The limit to the production of cotton is in the capacity of the plantation force to pick the amount cultivated by the field hands; but the whole available force is insufficient, and large quantities are lost. The policy of the planters being to buy out the small landholders in their neighborhood, they have no extra force upon which to draw. Olmsted says: 'I much doubt if the harvest demand of the principal cotton districts of Mississippi adds five per cent. to their field-hand force. I observed the advantage of the free-labor system exemplified in Western Texas, the cotton-fields in the vicinity of the German village of New Braunfils having been picked far closer than any I had before seen,—in fact perfectly clean. One woman was pointed out to me who had, in the first year she had seen a cotton field, picked more cotton in a day than any slave in the county.'
'Substitute the French system (that of small allotment or parcellement) for the Mississippi system in cotton-growing, and who can doubt that the cotton supply of the United States would be greatly increased?'
Dr. Cloud, the most intelligent writer upon cotton cultivation I have been able to find, is urgent in his advice to manure the land, practice rotation of crops, and produce larger crops upon fewer acres. But the universal practice is precisely the reverse; the process of exhaustion is followed year after year; cotton is planted year after year; the seed—which Northern men would cultivate for oil alone, and which exhausts the land ten times faster than the fibre—is mostly wasted; in the words of a Southern paper, 'The seed is left to rot about the gin-house, producing foul odors, and a constant cause of sickness.' The land is cropped until it is literally skinned, and then the planter migrates to some new region, again to drive out the poor whites, monopolize the soil, and leave it once more to grow up to 'piney woods.'
Note again the warning words of Dr. Cloud: 'With a climate and soil peculiarly adapted to the production of cotton, our country is equally favorable to the production of all the necessary cereals, and as remarkably favorable to the perfect development of the animal economy, in fine horses, good milch cows, sheep and hogs; and for fruit of every variety, not tropical, it is eminently superior. Why is it, then, that we find so many wealthy cotton planters, whose riches consist entirely of their slaves and worn-out plantations?'
No crop would be more remunerative to a small farmer, with a moderate family to assist in the picking season, than cotton.
Upon the fertile lands of Texas, which produce one to two bales of cotton to the acre, ten acres of cotton is the usual allotment to each hand, with also sufficient land in corn and vegetables to furnish food for the laborer and his proportion of the idle force upon the plantation, which are two to one, without reckoning the planter and overseer and their families. Now, upon the absurd supposition that a free man, with a will in his work, would do no more work than a slave, what would be the result of his labor? 1st, food for his family; 2d, 10 acres of cotton, at 500 pounds to the acre, 5000 pounds, at 10 cents per pound, or $500. But the result would be much greater, for, as a Southern man has well said, 'the maximum of slave labor would be the minimum of free labor;' and the writer can bring proof of many instances where each field hand has produced 13, 15, and even 18 bales of cotton in a year. With the denser population which would follow the emancipation of the slaves and the breaking up of the plantation system, a harvest force for the picking season would be available, and one man would as easily cultivate 20 to 25 acres of cotton, with assistance in the picking season, as he could thirty acres of corn, the usual allotment to each hand upon the corn land of Texas.
The very expense of slave labor is a proof of the profit which must be derived from it. The writer has elsewhere estimated the cost of slave labor at $20 per month, which statement has been questioned, because no allowance was made for the increase of the live stock. Now it is well understood that where the women are worked in the fields in such a manner as to make their labor pay, the increase of live stock is much smaller, and the business of breeding is left to the first families in Virginia and other localities where the land has been exhausted (readers will pardon a plain statement,—it will cause them to realize the full horror of the business). The slaves in the cotton States increased from 1850 to 1860 33-88/100 per cent., in all the other slave States 9-61/100 per cent. The surplus increase in the cotton States, above the average, was 190,632. Where did they come from?[3] At $900 each, this surplus represents a capital of $171,568,800. How was this sum earned, and to whom was it paid?
Let us examine the estimate of $20 per month, and, although it is admitted that female field hands do not bear many children, take the average increase of the country, or 2-335/1000 per cent. per annum.
The standard of value for an A 1 field hand is $100 for each cent per pound of the price of cotton, say ten cents per pound, $1000, and the standard of value for all the slaves upon a plantation is one-half the value of a field hand.