SF 375
.A87
Copy 1

Freee, P UPON
THE UPLAND

CeO Tot Ow

Bel Bele) (Sy 64 2 a
Some Other Matters.

AN ADDRESS Prepared.
for Submission to the
Southern Cotton Spin-
ners’ Association at
Their Meeting to be
Held in Charlotte, N.
C., May 14th and 15th,
193 TT TT I

By EDWARD ATKIN-
SON, of Massachusetts,
EL. D. of the State
University of South
Carolina.

wiv ‘eg is

~s i a wy Ly i A Wi 4
aif, LE LU] y y istCcr ove

of Bdward Ackinson.

SHEEP UPON THE) UPLAND COTTON, FIEEDS;
AND SOME OTHER MATTERS.

Gentlemen of the Southern Cotton Spinners’ Association:

When I first received the invitation to attend your meet-
ing and to speak to you on the matter of insurance, I thought
I would not risk the long railway trip, but would send my
paper to be read to you. Later it occurred to me that here
might be an opportunity to address you on the fundamental
conditions underlying the whole cotton industry of the
world, by the right development of which not only your cot-
ton manufactures, but our own may be promoted, or by the
neglect of which all may be retarded.

The first opportunity ever given to a Northern anti-slave-
ryman to speak words of truthand soberness toSouthern men
was, I believe, extended to me by the invitation to address a
few of the leading men of your section in the Senate Cham-
ber of Georgia, in 1880, on how to establish a cotton exposi-
tion in all its parts. I decided to make that address plain
and simple, and under the guise of a cotton exposition to
bring about an exhibit of the great potential of the South-
land in mineral, timber and agriculture. In order to make
this work effective I decided to draw the contrast between
the past system of labor, the present and the future, from
the standpoint of the economist who had always been an
active opponent of slavery. You will observe that all the
concepts of the political economist are and must be based
upon personal liberty and upon the equal right of every man,
without distinction of race or color, to achieve the highest
position in art, or industry that may fall within his capacity.
That fundamental principle or rule of action needs to be

3

re-stated to-day with all the force with which I endeavored
to state it in the Senate Chamber of Georgia in 1880.

My Southern friends imputed to me and to that speech
more credit than I should ever dare take to myself, for the
influence which it had in opening new lines of progress
throughout the Southland. As I am now long past the three
score years and ten of active life, I may yet more surely ad-
dress you, perhaps pointing out some of your shortcomings
without giving offense. But if offense be taken toward one
who simply stands fast upon the principle of liberty estab-
lished by the great statesmen of the South as well as the
North, in tiie early history of this country, then let him
take warning of the fateful significance of his position. He
will be wrecked if he dashes himself against the rock of lib-
erty. Ir may even happen, on the other hand, as | once
said in a great public meeting in Atlanta, that the children
of Confederate soldiers may sometime erect a bronze statue
to John Brown on the heights of Harper’s Ferry in token
of the liberty which he brought to the white men of the
South. Within three months after that speech a most re-
markable article, written by an ex-Confederate officer, ap-
peared in the “Century” magazine on that very subject, the
emancipation of the white men of your section.

Can I go any farther in challenging your attention? There
can be no limited or partial application of the principle of
liberty in a nation which is founded on that principle. Lin-
coln said, ““No nation can exist, half free and half slave.”’
It is equally true that while a section may continue to exist
in a feeble and fitful way, half enfranchised and half dis-
franchised, it can never thrive or prosper to the full meas-
ure of its resources, but will languish for years as the Island
of Jamaica did. When the slaves of the British Islands were
emancipated the owners were compensated and were endow-
ed with the entire power of legislation. ‘Their main inter-
est was in their sugar plantations and their sugar factories,
in which the work of the laborer was arduous in the ex-
treme and but ill paid. The emancipated negroes left these
works, established themselves all over the island on little

4

plots of land, where they followed the smaller arts of culti-
vation, picking pimento, raising their own supplies. ‘They
were well housed according to their standard; they began to
prosper, but the exports of the island diminished and the
great sugar factories were short of operatives. What hap-
pened? The white planters controlling legislation turned
ihe whole power of taxation against the colored workmen,
taxing their roofs, taxing their windows, putting differential
taxes on their imported supplies, and in this way tried to
force them back into the sugar factories. What ensued?
The ruin of the island for half a century. Yet of late, in
spite of the continued existence of differential taxes, that
island has begun to prosper since the Yankees developed its
resources, gaining slowly and surely in the common welfare
of the masses of the people, while the sugar plantations have
all gone to ruin. Only within the present year have those
differential taxes been adjusted to the new conditions.

What is Chamberlain proposing in South Africa except
the same thing, namely, to put hut taxes and other taxes
upon the colored inhabitants, in order to make it, necessary
for them to earn money with which to pay their taxes, and
thus indirectly force them into the mines. That plan will
fail as every plan must fail economically which is not con-
sistent with justice, equal rights and liberty under equal
laws. Whatever the conditions of the franchise may be, no
State or section will attain the full measure of its prosperity
where any effort is made to draw that distinction on the
color line.

Now rebuke me 1f you please for bringing politics into
a business meeting, but before you do so let me ask you,
what is business? It is the conduct of commerce, manufac-
tures, agriculture and the exchange of products, product,
for product, service for service. It rests on mutual benefit
and mutual interest. And what are politics? The conduct
of the business of government; the making of laws; the
establishment of liberty and equal rights, to the end that the
mutual benefits ‘and opportunities may be shared by all, rich
and poor, black and white, so that each according to his

5

ability and opportunity may attain whatever standard of
welfare his intelligence and character entitle him to.

Gentlemen of the South, it was in similar terms that I ad-
dressed the leading men of Georgia and South Carolina in
the Senate Chamber of Georgia, in 1880. It is on these plain
terms that, | have spoken and written many times in many
places in your Southland. This is probably the last time I
shall have the opportunity to speak within your boundaries.
I am now addressing men of capacity and intelligence, the
leaders of the new industries of the New South, to whom
I may appeal, admitting that in some respects the men who
are within and who are engaged in the great problem which
must be solved, may have knowledge that I do not possess;
but also asking you to bear in mind that one who is accus-
tomed to the impartial and unprejudiced scientific investiga-
tion of economic problems often gets a broader view and a
more accurate conception of general truths than those who
are in the heat of what may be called a great industrial as
well as social contest. You may be assured that one prin-
ciple is supreme:

“You may take the sun out of the sky
Ere Freedom out of man.”

