Southern Agricultural Exhaustion and its Remedy. condemnable for continuing it after the circumstances which justified it have ceased. The system was first begun in Eastern Virginia, because it was the first settled part of the present United States, and it continued to prevail almost universally until since the course of my adult life began; and only has partially ceased since, because the country was nearly reduced to barrenness, and the proprietors to ruin. From this erroneous policy so long pursued in Virginia, and the manifest and well-known disastrous results in the general and seemingly desperate sterility of the older-settled portion of the state, the younger southern states might have taken warning, and have learned to profit by the woful and costly experience of others. But it seems that every agricultural community must and will run the same race of exhausting culture, and impoverishment of land and its cultivators, before being convinced of the propriety of commencing an opposite course -after the best means and facilities for making that beneficial change have been greatly impaired by the lapse of time, and progress of waste of fertilityif indeed these means are not then irretrievably forfeited. 35 compared to their former low conditionbut cases showing the bearing of the comparatively few marled and limed farms on the aggregate assessed value of all the lands in Lower Virginia, and upon the receipts of land-tax from the same, although not one twentieth part of the whole tide-water district has yet been improved in fertility, or is the least better (and, probably, the great remainder is much poorer) than when the marling of other lands first began to raise the general average of assessed values throughout this whole district. It appears, from the latest state assessment of lands in Virginia for 1850, that the actual increase of value in the tidewater district only, since 1838, the previous assessment, was more than seventeen millions of dollars. On this increase of valuation, and at the same rate of taxation, there is more than $17,000 increase of land-tax alone accruing annually to the state treasury. It is obvious that any increased value of lands, caused by their increased production, would necessarily require an increase of labor, and of farming stock, and would produce proportional increase of general wealth of the improvers, and would add other receipts from taxes in proportion-all serving still more to augment the public revenue. If, at this time, the work of improvement, with the aid of marl and lime, were properly begun and prosecuted, The recent addition to the aggregate there would be found here incalculable value of lands in Eastern Virginia, is adadvantages over those of the pioneers in mitted to be the effect of agricultural the like work in Virginia. These advan- improvements; and that more than all tages would be, first: A tenfold better the net increase is due to marling and supply of far richer and cheaper marl liming only, would be equally evident, if than is found in Virginia. Second: I could here adduce the proofs, as I have Much more remaining organic matter, or original fertility of the soil, as yet unexhausted. Third: Full information to be obtained of the operations and opinions of thousands of experienced and successful marlers to refer to, of which advantage there was almost nothing existing thirty years ago. In South Carolina, more marling could now be done in a year, and in a proper manner, than was done in Virginia for the first twenty years; and, though judging merely by analogy, I infer that the benefit would not be less great in this region than in my own. And now I will state, from unquestionable official documents, something of what has been effected in Virginia-not merely in cases of particular farms, and those entirely marled, which might show tripled or quadrupled products and market returns, and tenfold intrinsic value, done elsewhere.* Further-though 1838 was the date of the earliest assessment made after marling and liming had begun to increase aggregate production and value of lands, it is an unquestionable fact, that the general impoverishment had been greater, and values much lower, about 1828. And if this earlier time and greatest depression had been marked by an assessment then made, the full increased value of lands, from that time, would have appeared at least $30,000,000 in 1850, instead of seventeen and a quarter millions, counting from the already partially advanced improvement, and enhanced values of 1838. However, even if these, my deductions and estimates, go Agricultural Society of Virginia, on "Some of the In a communication recently made to the State Results of the Improvement of Lands, by Calcareous Manures, on Public Interests in Virginia, in the increase of Production, Population, General Wealth, and Revenue to the Treasury." for nothing, there will still remain the proof, by official documents, of the actual increase of value of lands in twelve years, of seventeen and a quarter millions, or nearly one and a half millions yearly. Now bear in mind that these are not the results of the improving of all the tidewater region, nor all of its much smaller arable portion; but, probably, of not more than one-twentieth of the cultivated land. All the remainder, if uncultivated, is stationary; and, if cultivated, is generally in a continued course of exhaustion; and the small quantity of enriched land had first to make up for all deficiencies of the impoverished, and lessening of production throughout the whole tide-water district, and after all such deductions, still exhibited a clear surplus of seventeen and a quarter millions of increased aggregate value. This is the result of but the beginning, and a very recent beginning of measures for improvement, executed in every case imperfectly, often injudiciously, and sometimes injuriously, and altogether on less than one-twentieth of the space on which calcareous manures are available. The great omitted space will hereafter be fertilized in the same