I enclose papers put into my hands last night by Mr. Kapp[1] which must be used with discretion. I promised to return them in course of the week. They contain offers to sell lands of the choicest unimproved character in the vicinity of the northernmost German settlements of Texas and precisely in the line we wish to occupy and evidently at unusually low prices. I think some encouragement should be offered to the owners, who are Scotchmen—the merchants mentioned in my book at N. Braunfels, who bought the free-labor cotton.[2] I know that they have made their land investments with great care. I have another offer of choice, selected lands in the same region and to the northward of it, 20,000 acres at 90 cts an acre. Another of 2000 acres same district, selected lots at 50 cts. or one half in alternate lots, for nothing, on condition of occupation within three years: another of 2 leagues in the Brazos, Milan County (6000 acres) $1.50 an acre, another on the Nueces 35 miles north of Corpus Christi, 20,000 acres, in one body, at $1.00 an acre. Large tracts of cotton land can be best got, however, by dealing with the R. R. companies.
I am obliged to close suddenly and will probably write further by next mail
Copy.
II.
To the Secretary of the
Cotton Supply Association
Sir
My attention having been directed for some years past to the cotton producing regions of the North American Continent, I take leave to present certain views I have formed for the consideration of your association.
Under the stimulus of high prices, valuable contributions of cotton are obtained from various other parts of the world than the United States; measures may be taken by which this auxilliary supply will be much increased. After much research and several costly experiments however, it yet remains very questionable if any where else in the world, an equal value of cotton-wool can be obtained from a given expenditure of labor, as in that part of the N. A. Continent lying between the thirtieth and the thirty sixth parallels of latitude. No where else are the same meteorological conditions found which here prevail, nor is [it] to be expected that by any exercise of human ingenuity they will be obtained.
The amount of labor engaged in the production of cotton within the region thus favored does not exceed .that of one strong man to a square mile. If one half the agricultural population of Europe was- ↑ Friedrich Kapp (1824–18S4), the well-known writer on slavery and on the German element in America. Olmsted's account of the history of New Braunfels, in his Journey through Texas, pp. 172–177, is based on a published lecture by his friend Kapp.
- ↑ A Journey through Texas (New York, 1857), p. 146. On New Braunfels, see G. G. Benjamin, The Germans in Texas (Philadelphia, 1909), pp. 44–54.
the colonization scheme. He also sketches his plans for a third volume of the series Our Slave States, which appeared in 1860 under the title, A Journey in the Back Country.
