cotton culture, the cotton planter's inquiry being exclusively for 'prime boys,' or 'A 1 field-hands.'"
Thus in every way cotton culture more resembles corn culture than it does tobacco culture. The production of corn is larger in the aggregate, is considerably larger per man engaged in its cultivation, and is far larger per acre in Ohio than in Virginia.[1] I should, therefore, be inclined to reverse Mr. Russell's statement, and to say that if the climate had admitted of the growing of cotton on both banks of the Ohio, we should have seen that free-labour possessed as great advantages over slavery in the cultivation of cotton as of corn.
Mr. Russell echoes also the opinion, which every cotton planter is in the habit of urging, that the production of cotton would have been comparatively insignificant in the United States if it had not been for slave labour. He likewise restricts the available cotton region within much narrower limits than are usually given to it, and holds that the slave population must soon in a great measure be concentrated within it. As these conclusions of a scientific traveller un-*
- ↑ Virginia, with 10,360,135 acres of improved land, produced, according to the
last census returns,
35,254,319 bushels of corn,
56,803,227 pounds of tobacco.Ohio, with 9,851,493 acres of improved land, produced
59,078,695 bushels of corn,
10,454,449 pounds of tobacco.The aggregate value of these two products alone, at present New York prices, would be
Ohio $5,127,223,565
Virginia $3,564,639,385Actual crops per acre, on the average, as returned by the marshals for 1849-50 (Census Compilation, p. 178):
Corn. Tobacco.
Ohio 36 bushels 730 pounds.
Virginia 18 " 630 "
