CHAPTER IV.

COTTON PRODUCTION.

SOME years ago the Legislature of Massachusetts made a law requiring that children of a certain age, employed in the factories of that State, should be sent to school a certain number of weeks in the year. While visiting the factories to ascertain whether this wise provision of the State government was complied with, an officer of the State inquired of the agent of one of the principal factories at New Bedford, whether it was the custom to do anything for the physical, intellectual, or moral welfare of the work people. The answer would not have been out of place in the captain of a coolie ship: We never do; as for myself, I regard my work people as I regard my machinery. They must look out for themselves, as I do for myself."-WILLIAM MATHEWS, LL.D.

OUR

UR business system has regarded the people very much the same way. Capital calls no halt.

in the race for gain. The general prosperity of the people—their welfare-is not the question. Progress is measured by the aggregate capital of the few. There are said to be fifty millionaires in the South. What about the 18,000,000? Comparisons may be odious, but they often convey alarming truths. It takes 360,000 people to make one millionaire.

Mr. Henry W. Grady in an address to the young men of a Southern university, in 1889, said: “Our great wealth has brought us profit and splendor, but the status itself is a menace. A home that costs

$3,000,000, and a breakfast that costs $5,000, are disquieting facts to the millions who live in a hut and dine on a crust. The fact that a man ten years from poverty has an income of $20,000,000, and his two associates nearly as much, from the control and arbitrary pricing of an article of universal use, falls strangely on the ears of those who hear it, as they sit empty-handed, while children beg for bread. Economists have held that wheat grown everywhere could never be cornered by capital. And yet one man in Chicago tied the wheat crop in his handkerchief, and held it until a sewing woman in my city, working for 90 cents a week, had to pay him 201 cents tax on the sack of flour she bore home in her famished hands. Three men held the cotton crop until the English spindles were stopped, and the lights went out in 3,000,000 English homes. Last summer, one man cornered pork until he had levied a tax of $3 per barrel on every consumer, and pocketed a profit of millions. The Czar of Russia would not have dared do these things. And yet they are no secrets in this free government of ours! They are known of all men; and my countrymen, no argument can follow them, and no plea excuse them, when they fall on the men who, toiling, yet suffer; who hunger at their work, and who can not find food for their wives with which to feed the infants that hang famishing at their breasts."

These may be regarded as pessimistic views, but the hard facts of the condition of the two great factors, capital and labor, are alarm signals.

The New Orleans Daily Picayune of June 27, 1889,

in its comments on the address of Mr. Grady, shows clearly and tersely the end to which this condition is unmistakably tending:

"The prophet of evil is not a popular personage, but he is a wise one if his forecasts be well founded.

'Without doubt the greatest danger which to-day threatens the safety of our free American institutions is the rapid and enormous aggregation and concentration of wealth. This is the richest country in the world; it will soon possess more citizens with greater fortunes than has ever before been known in the annals of civilization. This concentration of wealth in the hands of a few means a corresponding drawing away from the many of comfort, competence, and the just recompense of labor. The more rich men, the more paupers. One extreme necessitates the other.

This concentration of wealth and corresponding concentration of poverty combine to produce the overthrow of democratic institutions, and to establish in their stead a powerful centralized government. For if the possessors of great wealth shall demand a strong government to protect them from the aggressions of the pauper masses, so also the indigent and improvident classes will call upon the government to seize upon all property and all industries, and administer them for the benefit of the whole people. These are the dangers which threaten, and they should alarm even the most enthusiastic optimist."

The debts of the people, incident to the credit system of the Southern States, have been no small. factor in bringing about the over-production of the great staple crop. Men in debt, want money. Farmers know that cotton is the only crop that will bring money. In their opinion there is no time for anything else. They owe for land, for mules, for supplies of all sorts-bought at high prices. Cotton brings the money, and money pays debts.

What matters it if corn and meat raising is neg

1

lected, so a large cotton crop is made? This will deliver the man from his troubles. Thus reasons the average farmer.

For years a class of merchants encouraged their credit customers to raise cotton exclusively, or very largely. They reasoned very naturally and very logically, that, the more goods sold to farmers, the greater their sales and the greater their aggregate profits. Corn, bacon, and pickled pork are just as good commodities on which to make money as molasses, calico, and brogans. Mr. Henry W. Grady in his second article in the New York Ledger, 1889, writing on "The Era of Speculation in the South," states how this class of dealers viewed the matter of cotton raising: "When he (the farmer) saw the wisdom of raising his own corn, bacon, grasses, and stock, he WAS NOTIFIED that reducing his cotton. acreage was reducing his line of credit. He was thus helpless. Carrying this burden of usury, and buying everything he needed, and having stocked his farm on credit, he made slow progress." What other progress could he make? Once in debt, he was forced to raise cotton to the neglect of corn and meat raising, no matter how ruinous. The debts of the farmer bound him to cotton. He was powerless.

He took all the chances as to price. If the cotton rose in price, the farmer was fortunate. He saw a rift in the dark cloud. His spirit rose in proportion to the price, and his purpose was soon formed to raise more cotton. He looked with wonder at the long-headed wisdom of his merchant who had ad

vised him to raise a big cotton crop as the road out of debt. If the price fell, the farmer plunged deeper in debt. The fetters that bound him were tightened. During the first four years, after the war, the price of cotton danced up and down, generally and alarmingly down. In 1866, it was 65 cents; in 1867, it went down to 40 cents. That meant a loss of $117 per bale of 450 pounds. It was a loss of $5,850 on fifty bales in one year. That farmer had all, or nearly all, his corn and meat to buy. No wonder he lost his breath, and a cold, dreary doubt suggested itself as to the Solomonic wisdom of the merchant. That doubt was as cheerless and as benumbing as the lack of $5,850. "What must I do?" said Farmer Jones to his merchant. "Plant more cotton; it is the only way out of debt, and it is the backbone of credit." More cotton was planted. In 1868, the price of cotton went down to 114 cents. From 40 cents in 1867 to 114 cents in 1868 was a tremendous leap downward. In the mean time provisions kept up. Bacon, 22 to 23 cents; molasses, from $1 to $1.25 per gallon; sugar, 15 to 22 cents per pound; coffee, from 30 to 32 cents; a plow, $7; thread, 121⁄2 cents a spool; flour, from $11 to $12 per barrel; corn, $1.50 per bushel; calico, 20 cents per yard; cottonade, from 40 to 50 cents per yard; lard, 28 cents per pound; nails, 10 cents per pound; candles, 32 cents; Irish potatoes, $7 per barrel; russet shoes, $2.75 per pair; Lowells, 28 cents; cotton ties, 10 cents; and bagging, 35 cents; coal oil, $1 per gallon; matches, $5 per gross; brogans, $2.50