- men generally testify that a certain amount of labour given to
corn will be much better repaid than if given to tobacco. "Men are worth too much for growing corn to be employed in strolling through tobacco fields, looking for worms, and even women can, as our farmers think, find something better to do about the house." Children, too, are thought to be, and doubtless are, better employed at school in preparing themselves for more profitable duties, and this is probably the chief reason why coarse tobacco[1] cannot be cultivated with as much profit as corn in Ohio, while the want of intelligent, self-interested labour, is the reason why the corn-field, among the tall broad blades of which a man will work during much of its growth in comparative obscurity, cannot be cultivated with as much profit on soils of the same quality in Virginia as in Ohio. In short, a class of labourers, who are good for nothing else, and who, but for this, would be an intolerable burden upon those who are obliged to support them, can be put to some use in raising tobacco, and, therefore, coarse tobacco continues to be cultivated in some of the principal slaveholding counties of Virginia. But this class of labourers is of no more value in cotton culture than in corn culture. Mr. De Bow says: "The South-west, the great cotton region, is newly settled, and the number of children, out of all proportion, less than in negroes [regions?] peopled, by a natural growth of population.[2] Weak women and children are, in fact, not at all wanted for
- ↑ In my Notes on Eastern Virginia, it was mentioned that a tobacco planter informed me that he could not raise the finer sorts of tobacco with profit, because he could not make his slaves take pains enough with it; and in certain localities in Ohio, having a favourable soil for the production of fine or high-priced tobacco, it appears that free labour is engaged more profitably in the cultivation of tobacco than in the cultivation of corn. It is the same in parts of Connecticut and of Massachusetts. Except in these limited districts, however, it is found that the labour of Ohio, as of Connecticut and Massachusetts, is more profitably directed to the cultivation of Indian corn and other crops than of tobacco.
- ↑ “Resources," p. 175.
