Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/589

Rh comes next in importance, especially to the people of Great Britain. The all-cotton, old plantation system is extinct. A mere fraction of the present cotton crop is growing in the old way; almost the whole comes from the small farmers, black as well as white. The tenant system was almost universally adopted in the process of reconstruction; improvement in agriculture is slow but sure. The dream of the freedman was forty acres and a mule, and in fact great numbers are attaining that end.

For many years after the end of the Civil War the cotton States still depended upon the North for hay and upon the West for corn and meat. There is probably no great force of laborers in the world who can fully subsist at so low a cost as the Southern negroes. 'Hog and hominy,' as it is called, bacon and cracked corn, are their choice above all other kinds of food. On this ration, coupled with such fruits and vegetables as they can secure, they are content. A peck of corn meal, three and one-half pounds of bacon and a quart of molasses or sorghum syrup is the customary ration for one week, costing six to nine cents a day. All that is changing. The intelligent farmers now produce their own bread and meat; some of them in excess. They are developing leguminous plants—pea vines, beans, alfalfa, crimson clover and the like; gradually introducing stock, and soon to fold sheep upon the cotton fields, to the renovation of the soil.

The very large proportionate number of tenants which has been disclosed by the former census and will be yet more marked in the present census is mainly the result of the changing conditions in the cotton States; a passing phase in the South, as it is in the West; not of long duration, and not implying any permanent condition of landlordism.

In fact, in conclusion it may be dogmatically stated that both wheat and cotton are becoming the excess, surplus or money crops of farmers whose products otherwise suffice to sustain the farm. It is therefore difficult to measure the exact cost of raising wheat. It has been produced at less than one shilling per bushel, including use and repairs of machinery and interest thereon, but not including any charge for the rental of land, which forms a part of the income or profit of the farmer. It may be dogmatically affirmed that so long as the farmer in the Mississippi grain-growing States can secure to his own use and enjoyment one cent a pound, sixty cents a bushel, four dollars and eighty cents, or twenty shillings a quarter, the present average product of wheat will be maintained, subject to variation in quantity according to the season. At seventy cents a bushel new land will be put under cultivation in wheat to any extent of the demand, and capital will be found. The difficulty will be to procure even the necessary labor still required, notwithstanding the increasing use of machinery and