubt that it is considerable. Nevertheless, in all the cotton climate of the United States, if a white farmer has made money without slaves, it will be found that it has been, in most cases, obtained exclusively from the sale of cotton. If cotton is a plant the cultivation of which by free or white labour is especially difficult, how is it that, with the additional embarrassments arising from a lack of capital, his gains are almost exclusively derived from his cotton crop?
But I may be asked, if combination is what is needed to make cotton a source of more general prosperity at the South, why is there no such thing as a joint-stock cotton plantation in Mississippi, as there are joint-stock cotton mills in Massachusetts, the stock in which is in large part owned by those employed in them? I ask, in reply, how is it that the common way of obtaining breadstuffs in Northern Alabama is to sow three pecks of seed wheat on hard stubble ground, plough it under with unbroken bullocks, led with a rope, and a bull-tongue plough, and finally to garner rarely so much as six bushels from an acre? How is it that while in Ohio the spinning-wheel and hand-loom are curiosities, and homespun would be a conspicuous and noticeable material of clothing, half the white population of Mississippi still dress in homespun, and at every second house the wheel and loom are found in operation? The same influences which condemn the majority of free labourers in Alabama to hand-looms, homespun, and three hundred pounds of wheat to the acre, as the limit of production, also condemn them to isolated labour, poor soil, poor tools, bad management, “bad luck,” small crops, and small profits in cotton culture.
The following passages from a letter published in the New York Times present convincing evidence that it is no peculiarity of the Western Texas climate, but only the exceptional social condition with which its people are favoured, that enables free white labour to be employed in increasing the cotton production of the country. I have ascertained that the author of the letter is known to the editor of the Times, and is esteemed a gentleman of veracity and trustworthy judgment.
“I am well acquainted with Eastern Mississippi, south of Monroe county, and there are few settlements where my name or face is unknown in the following counties, over the greater part of which I have ridden on horseback, to wit: Loundes, Oktibleha, Choctaw, Carroll, Attalla, Winston, Noxubee, Kemper, Nashoba, Leake, Scott, Newton, Lauderdale, Clarke, Smith, and Jasper. After four years’ travel through these counties, transacting business with great numbers of their inhabitants, stopping at their houses, conversing much with them, and viewing their mode of living, I unhesitatingly answer that white men can and do labour in the cotton field, from Christmas to Christmas following; and that there, as elsewhere, prudence, industry, and energy find their universal reward: success and wealth.
“In the counties of Choctaw, Winston, Nashoba, Newton, and Smith, there are very few large plantations; most of those having slaves holding but two or three, while those who own none are in the majority; yet these are all cotton-growing counties, and the staple of their cotton, poor as their lands are, is equal to the average sold in the Mobile market. Where the young farmer is enterprising and go-ahead, his cotton is usually superior. * * *