manner. Then the actual increase of value of lands, founded on increased production, will be counted by hundreds of millions of dollars. And this anticipated enormous amount of fertility and capital to be created, might have been now in possession, if our improvements by calcareous manures had been begun thirty years earlier, instead of there having been continued, through all that time, the progress of wasting and destroying the remaining powers of the soil. South Carolina began exhausting culture much later, and is now full fifty years less advanced towards the lowest depth of that full descent which we had nearly completed. If that future of fifty years of continued exhaustion could be now cut off, and the improvement of Lower South Carolina by calcareous manures could be at once begun and continued, the loss of at least one hundred millions of dollars of now remaining value would be saved, and a gain of three hundred millions from improvement would be reached sooner by the same fifty years. This would be better, by all this great value, than even the following out precisely the first sinking and now rising course of Lower Virginia. In that region, the cultivators waited until the fertility of the land had so nearly expired, that it was supposed to be in articulo mortis-at the last gaspbefore the work of resuscitation was begun. The comparative results of the opposite systems of improving and exhausting cultivation may be thus illustrated: Suppose a certain investment of capital will yield twenty per cent. of present annual interest, or net products, and two persons invest equal amounts in the business. The more provident one draws or spends but fifteen per cent. annually of his income, and leaves the remaining five per cent. to accumulate, and to be added to his interest-bearing capital. The other proprietor draws each year, and spends all of the certain and annual average returns of his capital, and five per cent. more of the capital stock itself. He reasons (may I say it?) like many cotton planters, and infers that so small a detraction from his capital will do no harm, as he will have so much the more of quick returns for immediate use or re-investment. In less than twenty years, one of these individuals will have doubled his original capital, and also his twenty per cent. income, and the other will have exhausted his entire fund. But it may be said, (as alleged in regard to the squanderers of fertility,) that as the latter person had received so much more of annual returns, at first, he might have re-invested, and thus have retained his over-draughts of annual products. If a planter and, of course, his overdraughts had been from the fertility of his land-he might have bought another plantation, to work and to wear out in like manner. But even if so, wherein would be the gain? He would have had the disadvantages of a change of investment, of removal, and making a new settlement. But where one man would so save and re-invest his over-draughts from his capital, two others would use, or perhaps spend theirs, as if so much actual clear profit, or permanent income. When the land is utterly worn out, and the total capital of fertility wasted, (or the small remnant is incapable of paying the expense of further cultivation,) it will most generally be found that the channels into which the early full streams of income flowed, are then as dry as the sources. I do not mean that it necessarily follows that the planter who exhausts his land, also lessens his general wealth. Would that it were so! For, then, such certain and immediate retribution would Southern Agricultural Exhaustion and its Remedy. 37 social virtues, and even moral and religious culture. For, upon the productions of the earth depend, more or less, the measure to be obtained, by the people of any country, of these and all other blessings which a community can enjoy. There is, however, one very numerous class of exceptions to this general rule— which is, when an agricultural people, or interest, is tributary to some other people or interest, whether foreign or at home. Such exceptions are presented in different modes: by the agriculture of Cuba being tributary to Spain-of many other countries to their own despotic and oppressive home governments-and of the Southern States of this confederacy, to greater or less extent, to different pauper and plundering interests of the northern states, which, through legislative enactments, have been mainly fostered and supported by levying tribute upon southern agriculture and industry. speedily stop the whole course of wrongdoing, and prevent all the consequent evils. It may be rarely, and it might be never the case, that the exhauster of land becomes absolutely poorer during the operation. He will have helped to impoverish his country, and to ruin it finally, by the same general policy being continued,)-he will have destroyed as much of God's bounties as the wasted fertility, if remaining, would have supplied for ever, and as many human beings as those supplies would have supported, will be prevented from existing. And yet the mighty destroyer may have increased his own wealth. Nevertheless, he does not escape his own, and even the largest share of the general loss he has caused. While thus destroying, say $20,000 worth of fertility, the planter, by the exercise of industry, economy and talent in other departments of his business, or from other resources, may have grown richer, by $10,000. But if, as I believe is always The reason why such woful results of true, it is as cheap and profitable to save impoverishment of lands, as have been as to waste fertility in the whole term of stated, are not seen to follow the causes, culture, then the planter in this case and speedily, is, that the causes are not might have gained in all $30,000 of ca- all in action at once, and in equal progpital, if he had saved, instead of wasting, ress. The labors of exhausting culture, the original productive power of his land. also, are necessarily suspended as each Even if admitting the common