We know the stupendous difficulties which are imposed
upon you. We know that our ancestors are responsible as
well as yours. We attempt neither to dictate nor to control.
We rest assured that justice will be done by the true leaders
of your great Southland. You have our sympathy, and
we can only make suggestion. There will be errors on your
part, and there will be errors on our part. Not in less than
a century of liberty will the wrongs of more than two cen-
turies of slavery be redressed. We know from our own ex-
perience and from the difficulties which the enormous immi-
gration of ignorant foreigners impose upon us, that this
problem is one of the most profoundly difficult, but you may
rest assured that no such question can ever be settled by
compromise with wrong, and nothing will ever be establish-
ed except that which is right.

6

One suggestion I may make at this point. Large sums
of money are being contributed in aid of Southern educa-
tion. Fears are expressed that the contributors may not ad-
just the conditions to those which you are assumed to com-
prehend more fully than those who give the money. I think
there need be no such fears, and some of the objections al-
most seem to indicate a fear lest the poor black, eager for
schooling, should for a time attain a better material position
than the poor white, who has not yet had even as good an
opportunity as the black.

Now let us glance over the conditions which have enabled
the great Western and Southwestern States like Oklahoma,
to build school-houses even in advance of suitable dwellings
for those whose children are to attend the schools. Virginia,
North Carolina, South Carolina and I believe Georgia and
other States surrendered to the nation a great part of the
western and northwestern territory. When the nation began
to dispose of these public lands large areas were wisely re-
served to enable the settlers to establish schools. From these
resources more than sixty million dollars have been derived
and expended in the construction of school-houses, while the
Southern States that gave over to the nation the title to this
vast territory have received nothing or next to nothing. You
have a claim of right, not of charity, that the avails of pub-
lic lands, still coming in in very considerable amounts, shall
be assigned by the nation to you, in order to enable you to
establish popular education in the cotton kingdom as fully as
it has been established in the West. Texas retained her pub-
lic lands and has the greatest potential endowment for schooi
purposes of any State in the Nation. Whydo you not combine
in demanding of the nation your share in the avails of these
public lands, in some measure equal to the share which has
been devoted to common schools in the great West? New
England will aid you and I doubt not the Middle States
would support you in this demand, which would be of right.

Now with this introduction, which it seemed fit that some
one should put before the thinking men of your States, I will
submit to you a plain statement of the reasons why you

i

ought to fold sheep on your partially exhausted cotton fields
in this upland or Piedmont, district.

The last counsel that our great War Governor, John A.
Andrew, gave to his friends a little before his death in 1866,
was to enter upon “the vigorous pursuit of peace in our rela-
tions with the Southern States.” I have always kept that
counsel in view in my Southern addresses.

It happened that when I first spoke in the Senate Cham-
ber of Georgia I almost unwittingly gave utterance to a
statement from which the cotton seed oil industry was pres-
ently generated. I said that if we had possessed a variety of
the cotton plant producing no fibre but only seed, it would
long since have been one of the most valuable crops in the
United States. It seemed to me the statement of a most
obvious fact, but it proved that to my hearers it was a most
startling almost incredible suggestion. What have we wit-
nessed since 1881 in the utilization of cotton seed? I need
not measure it in money or attempt to measure its impor-
tance.

Sheep on the cotton field will yield yet greater results. The
last time I had occasion to speak 'to a picked body of men
was at the last Atlanta Exposition, where I went with the
late editor of the Philadelphia “Times.” Our friends of
Georgia and South Carolina gave us a reception, and after’
we had been treated with the usual Southern hospitality and
had passed our compliments to each other in mutual admira-
tion according to the customary method on such occasions,
one of my Southern friends called out, “This isn’t your way,
Atkinson; hit us, you always do.’ To which I replied, “But
I am your guest; this is not the right occasion.” “Oh,” he
rejoined, “we give you leave. You always hit straight from
the shoulder, and we get some good sense.” “All right,”
said I, “if you give me leave I will hit.” I then proceeded.

“T have come down again through your Piedmont district,
witnessing the vast improvements that you have made in
less than a single generation since the devastation of war,
but casting my thought toward the future I still witness one
great deficiency. I advise you to return to your respective

8

capitals and by act of legislation take off the palmetto from
the State seal of South Carolina and the emblems of jus-
tice from the State seal of Georgia, substituting a yellow
dog rampant, with the motto, “Cave Canem.” The dog rules
you, and so long as that is the case you can attain nothing
like the position in agriculture to which your soil, climate
and conditions entitle you. I am informed that every poor
man keeps two dogs and every d—n poor man has four. Un-
til you muzzle those dogs you cannot put sheep upon your
cotton fields or upon your mountains or your valleys with
any sense of security.”

Well, they threw up their hands and admitted that I had
hit them in a very tender spot. I do not know what prog-
ress you have made since then. I do know that you have
improved your cattle and that you are developing a big cat-
tle industry in the mountains of Virginia and North Caro-
lina. I do know that improved breeds of sheep are pervad-
ing Western Virginia, some parts of Virginia proper and
I believe some parts of North Carolina. You know more
about that than I do. But I wish to bring you down to the
Piedmont upland district, where you may attain as para-
mount, a control over the production of the fine clothing
wools of the world as you have attained in the production
of cotton in the cotton States. You may leave the long wool
sheep and the sheep that can only be gathered in small flocks
for the mountain valleys and for the hillsides, turning your
attention to the merino and the cross breeds that can be fold-
ed together in large numbers and can be used in the most
effective manner for renovating the partially exhausted sur-
face soil of this great Piedmont district.

