Food and Cotton in Georgia.
The Legislatures of
Georgia and
South Carolina are now engaged extensively in plans to increase the quantity of food and diminish extortion.
The former may be considered within their reach.
The latter, we fear, must be considered a hopeless task.
the last Georgia Legislature passed a law prohibiting the cultivation of more than three acres of cotton land to a hand to a hand.
The present extra session was called, among other things, for the purpose of reducing this amount.
Then was great opposition to it.
Mr. Hester, of
Elbert, as we learn from the Milledgeville
Recorder, furnished some calculations against it. The whole cotton crop of the eight Cotton States in 1862, he said was 4,000,000 bales, of which 370,000 had been purchased by the
Government, and 1,500,000 otherwise disposed of, including the portion destroyed to prevent its falling into the hands of the enemy, leaving now on hand about 2,000,000 bales which, at 50 cents per pound, or $150 per bale, the price now in
Europe, would bring $100,000,000, or about one half of our national debt.
He asserted that enough cotton ought to be produced in 1863 to supply the domestic demand as least, if none were raised for exportation.
In
Georgia 400,000 bales were made in 1861, and 60,000 in 1862.
Under the law permitting three soles to the hand, he placed the crop in 1@3 at only 30,000 bales, or 15,000,800 pounds, the whole of which would be consumed in clothing the people of
Georgia, supposing that fifteen pounds to each person would be necessary.--Much would also be required for baling and rope, and for bedding purposes.
It was our duty, he said, to furnish more cotton than we consumed, that other States of the
Confederacy might be supplied.
He gave date for the belief that only 150,000 bales would be raised this year in the whole Confederacy;
Georgia 30,000,
Alabama 20,000
Mississippi 20,000,
Texas 20,000.
Louisiana Arkansas 10,000.
South Carolina 20,000 and
North Carolina 10,000.
Deducing 3,000,000 of persons in
Missouri,
Kentucky,
Tennessee, and
Virginia, who would not require our cotton, there would be 9,000,000 persons left in the
Confederacy to be clothed, who at fifteen pounds each, would consume 275,000 bales. To this add 40,000 bales for baling the crop, and for tents in the army, family bedding, &c., and there would be 315,000 required to answer these purposes against 150,000 bales, the entire cotton crop for 1863.
This would show a deficiency of 65,000 bales, which he thought it would be unwise to permit.
On the subject of corn supply there had also been an interesting debate, growing out of the proposition to reduce the quantity of cotton.
One member made a calculation in
Georgia to show that the supposed surplus of corn — say 10,000,000 bushels — was fallacious.
The estimated crop of 15,000,000 bushels, on the supposed bales of 14 bushels to the acre, was not verified by the facts in 1862, as it was notorious that in the
Cherokee region the yield was very short from a diminished breadth of land planted, owing to the absence of labor in the army, and to the excessive drought of last summer.
In 1849 when in the upper counties it was common for 30,40, and 50 bushels to be produced to the acre, the average for the
State was only 16 bushels, while in 1863, in many parts of the
Cherokee region, the production was only 10 and 15 bushels — Even in
Southwestern Georgia the average was not over 10 bushels, as the experience of planters will testify.
From these promises he said that it was evident that no such surplus is on hand for the use of the army, and for the people of the mountains where the scarcity is most alarming.
What reply was made to these statsments does not appeal in our exchanges; but there is evidently a fallacy in the calculation of the quantity that may be produced to the acre.
Hitherto our planters have mainly warned only the poorest of their lands for corn and reserved the most fertile for cotton, and thus the yield has not shown the Cerelly of the soil for massing the farmer.
Cotton now being limited the richer lands will be put into corn and better worked.
The yield therefore, will probably be nearly double the above estimate