fallacy of the cultivator's fields is successively which prevails in every newly-settled worn out. And when tillage so ceases, country, that it is profitable to each indi- and any space is thus left at rest, Nature vidual cultivator to wear out his land, immediately goes to work to recruit and still, by his doing so, and all his fellow- replace as much as possible of the wastproprietors doing the like, while each ed fertility-until another destroyer, after one might be adding to his individual many years, shall return, again to waste, wealth, the joint labors of all would be and in much shorter time than before, exhausting the common stock of wealth, the smaller stock of fertility so renewed. and greatly impairing the common wel- Thus, the whole territory, so scourged, is fare and interest of all. The average not destroyed at one operation. But life of a man is long enough to reduce though these changes and partial recovethe fertility of his cultivated land to one- ries are continually, to some extent, half, or less. Thus, one generation of counteracting the labors for destruction, exhausting cultivators, if working to- still the latter work is in general progress. gether, would reduce their country to It may require, (as it did in my native one-half of its former production, and, in region,) more than two hundred years, proportion, would be reduced the general from the first settlement, to reach the income, wealth, and means of living- lowest degradation. But that final result population and the products of taxation is not the less certainly to be produced and, in time, would as much decline the by the continued action of the causes. measure of moral, intellectual, and social I have witnessed, at home, nearly the advantages, the political power and mili- last stage of decline. But I have also tary strength of the commonwealth. witnessed, subsequently, and over large The destructive operations of the ex- spaces, more than the complete resuscihausting cultivator have a most impor- tation of the land, and great improvetant influence far beyond his own lands ment in almost every respect, not only and his own personal interests. He re- to individual but to public interests; not duces the wealth and population of his only in regard to fertility and wealth, but country and the world, and obstructs the also in mental, moral and social improveprogress and benefits of education, the ment. At the risk of uttering what may be deemed trite or superfluous to many of those who now honor me by their attention, I beg leave to state concisely the fundamental laws, as I conceive them to be, of supply and exhaustion of fertilizing matters to soils, and aliment to plants. Inasmuch as my remarks would seem northern farmer is guarded from the to ascribe the most exhausting system of worst of these results, not because he cultivation especially to the slave-hold- uses free-labor, but because his labor is ing states, the enemies of the institution so scarce and dear that he uses as little of slavery might cite my opinions, if as possible for his purposes. Besides this without the explanation which will now consideration, his climate is more suitbe offered, as indicating that slave-labor able to grass than to grain, and his other and exhausting tillage were necessarily large crops are much more generally connected as cause and effect. I readily broad-cast than tilled. These are suffiadmit that our slave-labor has served cient causes why, in general, the culture greatly to facilitate our exhausting culti- of land in the northern states should be vation; but only because it is a great less exhausting than in the southern, facility-far superior to any found in without detracting anything from the suthe non-slave-holding states-for all ag- perior advantages which we of the South ricultural operations. Of course, if our enjoy in the use of African slave-labor. operations are exhausting of fertility, then certainly our command of cheaper and more abundant labor enables us to do the work of exhaustion, as well as all other work, more rapidly and effectually. But if directed to improving, instead of destroying fertility, then this great and valuable aid of slave-labor will as much All vegetable growth is supported, for more advance improvement, as it has a small part, by the alimentary princigenerally heretofore advanced exhaus- ples in the soil, (or by what we undertion. The enunciation of this proposition stand as its fertility,)—and partly, and for is perhaps enough. But if any, from much the larger portion, by matters supprejudice, should deny or doubt its truth, plied, either directly or indirectly, from they may see the practical proofs on all the atmosphere. More than nine-tenths the most improved and profitable farms usually of the substance of every plant of Lower and Middle Virginia. On the is composed of the same four elements, lands of our best improvers and farmers, three of which, oxygen, nitrogen and such as Richard Sampson, Hill Carter, carbon, compose the whole atmosphere. John A. Selden, William B. Harrison, The fourth, hydrogen, is one of the conWilloughby Newton, and many others, stituent parts of water; and also, as a slave-labor is used not only exclusively, part of the dissolved water, hydrogen is and in larger than usual proportion, (be- always present in the atmosphere, and cause more required on very productive in great quantity. Thus all these prinland.) but is deemed indispensable to the cipal elements of plants are superabungreatest profits, and operating to produce dant, and always surrounding every more increase of fertility, and more agri- growing plant; and from the atmosphere, cultural profit than can be exhibited (or through the water in the soil,) very from any purely agricultural labors and much the larger portion of these joint capital north of Mason and Dixon's line. supplies is turnished to plants; and so it There is another and stronger reason is of each particular element, except for the greater exhausting effects of nitrogen, much the smallest