Lake Michigan ports amounted to 43,211,488 bushels. The Northern States did not keep pace with the agricultural growth of the Middle West. Here and there one of them showed a slight advance in the production of some particular cereal, but most of them reported a falling off or a standstill. Attention in this section was given more to the raising of garden truck and to dairying. For example, New York produced market stuff in 1850 worth $922,047 and in 1860 $3,381,596, and in the same years 79,766,094 and 103,097,279 pounds of butter. New Jersey and Pennsylvania showed similar tendencies. In New England attention was given to fruit crops, particularly apples.

The following table shows the agricultural expansion in the two decades from 1840 to 1860, according to the census reports of those years:

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sections sections of the country. But the South had not yet yielded entirely to the West in its cereal production. Of the entire crop of the country in the leading cereals, the percentages raised

in the South in 1849 and 1859 were: wheat, 27 per cent. and 22 per cent.; rye, 11 per cent. and 19 per cent.; Indian corn, 60 per cent. and 52 per cent.; oats, 33 per cent. and 19 per cent. (the last showing the only falling off).

Cotton continued to be a promising, but remained an unmarketable product of the South until the invention of the gin by Eli Whitney in 1792. This machine revolutionized the method of cleaning cotton and thus gave the one needed stimulus to its large production. Principally confined to South Carolina and Georgia until after the close of the Eighteenth century, cotton cultivation gradually spread first into North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee, and then into the Southwest. In the early part of the century the export was large and the domestic use notable. According to the census of 1810, Georgia, with only household manufacture, produced more yards of cloth than all the mills of Rhode Island, while in North Carolina and South Carolina more looms were operated than in any other State of the Union. The tariff act of 1816 was also a means of enlarging the market and making the raising of the staple more profitable.

From the foreign mills of Great Britain and the home mills of New

England came a large and steadily growing demand for this raw material as the saw-gin improved the character of the fibre and the factory system of labor with its new machines combined to increase consumption. In 1811 the Atlantic coast States produced fifteensixteenths of the cotton crop of the country and in 1821 two-thirds of the total yield, two States alone - South Carolina and Georgia - producing five-sixths of that amount. From the beginning of the settlement of the Southwest the supremacy of the eastern cotton belt began to wane and Alabama and Mississippi, and finally Texas, took the lead in acreage cultivated and in pounds produced. The annual production increased constantly until the breaking out of the Civil War. For five-year periods from 1791 to 1865, the average annual production in pounds was: 17911795, 5,200,000; 1796-1800, 18,200,000; 1801-1805, 59,600,000; 1806-1810; 80,400,000; 1811-1815, 80,000,000; 18161820, 141,200,000; 1821-1825; 209,000,000; 1826-1830, 307,244,400; 18311835, 398,521,600; 1836-1840, 607,306,200; 1841-1845, 822,953,800; 18461850, 979,690,400; 1851-1855, 1,294,422,800; 1856-1860, 1,749,496,500.*

*

With the opening of the new century, cotton began to displace tobacco as a favored agricultural staple in the South, capital in land and in slaves being diverted to the cultivation of the new crop. Moreover, the Embargo

* M. B. Hammond, The Cotton Industry, app. i. (New York, 1897).

and the ensuing War of 1812 stopped its export and so curtailed production. By 1814 the export trade had almost entirely disappeared. From 1790 to 1840 the industry was stationary, but rose again after the middle of the century. Between 1850 and 1860 production increased 115 per cent. Meanwhile the tobacco area had extended to the newer States-to Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, and even to Missouri. In 1859 Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee produced 176,707,518 pounds in Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina 195,232,527 pounds. In 1850 Missouri produced 17,113,784 pounds and ten years later 25,386,196 pounds. In 1860 the South was the largest producer of tobacco in the world, a preeminence it has never lost. In that section the cultivation of the leaf for nearly 250 years influenced every economic institution, moulding and making many of them. Ultimately, however, cotton exercised a stronger, though a less prolonged, influence upon the social, economic and political life of the South. As a source of wealth, cotton became supreme; its profitableness led to the general neglect of other crops, even those of food; and for more than half a century the slave system rested upon it. Thus cotton, more than any thing else, was responsible for the Civil War.*

During the first half of the Nineteenth century the annual rice crop in the South assumed considerable im

* The South in the Building of the Nation, vol. v., pp. 168, 207.

portance. Nearly all the southern States, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas were engaged in its cultivation. South Carolina and Georgia headed the list in quantity and quality of production. Prior to 1850 more than half of the rice crop of the United States came from South Carolina. Out of 245,289,955 pounds harvested in the United States in 1850 and valued at $8,585,148, 159,930,613 pounds came from South Carolina and 38,950,691 from Georgia. Out of 187,143,098 raised in this country in 1860 and valued at $7,485,723, South Carolina produced 119,100,528 pounds and Georgia 52,507,652. From 1820 to 1850 the annual crops of North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia combined were, in pounds: 1820, 69,534,600; 1824, 76,083,800; 1829, 83,438,000; 1833, 106,953,000; 1836, 95,310,600, valued at $3,097,594; 1844, 105,755,800, valued at $2,644,395; in 1849, 204,346,520.

