That year's
output, however, was nearly twice the size of the average crop in the
period. A dozen or more proprietors owned two or more estates each, some of
which were on the largest scale, while at the other extreme several dozen
farmers who had no mills of their own sent cane from their few acres to be
worked up in the spare time of some obliging neighbor's mill. In general
the bulk of the crop was made on plantations with cane fields ranging from
rather more than a hundred to somewhat less than a thousand acres, and with
each acre producing in an ordinary year somewhat more than a hogshead of
sugar.
[Footnote 51: _DeBow's Review_, XIV, 199, 200.]
Until about 1850 the sugar district as well as the cotton belt was calling
for labor from whatever source it might be had; but whereas the uplands had
work for people of both races and all conditions, the demand of the delta
lands, to which the sugar crop was confined, was almost wholly for negro
slaves. The only notable increase in the rural white population of the
district came through the fecundity of the small-farming Acadians who had
little to do with sugar culture.
CHAPTER X
THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT
The flow of population into the distant interior followed the lines of
least resistance and greatest opportunity.
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