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Show ; liuihiiifr'U-ft. As tin' next t,e.t:,oii ramc ai'onnil he H.r, turain compelled u mort-' mort-' ;r:i:;v li' ' ovop in adv.nu-p 1o the limn to whom h- u-as already in debt. It Has ' "a con; lit ion ami not a theory"' that con-j con-j fronted Ihc fanners of the south anil necessarily it hai'triken years for them to gradually work out of it. Moreover, ' the neToe-i, '"intoxicated with frec-I frec-I dom," had many hard lesbons to learn. While they had nothing in the world on J which to start, they were financially j about as well off as their late master, for, at least, they had no debts to incumber in-cumber them for years to come. Cotton was the easiest crop for them to cultivate, culti-vate, and so they all began to grow cotton, cot-ton, buying" western corn and bacon on credit irora the merchant who had a mortgage on tile cotton before the ground was plowed for its planting. Working on shares that is. paying a part of the crop for the rent of the land they cultivated and moving about frequently, fre-quently, they had no inducement to try to improve the soil. So, while the aggregate ag-gregate acreage annually increased, the total production of the souths crops fell far short of the yield per capita between be-tween ISM and 1SG0. REIGN OF KING COTTON. "Why It Becamo Supreme iti the South Immediately After the War. Promising as was the industrial advance ad-vance of the south prior to the war it was in its agriculture that the chief interests in-terests of the people were centered, says the Engineering Magazine. Here was displayed an energy as great as that which opened up to civilization the vast prairies of the west; here was a well-rounded growth which neither the south nor any other part of the country has been able to duplicate since the v.-ar. Cotton was indeed Ling, but it was not such an absolute monarch as it has been since 1305 nor as grain has be'.-ii in the west. Instead of being the main crop of the south it was largely n surplus crop. The south did not then have its "smokehouse and corn crib in the west" this wasone of the disasters of the war but it produced its own corn, wheat and bacon. The war changed these conditions. It left such universal poverty that men were compelled com-pelled to grow cotton alone, because the crop would be mortgaged before it was planted for enough at least to secure a i,-, Kt-;,, ti,rt -inn.. waited for it to mature. On no other crop could advances be secured in this way. When the crop had been gathered and turned over to the merchant who had been "carrying" him, and out of Hs proceeds the debt for goods bought on credit ineliKl'mg interest r.r.d cornmi Mons had been paid, the farmer ha.'. |