Modern sugar-making was begun in Louisiana in 1795 by Etienne De Bore and from that date until the Civil War the cultivation of cane and the manufacture of sugar was the main industry of that section. In 1808 Louisiana had 308 sugar estates; in 1844, 762; and in 1845, 1,104. In 1845 Texas had 35 estates. The annual production between 1823 and 1861 showed many fluctuations, due principally to the influence of the tariff and oftentimes to rivalry of cotton

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as a more profitable crop. In 1823 the tons of sugar grown in Louisiana were 15,401; in 1834, 15,339; in 1835, 15,401 (the same as in 1823); in 1836, 35,937; in 1845, 142,723; in 1846, 70,995; in 1847, 123,124; in 1853, 224,118; in 1856, 33,813; in 1857, 137,542; in 1861, 235,856; and in 1865, 9,289.

Hemp and flax came into prominence in nearly all the Southern States. A large industry was developed in making homespun hemp, linen bagging, and cordage. In North Carolina, Kentucky, and Georgia there were nearly 150,000 spinning wheels and 78,000 looms in 1810.

The first agricultural society in the United States was organized by planters of South Carolina in 1784. In the following year Philadelphia gentlemen formed the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture and in 1791 a similar organization came into existence in New York City. The Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agriculture was formed in 1792. These societies led the way to similar organizations of practical farmers. A farmers' farmers' convention was held in Washington in 1809 and The Columbian Agricultural Society for the Promotion of Rural and Domestic Economy was organized. This Society held a fair in May of 1810, which is believed to be the first agricultural fair held in the United States. In 1810 Elkanah Watson, a Massachusetts agriculturalist, founded in that State The Berkshire Agricultural Society, under whose auspices an agricultural

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fair and cattle show-the pioneer of its kind was held in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in September of 1811. In the ensuing half-century annual exhibitions of this character were common in all parts of the United States. Agricultural societies (State, city and town) were everywhere organized and farmer's clubs were established in towns and villages. In the course of time nearly every State had its board of agriculture. Before the Civil War there were probably 2,000 agricultural societies and similar organizations in the United States. The publications of these societies constitute an important series of volumes, antedating the reports of the State bureaus of agriculture which began to come into existence before the middle of the Nineteenth century, first in New York, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Indiana. Besides these official publications, there were in 1870 93 agricultural newspapers and periodicals, with an aggregate annual circulation of nearly 22,000,000 copies.

Before the century had opened, agitation for education in agriculture and kindred pursuits began. In 1791 Columbia College in New York established a professorship of chemistry and agriculture and chose Samuel L. Mitchell to fill that chair. In subsequent years the professors of chemistry in nearly all the colleges gave

incidental instruction in agriculture. It was nearly the middle of the century, before the subject had an independent professorship, however. In 1846 John P. Norton was appointed professor of agricultural chemistry and vegetable and animal physiology in Yale College, the first American educator to hold such a position, and he began his course of instruction the following year. In 1862 Congress provided for grants of public lands to the individual States to encourage the establishment of industrial and agricultural institutions of learning.*

* American Almanac and Repository of Useful Knowledge (33 vols., Boston, 1830-1862); American Husbandry (2 vols., London, 1775); F. J. Turner, The Rise of the New West, 18191829, in The American Nation series, vol. xiv. (New York, 1906); J. H. Thompson, From the Cotton Field to the Cotton Mill (New York, 1906); D. A. Wells, Year Book of Agriculture (Philadelphia, 1856); Ernest L. Bogart, The Economic History of the United States (New York, 1907); W. N. Brewer, History of Agriculture in the United States, in tenth census (Washington, 1880); John Bristed, America and Her Resources (London, 1818); B. A. Hinsdale, The Old North West (New York, 1888); report of the United States Industrial Commission (19 vols., Washington, 1900-1902); J. D. B. DeBow, Industrial Resources of the South and West (3 vols., New Orleans, 1853); Charles L. Flint, A Hundred Years of Progress; report of the United States Department of Agriculture (Washington, 1872); the same also in the twenty-first annual report of the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture for 1873; J. F. W. Johnston, Notes on North America (Boston, 1853); reports of the United States Department of Agriculture; reports of the boards of agriculture of the several States; census reports, 1790--1860.