Can I be mistaken? What are the requisite conditions for
the production of fine clothing wools or merino breeds of
sheep? Are they not a light soil, well drained, where the
sheep will be free from foot rot; a climate not too hot in
summer or through long periods to make the wool hairy, not
too cold to require the housing of the sheep in winter; suf-
ficiently fertile soil to yield ample food products to carry the
sheep through periods when the grass has been consumed or

9

dried away; freedom from excessive storms, and comforta-
ble conditions for those who care for the flocks? There will
be of course the difficulties which are met with in all sheep
growing. ‘There are special diseases, but there are specific
remedies for nearly every type of such disease, while others
are sure to be found. If such are the conditions, are they
not the exact and special conditions of the Piedmont Plateau
and of the uplands of Georgia? I only know this subject
by theory and by study. You ought to know it a great deal
better than I do. What reply have you to make to my ques-
tions? Why do you not make wool upon your cotton fields
and renovate your lands by putting sheep upon them?

I may venture to quote to you, as I did to your friends in
Georgia in 1880, the dictum of a Southern man on the old
process of raising cotton and other crops. Governor Wise
rendered the verdict on agriculture as it was, when he said
that “‘the niggers skinned the land and the white men skin-
ned the niggers.” You have not fully surmounted the evil
of that skinning of the land. That is proved by the relative-
ly very small ratio of stock in the Atlantic Cotton States as
compared to the aggregate product of your fields and as com-
pared to the quantities of stock that are carried in other agri-
cultural districts. If you study carefully the details of the
census you will find that the progress and prosperity of agri-
culture correspond to the proportion of cattle, hogs and
sheep that are maintained on the farms from which the other
great commercial crops are drawn, the fertilizers made on
the farm being restored to the soil, or in some cases, as in
Massachusetts and a few other Eastern States, the fertilizers
drawn from the great cities as well as that supplied by stock
upon the farms being applied to the maintenance of the soil
or even to the making of the soil.

It is an error to assume that agriculture is a lost art in
New England. The products of the field, of the pasture and
of the market garden were never so large in proportion to
the population of Massachusetts as they are now. Our crops
per acre of Indian corn far exceed the average of your
Scuthern field corn, and there are in the neighborhood of

se)

our cities acres and acres of glass by the hundred under
which early crops are made. ‘These are the most profitable
acres of land, on which a thousand dollars a year may be
spent in fertilizers and in cultivation.

I have therefore again called attention to your great op-
portunity to renovate the uplands of this whole section from
here to Northern Alabama and Mississippi inclusive, by
folding sheep upon your partially exhausted cotton fields.
You are being obliged to go to the bottom lands in Missis-
sippi and to Texas for the long-staple cotton to use in your
fine work, when if you would give as much and as intelligent
study and put as much work into your fields as you are put-
ting into your factories, you would raise all the long-stapled
and strong-stapled cotton that you need, right from here
throughout the Piedmont section. What will you do about
it?

Before replying to this question I desire to call your at-
tention to certain curiously similar conditions in Great
Britain about a hundred and fifty and in the Southern States
about fifty years ago, and to the utterly different conditions
prevailing in New England and the West in the conduct of
agriculture. When in the latter part of the last century
Arthur Young introduced the cultivation of the turnip into
Great Britain, in order to sustain sheep folded upon the
fields, the aristocracy of Great Britain, being the great land
owners, were a class of thoroughly intelligent, progressive
men who owned the land and supplied the capital to the ten-
ant farmers, also a very intelligent class. But Hodge, the
peasant, was anything but intelligent; he was and is a clod-
hopper, without prospect of elevation above his present con-
dition; instructed by parson and the owner to learn that
where his lot had been cast therewith to be content—the
most obnoxious sentiment that ever retarded the progress of
a State or people. Under these conditions the ideas which
Arthur Young brought over from Holland were at once
adopted by the introduction of the sheep, not for the direct
purpose of raising wool and mutton, but for the main pur-
pose of renovating the land and bringing it to its highest

II

condition of production in grain and food crops. From that
date the agriculture of Great Britain has rested upon the
sheep, intelligently developed as compared to the older peri-
ods when, although wool was a main product of Great, Bri-
tain, it was rough, hairy and poor by comparison. Yet you
observe that the highe&t officer of the judiciary of Great Bri-
tain, the Lord Chancellor, sits upon the wool sack as the em-
blem of the nation.

Now what were the corresponding conditions in the South
in agriculture under the old conditions? An aristocracy of
high character and intelligence, conducting their plantations
with the greatest possible intelligence and applying the best
methods that circumstances and ignorant labor would per-
mit, without the intervention of tenant farmers between
them and the laborers, but with the assistance of overseers.
The laborers upon the cotton field, of necessity, possessed a
less measure of intelligence or hope of industrial progress
than the peasants of England. The growers of cotton pos-
sessed an unwholesome monopoly of the production of cot-
ton; they thought it was king when it was not and never had
been. The best thing that could happen to the cotton grow-
ers of the South today would be for good government to be
established in the Argentine Republic. They might then be
subjected to a really serious competition in the effort to sup-
ply the world with cotton of the green seed or common vari-
eties. Egypt can never doit. Her capacity has reached its
maximum. Egyptian cotton supplements our American;
it does not compete. India can never compete. Africa can
never do it. Central Asia can in a small way, for the supply
of Russia. Having too great monopoly of the crop and too
wide an area of land, your progress in the cotton field and
in the handling of the cotton itself is not what it should be
and not what it would be if you were subjected to a reasona-
ble and intelligent competition.

That former method of great plantations went out. The
new methods, the new men and the New South have been
developed. You will develop the growing and handling
of cotton, the renovation of your fields and the support of

12

all your own mills in this district in just proportion to your
development of common intelligence among the masses of
the community. You will succeed in renovating land and in
the introduction and protection of sheep only by muzzling
the cur dog, and that requires intelligence among the masses.

Western agriculture is being subjected to a complete revo-
lution under the influence of the Agricultural Experiment
stations. The old methods of growing sod crops, dealing
with the land as a mine subject presently to exhaustion, have
gone by. The sons.of the pioneers, bred in an intelligent
manner and possessing more ample capital, have turned to
intensive farming. ‘They are dealing with the soil as a lab-
oratory that will yield product in just proportion to the men-
tal energy and intelligence which is applied to its use. With
this application of common ‘sense, general and widely dif-
fused intelligence and the new methods of science, the pro-
ducts of the great prairies of the West and Northwest have
been enormously augmented, the cost has been diminished
and the number of workmen to the ratio of the product has
also been greatly diminished by the substitution of mechan-
ism for manual work.

