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