And the poor fellow had come to stay. Not even his place in the corner would he want now! No place about the scanty board! Just to stay—that was all; not to offend by his laziness, or to annoy with his ugly, shambling figure, and his no-count ways. Just “come home to stay!”
And there the baby slept quietly, all unconscious of the shadow and the mystery that hung above his wise little head—unconscious of the shabby old watcher, and the woman on the floor, dreaming, perhaps, of the swinging butterflies and the chaffing birds and the brook flashing in the sunshine. And there was old Bob—brave, at last, through love—“come home.”
Out of the storm like a night-bird! In the door stealthily like a thief! Groping his way to the bedside through the dark like a murderer! But there was no danger in him—no ill-omen about him. It was only old Bob, come home, “come home to stay!”
He had clasped the little hand he loved so well in his rough palm and cuddled it close, as if he hoped to hold it always—fondled it in his hands, as if he hoped to ride his own life on the spring-tide that gathered in its rosy palm, or to catch that young life in the ebbing billows that wasted from his cold fingers. But no; the baby was “too much for him!” And the young heart, all unconscious and all perverse, sent the rich blood through the little arm, down the slender wrist, and into the dimpled fist, where it pulsed and throbbed uneasily, as it broke against the chill, stark presence of Death!
COTTON AND ITS KINGDOM.[[1]]
[1]. Reprinted from Harper’s Magazine, Oct., 1881.
IT has long been the fortune of the South to deal with special problems—slavery, secession, reconstruction. For fifty years has the settlement of these questions engaged her people, and challenged the attention of the world. As these issues are set aside finally, after stubborn and bloody conflict, during which she maintained her position with courage, and abided results with fortitude, she finds herself confronted with a new problem quite as important as either of those that have been disposed of. In the cultivation and handling, under the new order of things, of the world’s great staple, cotton, she is grappling with a matter that involves essentially her own welfare, and is of the greatest interest to the general public. To the slaveholder the growing of cotton was straight and easy, as the product of his land was supplemented by the increase of his slaves, and he prospered in spite of himself. To the Southern farmer of post-bellum days, impoverished, unsettled, and thrown upon free labor, working feverishly with untried conditions, poorly informed as to the result of experiments made by his neighbors, and too impatient to wait upon his own experience, it is quite a different affair. After sixteen years of trial, everything is yet indeterminate. And whether this staple is cultivated in the South as a profit or a passion, and whether it shall bring the South to independence or to beggary, are matters yet to be settled. Whether its culture shall result in a host of croppers without money or credit, appealing to the granaries of the West against famine, paying toll to usurers at home, and mortgaging their crops to speculators abroad even before it is planted—a planting oligarchy of money-lenders, who have usurped the land through foreclosure, and hold by the ever-growing margin between a grasping lender and an enforced borrower—or a prosperous self-respecting race of small farmers, cultivating their own lands, living upon their own resources, controlling their crops until they are sold, and independent alike of usurers and provision brokers—which of these shall be the outcome of cotton culture the future must determine. It is certain only in the present that the vigor of the cotton producers and the pace at which they are moving are rapidly forcing a settlement of these questions, and that the result of the experiments now swiftly working out in the South will especially concern a large part of the human race, from the farmer who plods down the cotton row, cutting through his doubts with a hoe, to the spinner in Manchester who anxiously balances the totals of the world’s crop.
It may be well to remark at the outset that the production of cotton in the South is practically without limit. It was 1830 before the American crop reached 1,000,000 bales, and the highest point ever reached in the days of slavery was a trifle above 4,500,000 bales. The crop of 1880-81 is about 2,000,000 in excess of this, and there are those who believe that a crop of 8,000,000 bales is among the certainties of the next few years. The heavy increase in the cotton crop is due entirely to the increase of cotton acreage brought about by the use of fertilizers. Millions of acres of land, formerly thought to be beyond the possible limit of the cotton belt, have been made the best of cotton lands by being artificially enriched. In North Carolina alone the limit of cotton production has been moved twenty miles northward and twenty miles westward, and the half of Georgia on which no cotton was grown twenty years ago now produces fully half the crop of the State. The “area of low production” as the Atlantic States are brought to the front by artificial stimulation is moving westward, and is now central in Alabama and Florida. But the increase in acreage, large as it is, will be but a small factor in the increase of production, compared to the intensifying of the cultivation of the land now in use. Under the present loose system of planting, the average yield is hardly better than one bale to three acres. This could be easily increased to a bale an acre. In Georgia five bales have been raised on one acre, and a yield of three bales to the acre is credited to several localities. President Morehead, of the Mississippi Valley Cotton Planters’ Association, says that the entire cotton crop of the present year might have been easily raised in fourteen counties along the Mississippi River. It will be seen, therefore, that the capacity of the South to produce cotton is practically limitless, and when we consider the enormous demand for cotton goods now opening up from new climes and peoples, we may conclude that the near future will see crops compared to which the crop of the past year, worth $300,000,000, will seem small.
Who will be the producers of these vast crops of the future? Will they be land-owners or tenants—planters or farmers? The answer to this inquiry will be made by the average Southerners without hesitation. “Small farms,” he will say, “well tended by actual owners, will be the rule in the South. The day of a land-holding oligarchy has passed forever.” Let us see about this.