All this has rested for its possibility upon the common
school and upon the preparation of every boy and girl to take
an intelligent part in the development not only of agriculture,
but of every industry that pervades the great Western and
Southwestern States. But with this progress, land has be-
come too valuable for wool growing, and the product of
hens’ eggs in Ohio is worth twice as much as the wool clip.

I, therefore, press this problem before you—sheep upon
the cotton fields, mainly for renovating the land and doubling
the cotton crop in one or two years, adding the wool clip and
the mutton as an incident. I have submitted several times a
project to set apart a field of four hundred acres to be sur-
rounded by a seven-row, dog-proof, barbed-wire fence; to be
cut into four sections by cross divisions. In the middle a
place reserved for the farm buildings, the cotton gin and
press and other appliances, opening into each field. When I
first planned this the fencing would have cost twelve hun-

13

dred dollars ($12,000). I then proposed to plant the land,
one field in cotton, one in corn, one in cow peas, and to put
sheep on the fourth field, feeding from within or without,
as might happen. The next year move each crop, bring the
sheep over to the cotton field and put cattle and hogs into
some part of the area. In this way I held that the land
would be renovated; meat, would be provided; sheep, wool
and cattle for sale while the cotton crop would be doubled.
Booker Washington has taken this up; don’t let him get
ahead of you.

I have examined all the records in DeBow’s Review and
all the evidence that can be attained, and I can find no reason
why this system should not be adopted upon the uplands of
your Piedmont district, except the incapacity of the farmers
and the ignorance of the field hands, both white and black.
If I have put that too harshly, correct me. There are, of
course, a large number of men who are fully competent to
establish this system—men here before me who can do it if
they will. What prevents you? Is there anything unrea-
sonable, visionary or dangerous in such a simple proposition,
which you can easily correct or vary, knowing the special
conditions better than I do? Do I know the general condi-
tions better than you do or not? Does the man who stands
outside sometimes get a broader view and a more accurate
measure of what can and ought to be done than those who
are in the middle of the struggle? I believe that is often the
case, and having touched upon that and having long since
begun to study the potential of this great Southland, begin-
ning even in 1861 with the issue of an absolutely prophetic
pamphlet on “Cheap Cotton by Free Labor,” in which
pamphlet I also laid down the whole future of the cotton,
seed oil industry in all its details, when there was but one
mill pressing cotton seed in the whole United States, and
that was done secretly for the conversion of the oil into
olive oil—what I remark now is that you have entered upon
the cotton industry more skilfully and more successfully in
the making of cotton fabrics than you have in dealing with
and preparing the cotton for the factory. The cotton crop

14

as a whole has deteriorated. It is not as well handled or as
well ginned as the cotton produced on the large plantations
was handled and sent to market under the former conditions.
The public ginneries are run at high speed for the largest
possible out turn, and are injuring the cotton year by year
more than it was injured in former days. You have made
slight progress in improvement in baling. With the excep-
tion of American wool, American cotton is more wastefully
dealt with in the primary processes and in getting it to mar-
ket than any other important staple of the world. American
wool is worse yet. Under the obstructive influence of the
present tariff the consumption of wool by the people of the
United States has been reduced from nine pounds to six
pounds per head. The effort to keep out foreign wool has
totally failed, as anyone who knew anything of the subject
predicted that it would fail, but its cost has been doubled by
taxation. ‘The American wool cannot be successfully used
in a large part of the fabrics now made without the admix-
ture of foreign wools, especially the Australian and Argen-
tine, in order to compete with foreign manufacturers who
have wool free of tax.

Under these conditions the production of wool, which is
but a fraction of one per cent. in value on the total value of
our farm products, has diminished in the farming States.
It has increased only in the far Northwest, where great
flocks of what have become known as the “hoofed locusts”
are roaming over and destroying the cattle ranges, grazing
over the mountains and the hillsides, destroying the grass,
destroying the trees and even destroying the soil on which
trees might again grow; thus altering the conditions of the
flow of water in the great rivers on which the Middle West
depends. ‘These flocks of “hoofed locusts” are doing infinite
damage, while sending to market dirty, turdy, bally-handled,
badly-picked wool, of which no buyer can trust a sample, but
is obliged to throw every fleece before he sends it to his fac-
tory. This is the evil influence of efforts to protect a home
industry of this kind. You are not protected by a duty, but
by too great a monopoly of the cotton supply. Here is the

~

15

open field for you to compete freely with the world, without
any tax upon the foreign wool if you can get it removed.
You can raise wool in the Piedmont district, beating the ter-
ritorial wools in quality and quantity, and beating Australia,
where within the last five years one-third of the whole body
of the great flocks of sheep have been destroyed by drought.
You now pay double price for your sham woolen fabrics and
get shoddy at that. That is what is called protection to the
wool grower.

One great difficulty in your Southland is that the condi-
tions of your labor are too arduous, the hours are too long
and the wages or earnings in the field, the workshop and the
factory are too low for the most effective work and the low-
est cost of labor by the unit of product. I have spoken of
this many times before, and when I once uttered these words
at a meeting where Governor Gordon, of Georgia, was pres-
ent, he sent for me to come to his house in the evening. He
told me that. when I said the words, “short hours, high
wages and low cost of production,” he though I was crazy,
but on reflection he had come to the conclusion that I was
right. No one can fail to come to that conclusion. If you
work operatives in the factory on modern, high speed ma-
chinery over-long hours, you make second quality cloth, and
you will rapidly destroy their nervous energy. You wear out
your machinery without knowing it, and your temporary in-
crease in the margin of profit will be of short duration. When
I was in charge of cotton factories, one large mill in Maine
was worked under my supervision 11 hours a day; another
in Massachusetts, on very similar goods, ten hours a day.
We made more money in the Massachusetts mill than we
did in the mill in Maine. I am and have long been satisfied
that ten hours a day five days in the week, and six hours for
Saturday is more profitable than any other system, and as
time goes on you will all come to that conclusion.