ingredient, southern agriculture, and therefore of til- and yet the richest and most important lage by slave-labor. The great crops of of all organic manuring substances, and all the slave-holding states, and espe- of all plants. This, for the greater part, cially of the more southern-corn, to- if not for all of its small share in plants, bacco and cotton-are all tilled crops. it seems, is not generally derived, even The frequent turning and loosening of the earth by the plow and hoe-and far more when continued without intermission, year after year-advance the But, though bountiful nature has offered decomposition and waste all organic these chief alimentary principles and matter, and expose the soil of all but ingredients of vegetable growth in as inthe most level surfaces, to destructive exhaustible profusion as the atmosphere washing by rains-and rains the more itself which they compose, still their heavy and destructive in power, in pro- availability and beneficial use for plants portion as approaching the south. The are limited in some measure to man's partially, from the air, though so abundant therein, but from the soil or from organic manures given to the soil. Southern Agricultural Exhaustion and its Remedy. 39 labors and care to secure their benefits. cheapest of such manuring crops will be Thus, for illustration, suppose the natural the natural or "volunteer" growth of supplies of food for plants, furnished by weeds on lands left uncultivated, and not the atmosphere, to be three-fourths of all grazed; and the best of all will be received, and that one-fourth only of the furnished in the whole product of a broadgrowth of any crop is derived from the cast sown and entire crop of your own soil and its fertility. Still, a strict pro- most fertilizing and valuable field peas. portion between the amount of supplies from these two different sources does not the less exist. If the cultivator's land, at one time, from its natural or acquired fertility, affords to the growing crop alimentary principles of value to be designated as five, there will be added thereto other alimentary parts, equal to fifteen in value, from the atmosphere. The crop will be made up of, and will contain, the whole twenty parts; of which five only were derived from, and served to reduce, by so much, the fertility of the soil. These proportions are stated merely for illustration, and, of course, are inaccurate. But the theory or principle is correct; and the law of fertilization and exhaustion, thence deduced, is as certainly sound. Thus, of each manuring crop, (as of all others,) or of the fertilizing matter thus given to the land, the cultivator has contributed but five parts from the land, or its previous manuring, and the atmosphere has supplied fifteen parts. If, then, the cultivator, by still more increasing his own contributions, will give ten parts of alimentary matter to the land and crop, there will be added thereto from the atmosphere in the same three-fold proportion, or thirty parts, and the whole new productive power will be equal to forty. And if the soil is fitted by its natural constitution, or the artificial change induced by calcareous applications, to fix and retain this double supply of organic matter, the land will not only be made, but will remain, of as much Then, upon these premises, there is increased fertility, under the subsequent taken from the land, for the support of the like course of receiving one year's procrop, but one-fourth of the aliment de- duct for manure, for every two other rived from all sources for that purpose. crops removed. But, on the other hand, And, if no other causes of destruction of if more exhausting culture had been fertility were in operation, one green or allowed, instead of either increased or manuring crop (wholly given to the land maintained production-or if the crops and wholly used as manure) would sup- take away more organic matter than ply to the field as much of alimentary or nature's three-fold contributions will refertilizing matter, as would be drawn place-then a downward progress must thence by three other crops removed for begin, and will proceed, whether slowly consumption or sale. But in practice or quickly, to extreme poverty of the there are usually at work important land, its profitless cultivation, and final agencies for destruction of fertility, be- abandonment. In this, the more usual sides the mere supply of aliment to growing crops. Such agencies are the washing off of soluble parts, and even the soil itself, by heavy rains-the hastening of decomposition and waste of organic matter by frequent tillage processes, and changes of exposure-and plowing or other working of land when too wet, either from rain or want of drainage. Also, a cover of weeds left to rot on the surface, or any crop plowed under, green or dry, as manure, is subject to more or less waste of its alimentary principles, in the course of the ensuing decomposition. Therefore it is nearer the facts that two years' crops, or culture, for market or removal, would require one year's growth of some manuring crop to replace, and to maintain undiminished, or increasing, the productive power of the field. The poorest and also the case, the cultivator's contributions of aliment, (obtained from the soil,) are reduced from the former value, designated as five, first to four, and next successively to three, two, and finally less than one; and nature keeps equal pace in reducing her proportional supplies, from fifteen, first to twelve, and so on to nine and six, and less than three parts. So the strongest inducement is offered to enrich, rather than exhaust the soil. For whatever amount of fertility the cultivator shall bestow, or whatever abstraction from a previous rate of supply he shall make, either the gain or the loss will be tripled in the account of supplies from the atmosphere, furnished or withheld by nature. In another and more practical point of view, the loss incurred by exhausting culture may be plainly exhibited. According to my views, (elsewhere fully |