At that time an editorial in the
_Augusta Chronicle_ ran as follows: "A correspondent would recommend to the
planters of Georgia, now the season is opening, to raise more corn and less
cotton ... The dear bought experience of the present season should teach us
to be more provident for the future." [37] Under the conditions of the time
this excess at the expense of grain was likely to correct itself at once,
for men and their draught animals must eat to work, and in the prevailing
lack of transportation facilities food could not be brought from a
distance at a price within reach. The systematic basis of industry was the
production, whether by planters or farmers, of such food as was locally
needed and such supplies of cloth together with such other outfit as it was
economical to make at home, and the devotion of all further efforts to the
making of cotton.
[Footnote 36: Savannah _Museum_, April n, 1804.]
[Footnote 37: Reprinted in the _Farmer's Gazette_ (Sparta, Ga.), April 11,
1807.]
Coincident with the rise of cotton culture in the Atlantic states was that
of sugar in the delta lands of southeastern Louisiana. In this triangular
district, whose apex is the junction of the Red and Mississippi rivers, the
country is even more amphibious than the rice coast.
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