Now on high rates of wages and low cost by the unit of
product: Reflect upon it for a moment. In all these arts,
whether in the field, the forest or the factory, to which mod-
ern invention and mechanism have been applied, it requires

16

intelligence, aptitude and gumption to get the best results out
of them. When you get, the best results and the largest
product, you can afford to pay the highest rates of wages
that the force of the product will permit in order to lessen
the cost of your production by employing only skilled work-
men. I have traced this rule in more than fifty arts over
more than fifty years. It is invariable, and while I do not
wish to boast of old Massachusetts, I may venture to say that
on the whole the rates of wages are higher in our fields, in
our workshops and in our factories than they are elsewhere.
When you think that you have got a lower cost of production
because you have lower rates of wages, you may be well as-
sured that it won't last, and that in proportion as your oper-
atives become intelligent they will inevitably drift away to
that point or place or section, whether in cotton spinning,
wood-working or anything else, where the conditions are
best; where the schools are most adequate; where the stand-
ard of life is the highest; and where the wages are the high-
est. At that point the work will be done at the lowest cost
of production by the unit of the yard, the pair of boots, the
pound, or the bushel.

But again, where is your principal home market? Ninety
per cent. of the persons who are occupied for gain in this
country, each of whom supports nearly two others, are wage
earners or are on small salaries or are working on farms
with their farm hands. Among these multitudes is the great
demand for your fabrics and products of every kind. The
demand of the millionaire is but a trifle as compared to the
demand of the millions. Now when wages are high, the
hours of labor moderate and the intelligence of the people
and the standard of living well developed, the demands for
the comforts as well as for the necessities of life will be the
greatest, and there you will find the biggest market. Now
until down here in the Southland you have put all your en-
ergies into elevating the standard of life, developing the abil-
ity and the working capacity and enhancing the wages of the
poor whites and the poor blacks alike by developing greater
ability, leaving the social question to take care of itself, you

17

will have a very limited domestic market for the meanest
kind of goods that can be made. When you reach the stand-
ard of our old Commonwealth of Massachusetts in your ap-
propriations for schools and in the development of the best
conditions for your working people, you may be able to refer
to your records and show as we do, that about every other
person, one in two (about 1,600,000), of the population of
the State has an average deposit in a savings bank of the
safest kind of $350; the total amount according to the re-
port just rendered to the Legislature being but little short,
of $600,000,c00 last year, now exceeding that sum—three
quarters of which or more belongs to the boot and shoe mak-
ers, the clothiers, the factory operatives, the domestic ser-
vants, and yet more to the great multitude of intelligent
mechanics occupied in the lesser industries, whose products
are greater in the aggregate than that of any single group
of factories and in whose work mental and manual energy
are developed in the man and the woman by the very process
of the work itself.

Think of this fora moment. In every branch of industry
—on the farm, in the forest, in the mine, in the workshop
or the factory, wherever modern science and invention have
changed the methods of production, intelligence must be
developed in corresponding measure. That intelligence will
give the clear perception that the workman is worthy of his
hire in proportion to his or her own skill and aptitude.
That will set men and women thinking about their relative
opportunity, leading them to try to find the best place and
the best conditions for their children—and this development
may be found among the lowly as well as among the higher
departments of industry.

Not long ago I met on the New York boat a colored
man, on his way from Virginia to Connecticut. It was in
the early autumn. I fell into talk with him; asked him
where he was going. He said he was going to one of the
large workshops in Connecticut, where he had a perma-
nent, job every winter for about seven months out of the
‘year. His wife and children lived in one of the sleepy

18

towns on the James river, where he owned a little place, and
where he spent his summer. I asked him why he did not
stay in Virginia all the year round and develop some kind
of good work there, to which he replied: ‘No chance dar,
boss; dey ain’t got no energy roun’ dar. We raises our
corn and meat and den I goes up to Connecticut where |
can make some money.” Said I, ‘‘How long are you going
to keep this up?” “Not much longer, boss. I’se bought
a small farm in Connecticut; I’se paying for it. When I
get out of debt, den I moves my fam’ly up into Connecticut
—good schools dar for de chillun; ain't none such in Vir-
ginia.”’

Now suppose you reason a bit on that story, which is
typical of the movement of intelligent labor to the most
favorable points. You need the work of every worker, with-
out regard to race or color, in these Atlantic States. You
need not only to keep what you have, but to bring workmen
from outside. In the competition for laborers, Missouri,
Oklahoma, the Indian Territory and Texas compete with
you, all equally demanding the immigration of men com-
petent to work on the fields, in the mines, the forests and
the workshops, without regard to color. In these States
there has been no interference with the equal rights of men.
The head of the Village Improvement Society, who is:
modifying the conditions of a whole county in Texas, re-
spected and supported alike by all his neighbors, is a colored
man. Wherever individual capacity and character are rec-
ognized, there is the proof of mental and material progress ;
where they are not recognized there is the proof of lack,
both of mental and material progress. Those sections in
which these factors are permitted to do their full work will
steadily and slowly and surely drain away from the unpro-
gressive sections of the country all the most intelligent work-
men, leaving only the drudges, who can do nothing better
for themselves or for their State than to continue their
ignorant and slovenly methods, especially in the conduct of
agriculture. You hold out the most brilliant pictures of
your great resources and of the opportunities that are offered

19

for their development along this whole section of the Atlan-
tic Cotton States. But you are not alone in the possession
of these great resources. Texas is a great undeveloped em-
pire of almost untold resources. The cotton produced by
free labor before the Civil War was rapidly increasing, and
in a short time the economy of free labor would have de-
stroyed the costly slave-grown cotton of other sections, in
the natural course of events. In that State there is no dis-
tinction of race or color, except that which establishes itself
in the social order. If let alone, men vote under such suit-
able conditions as may be rightly established—South or
North—as the condition of the suffrage without regard to
race. In that State there is the most urgent demand for
labor. It will drain neighboring States if they do not give
equal rights and equal opportunities.

The Indian Territory is about to be opened. Oklahoma,
opened only fifteen years ago, contains more than half a
million inhabitants, makes cotton as well as corn and every
other product. In this great area, the two together fifty
thousand square miles, a million laborers may be wanted.
How did these settlers begin? Almost before they had
sheltered themselves in their own dwelling houses they had
begun to build very substantial school-houses, and there they
stand—the primary, the grammar, the high school, the nor-
mal school and the university; solid, substantial buildings,
dominating the section in which they are. Before these set-
tlers had barely housed themselves in comfort or turned the
sod, they had laid the foundation for common education
from the primary school to the university. In this section
the right of suffrage is conditional upon intelligence, but
not upon color, and to that section colored men of standing
and capacity will surely go.

