Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/383

Rh in the transaction very often, consisted only in spreading the samples on his table and receiving the money, an additional brokerage being charged to the planter for the go-between who found a purchaser. A dozen or more lots of cotton, of different grades, and from different plantations, were frequently sold together at a uniform figure to a heavy speculator or spinner, in which case, in making account of sales to each of the planters, a sort of "general average" had to be struck. Where the factor was not scrupulously honest, this average was apt to be in his favor. I have known cotton factors who boasted of making ten thousand dollars per year on their general average account. How would our wheat-growers in the North thrive under such a system?

In 1865, after the close of the war, the South furnished about two and a half million bales of cotton, which, at the low average of one hundred dollars per bale, brought her two hundred and fifty million dollars—considerably more than she had ever before realized for a single crop of cotton. But little of this enormous sum was appropriated to the payment of debts; if so, it was made the basis of, at least, an equal credit. It was mainly spent upon the forthcoming cotton crop. In 1866 the South produced somewhat less than two million bales, which, at an average of, at least, eighty dollar's per bale, yielded about one hundred and fifty million dollars. The last year's crop is estimated at two and a quarter million bales, which will not bring money enough to pay the freedmen, repay the debts contracted to make the crop and feed the people during the Winter months. Beside this, many millions of capital have been sent South since the war for investment in cotton planting, not ten per cent. of which is now in existence. The merchants and factors throughout the South have also strained their resources to make loans and advances to the cotton planter who never says "enough, enough!"

What has the South to-day to show for all this enormous outlay? What has become of all these millions of money devoted to cotton raising in the thousand-acre-plantation-overseer-negro-working-planter-idling method of the old planters? And, what is worse, the planters still adhere to their old notions. They still think it degrading to plant anything but cotton; would be ashamed to become snug farmers of a hundred acres of land, and cling with the tenacity of death to the possession of their, to them, worthless fields, as the only thing that now distinguishes them from the poor whites and the freedmen.

Meanwhile, Egypt and India have obtained the monopoly of cotton raising, and under circumstances, too, that promise them possession of it for years to come. Both of these countries were famous for their cotton fabrics two or three thousands of years