Which will be the first State along the Atlantic coast to
find out that inequality in human rights doesn’t pay? I
venture to guess that it will be the State that has sometimes
been called the Yankee State of the South—Georgia—where
presently the great economic force of equal rights and of

20

suffrage based on intelligence may get the first start toward
the full development of its industrial forces.

Gentlemen, it is neither land, nor mines, nor forests, nor
factories that make the State; it is men who make the State,
and in the exact proportion of their comprehension of the
principle of liberty and of equal rights will be their mental
energy, their moral standing and their political sagacity.

The State to which the most intelligent workmen and
laborers will repair will be the State in which equality before
the law is established and sustained by public opinion; in
which equal opportunities for material progress are offered
without distinction of color, because in that State the work-
men will find the opportunity to earn the highest rates of
wages that the market price of his product will warrant and
yet make that product at, the lowest cost of labor. That
will also be the State in which capital will be abundant,
banking most firmly established, the rate of interest the low-
est, but the aggregate profits the largest, because in that
State will be the greatest expansion of trade and commerce
within its own boundaries and with other States.

You have made more progress than you know toward the
attainment of a high place in raising stock. When I first
began to study the conditions of the cotton kingdom I found
most intelligent statements in the essay of Dr. N. B. Cloud,
of Alabama. What was his verdict at that time? He said:
“You have gullied your hillsides and blasted your prairies,
and being in possession of the best forage plants of the
world, you have rendered yourselves dependent upon the
North for hay to feed your cattle.’ All that is changed
over an increasing section of your agricultural district. The
lespideza holds the soil on your hillsides; the cow pea in
great variety is renovating the soil; the soya bean, of which
I imported a few bushels from China for the Atlanta Expo-
sition of 1881, whence they were distributed in small par-
cels, has become one of your great forage crops. All intelli-
gent planters and farmers have put away the all-cotton
theory, and with diversified agriculture have made great
progress, but as yet nothing compared with what may be

21

accomplished in the future. Fence laws and dog laws are
beginning to be enforced in many sections. Your cattle are
being bred with a view to the conditions of the Southern
climate. One of Booker Washington’s experts, who was at
the Columbian Exposition of 1893, learning the secret of
innoculating milk with the bacterium of June butter, 1s mak-
ing excellent butter from Southern milk, supplying the
markets of Mobile, Montgomery and other places in a way
never attained before. But as yet, you have done nothing
with sheep in the Atlantic Cotton States, where the supreme
opportunity exists for supplying the fine wools of the world.
Only contrast the wool industry of this country with that of
Great Britain, where every county has its special breed,
adapted to the exact conditions of that little county. I went
once with the sheep breeder of another county to see some
Oxford Down sheep that had taken the highest premium in
all Great Britain. He was prepared to buy for breeding in
his own county. The grower said I will sell you the sheep,
but you cannot make Oxford Down wool in your county;
your breed is better adapted to your conditions. Down in
Leicestershire, where the fields are divided by stone walls,
Bakewell bred a short-legged sheep so that they could not
leap over the walls. Think of the Southdown mutton,
equalled in Kentucky if not excelled. Bear in mind the
Shetland wools, the coarse fleeces of the Scotch moors,
woven into the most durable Scotch tweeds, the most ser-
viceable cloth that a man can wear out in the rain and over
the hills, on which you must pay a tax of one hundred per
cent. if you try to supply yourselves with such a foreign lux-
ury. You can equal and excell the wool product of Great
Britain in quantity and variety whenever you apply as much
intelligence to the art and work it out not only with the fine
clothing wools on your upland section, but the long wools
and the medium wools on your hillsides and in your moun-
tain valleys. ,

Georgia is larger than England and Wales, fifty-nine
‘thousand (59,000) square miles; North Carolina is larger
‘than England, forty-eight thousand six hundred (48,600)

ie,

Square miles—each with less waste land. England has over
twenty important breeds of sheep—tLeicester, Cutswold,
Lincoln, Oxford Down, Shropshire, Hampshire Down, Suf-
folk, Dorset. Horn, Kent or Romney March, Devon Long-
wool, Ryeland, Dartmoor, Exmoor, Wensleydale, Roscom-
mon, Limestone, Black-faced Mountain, Lonk and Welsh
Mountain. How many have you? How many might you
have? In two hundred miles of distance east and west,
from the level of the coast lands in North Carolina, to the
top of Roane Mountain, which our great botanist, Dr. Asa
Gray, declared to be the most beautiful mountain in the
world, are found the flora and the fauna of two thousand
mules of distance from the Gulf to the St. Lawrence. What
are you doing with this domain? What are the names of
the special breeds of sheep on the sandy lands of the piney
woods? What is the best cross-breed of the merino on your
partially exhausted cotton and tobacco land? What is the
county name of your best long-wool sheep? I thought I
heard some one say Buncombe. What will be the names
after you have digested this address?

But one thing let me beg of you—improve your breeds
of cattle and sheep, but for heaven’s sake don’t try to im-
prove the razor-backed hog. I won’t have any other ham
in my house, and when properly cooked it beats every kind
of pig meat that there is in the world.

Gentlemen, under the guise of dealing with a merely ma-
terial problem, I have ranged over a wide field. You may
observe that every part of this treatise 1s bound in with the
other, weaving the web that binds society together. If that
web is nct. firmly woven, the three fates of the old myth may
cut the strands and the end of the life of the nation, the
‘State or the section will come.

Again, let me enforce upon your minds the fundamental
principle of political life, of social order and of material
‘prosperity. No nation, no State, no dominant race can
permanently govern another, either by the force of arms or
‘by the force of legislation, without the gravest injury to
‘both. The race which submits to such government is emas-

23

culated and deprived of its power of progress, even if for
the time it may gain in mere material conditions. Witness
the conditions of India at the present time. But the greater
harm falls upon the dominant rulers, nation, State or race.
The effect of this false system is almost invariably to gener-
ate corruption, or else rulers become so arrogant as to ut-
terly fail to comprehend the spirit or soul of the oppressed
people whom they rule—they rely wholly on force to main-
tain their control without regard to human rights, either
individual or collective.

You are at the parting of the ways in these Atlantic and
Gulf Cotton States. The responsibility is upon you, and
you cannot evade it. According to your decision will be the
welfare or the ill-fare of your Southland, and if you err the
errors of the fathers will be visited upon the children even
unto the third and fourth generations.

Gentlemen, the one great lesson that I have learned in
over sixty years of working life, including fifty years of
close observation and study of affairs, is that the righteous
force of commerce, which lives and moves and has its being
in mutual service, will ultimately suppress the brutality of
war and expose the folly of tariff wars. The four corner
stones on which the great structure of this nation is founded
are free men, free soil, free speech and free trade over a
wider area and among a greater number of people within
our own borders than ever enjoyed its benefits before among
civilized States. With our expanding commerce, free trade
with other nations, qualified only by the necessity of collect-
ing a small customs revenue, will soon come.

If every one of these corner stones is not laid firmly. the
whole structure is for the time weakened. The base of all
these foundations is common education and common sense,
assuring industrial peace. Witness one incident to prove
how the engines of warfare may be turned to the support
of industry. Not long ago you added a verse to the Scrip-
tures. My old friend, General Wilder, not unknown to you
in North Carolina, engaged in thirteen great battles around
Chattanooga, in one of which he charged and took a redoubt

24

that had spread death and destruction around it. In the
intervals between the battles he studied the coal and the iron
of that section, and as soon as the war ended he returned and
established great iron works and on the hill he filled up the
embrasures of the redoubt, making it a reservoir. You have
heard of the old time, how they should convert their swords
into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks, but
in this instance the deadly site of war and destruction was
converted into a fountain of living water to nourish the new
industries of the new South.

You may think that my prophecy of industrial peace is
but a vision. Who first spoke those words, “‘peace and good-
will” through long struggle to be attained?

“Peace, aye, to dwell with men,
No strife, no wars; and then
The coupled comfort of those golden hours.

Shall these things come to pass?
Nay, if it be—alas !—
A vision, let us sleep and dream it true;
Or, sane and broad awake,
For its great sound and sake,
‘Take it, and make it Farth’s, and peace ensue!”

25

APPENDIX

To the Address of Edward Atkinson, Upon “Sheep on the
Cotton Fields.”

The slight discussion with Mr. B. W. Hunt, of Eatonton,
Georgia, after this paper was read, taken in connection with
the paper by Mr. Webber on the ‘Cotton Fibre,” makes it
suitable to add a few words to what was read.

Mr. Hunt misapprehended the purport of the address, ap-
parently assuming that my suggestion was to put foreign or
Northern breeds of sheep and cattle upon Southern cotton
fields, he stating what is a well-known fact, that when unac-
climated sheep and cattle are moved to the Atlantic States
they are subject to specific diseases, most of them dying;
but in respect to animals in this case, as in Mr. Webber’s
history cf the cotton plant and the pea-vine, a few escape.
My suggestion was not to attempt to continue the foreign or
Northern breeds, but to develop a breed, especially of sheep
suited to the conditions of every section of every State, im-
mune to the hazards of that particular soil and climate.
Mr. Hunt spoke of his import of the fat-tailed sheep of
Thibet, which I understood him to say had thriven. Why
not cross that breed with an immune sheep of English blood ?
Why not import the hairy sheep from the calcareous soils of
South America and of Asia from which we derive all our
coarse carpet wools, and by crossing that breed with fine
wool sheep of other blood, perhaps get a special breed of
the highest value? It may be observed that the same law
appears to govern the hybrids among plants as developed
by Mr. Webber, as governs hybrids among animals. Some
hybrids become stronger than either of the original types;
some weaker. All that is the matter that should be taken up
by the Agricultural Experiment Stations in the Cotton

26

States until every section and every county has been in-
structed in the right methods of renovating the soil with
acclimated or immune herds of sheep.

Again, let me remark that the farmer who now sells cot-
ton seed, as well as cotton fibre, is like Esau selling his
patrimony for a mess of pottage. He is exhausting his land
and becoming ignorantly dependent upon artificial fertilizers
at heavy cost to restore what he has wasted by selling his
seed. I have no recent analysis of the cotton fibre or of the
cotton seed, but | may go back to my first investigations of
the cotton plant, of which the results were printed in “Cheap
Cotton by Free Labor,” in 1861, when I laid down the whole
future of the cotton seed oil industry. Going back to that
and to the two analyses of seed therein given, it was proved
that the cotton fibre consists almost wholly of carbonaceous
material derived from the atmosphere. The oil is also car-
bonaceous material drawn from the air. The mineral ele-
ments derived from the soil are almost all contained in the
kernel when freed of oil and in the hulls of the seed. Disre-
garding fractions, a bale of cotton fibre of five hundred
(500) pounds will contain not over five (5) pounds of min-
eral element drawn from the soil, while the seed from which
that fibre has been removed contains nearly fifty (50)
pounds, and that fifty pounds is in the kernel and the hull
and not in the oil. ‘These mineral elements consist of pot-
ash, soda, lime, magnesia, phosphoric acid and a few other
minor elements, for all of which high prices are paid for
artificial fertilizers, while the cake made from the same field
is largely exported to Europe to feed cattle and sheep in
foreign lands. Could the force of ignorance any further go?

Lest this view of the matter should not be accepted, com-
ing from a Massachusetts man who never saw a field of
cotton until 1866, I venture to give the evidence of Dr. N. B.
Cloud, of Alabama, to whose article I referred in my ad-
dress. In 1850 or thereabout, the Governor of South Caro-
lina consulted Dr. N. B. Cloud, of Alabama, on how to stop
the waste of soil in South Carolina. Dr. Cloud’s reply was

27

given in my pamphlet on “Cheap Cotton by Free Labor,”
from which I now copy:

“Our own sage Franklin, in his friendly advice to Poor
Richard, has assured us ‘that by constantly taking out of
the meal tub and never putting in, we shall soon find the
bottom.’ Philosophically true, this—good homespun, sound
doctrine; yet plain and simple as be this doctrine. the cotton
planter knows it only in song—his acquaintance with this
golden truth is theoretic only. His exhausted fields, and
dwarfish puny cotton, tell tales more positively contradictory
and gloomy than I have room or inclination to enumerate.

“You nor I, my very dear sir, may never live to see the
day when that very last man shall cease to lay his cotton
rows up one hill and down another, thus draining off the
vitality of his land every three or four feet, to the depth of
his puny plough, or to waste the sure means of keeping up
the fertility of his fields, by feeding his stock in the public
roads.

“The land is first ruined by the one-crop practice of cot-
ton, then turned out to pasture. It soon runs together, pro-
duces little grass and sustains poor stock. The difficulty is
not so much in the injury, which the hungry stock did in
grazing the pasture, as the ruinous system of culture, which
prevented any pasture at all. Land under an improving
system of culture is not thus affected. Under my system,
or any one like it, furnishing the amount and value of pas-
turage that it does, the raising and keeping of stock, mules,
hogs end cattle, necessary to supply the wants of the planta-
tion, becomes a source of absolute profit, the land is made
rich and continues improving in the elements of fertility.

“The rich compost manure applied to the land once every
four years, in quantities sufficient to make a bale of cotton
per acre, continues to improve the land, and thus increase
annually the grain crop and pasturage. All this is simple,
plain and practical.

“This country is objected to by planters and others taking
their cue from them, on account of its ‘short bite’ and sterile
pasturage, as they were pleased to call it. Nor has there

28

been a designed misrepresentation in this; it is the result of
observation derived from the working of this universally
draining system of growing cotton. Now the facts which
my practice and observation under my system have demon-
strated, are these: that no country is equal to this (Ala-
bama) for good and ‘long-nip’ pasturage. Our climate 1s
remarkably favorable to rich and luxuriant pasturage. The
red man of the forest, and the pioneer white man that came
here in advance of our scratching plough, tell us they found
the wild oat and native grasses waving thick, as high as a
man’s head, and so entwined with the wild pea vine, as to
make it difficult to ride among it, all over this country.
Every cotton planter has heard of these fine primitive pas-
ture ranges, and many have seen them. Jf the country or
the climate has been cursed in our appearance as planters
here, it has been in the wasting system that we introduced
and continue to practice.

“With a climate and soil peculiarly adapted to production
of cotton, our country is also equally favorable to the pro-
duction of all the necessary cereals, and as remarkably favor-
able to the perfect development of the animal economy, in
fine horses, fine active mules, good milch cows, superior
sheep and hogs, and for fruit of every variety (not tropical)
it is eminently superior. If this condition of thing's be fact,
and I assert it to be such, why is it that we find so many
wealthy cotton planters, whose riches consist entirely of their
slaves and worn-out plantations ?

“Tn every other section of this country, north, east and
west, the proceeds of the productive industry of the people
in the grand aggregate are retained at home, while we, the
planters of the South, producing annually, from a single one
of our crops, $150,000,000, pay out the grand aggregate to
others for bread, bacon and mules, all of which we may,
under a proper system of plantation economy, grow at home,
and thus we may also retain at home this large sum of gold,
the substance of our fields, to be expended in home improve-
ments.

“T am entirely convinced, from my own experience in

29

making manure, that it is not only practicable, but a per-
fectly easy task to prepare, upon every plantation in the cot-
ton region, great or small, 1,500 bushels of an excellent
article of compost, per annum, to the hand, at a cost of less
than two cents per bushel, by the assistance of the stock of
horses, cows and hogs, upon properly arranged lots.”*

“It is immaterial what number of hands may work on the
place; we allot to each twenty acres, and upon the condition,
proceed to divide the land into four equal parts, adopting the
system of four years’ shift as best suited to our plantation
economy.

‘In the next place, I fix the rotation, and shift thus: five
acres to each hand in cotton, ten acres for grain, and five
acres to lie fallow. I plant cotton on the same land once in
four years, always on the fallow land, with a dressing of
500 bushels compost or stock-yard manure to the acre. °

“By the Ist of July my cotton stands five to six feet
high, and I have it topped by the roth.

“Strictly follow this plain and simple process, and if the
land does not reward your pains-taking, with five or six fold
the quantity per acre, of a superior staple, than has at any
previous year been taken from it, in its natural state, I will
present the experimenter with one bushel of my improved
seed, with which to perfect the experiment.

“The constant and invariable success which attends this
improvement in my hands, is the result of a strict and scrup-
ulous adherence to system in its management.

“Under a system affording such facilities for grain in
abundance, rich pasturage for fat home-raised stock of every
variety, and land improving annually in fertility, the culture
of cotton becomes a process of gardening, productive and
remunerating.

*NoTE.—At the time these letters were written, no
method had been discovered for separating the shell from
the kernel of the cotton seed, by which, and by pressing out
the oil, the seed is made good food for stock. A cheap
method has since been perfected.—E. A.

30

“In other words, after innumerable experiments and tests
(from 1844 to 1856) this system has been adopted as the
one best and surest, calculated to feed and clothe the oper-
atives of the plantation, supply all the stock necessary to its
various uses, improve annually and protect the fertility of
the land, and leave at the end of each year, the proceeds of
the cotton crop, as the clear profit of the plantation with all
its outtit.”’

On this statement, I made the following remarks, in 1861:

Among other advantages freedom from disease and from
insects is promised as the result of Dr. Cloud’s system.

The great adaptation of a product requiring such culture
consisting of small allotments rather than large plantations,
will be evident as well as the absolute necessity of intelligent
labor to bring such a system of cultivation into general use.

I have been waiting from 1861 to 1903 to witness the
application of intelligent labor on small allotments, to the
doubling of the cotton crop without increasing the area of
land, and to the renovation of the soil which has only been
skinned. [am now much nearer eighty than seventy. How
much longer will it take before the prophecies which I have
made of the future progress of the Southland in intensive,
productive and profitable farming, by which cotton may be-
come the surplus or profit crop, will be justified ?

Respectfully submitted,
EDWARD ATKINSON.

Boston, May 21st, 1903.

31

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

LUMI

Q@ 002 827 5651 €

—————
SSS