reduce the farm in the Free States, and this varies with local circumstances. There is equally a limit beyond which it is acknowledged to be unprofitable to enlarge the body of slaves engaged in cotton cultivation under one head. If cotton were to be cultivated by free labour, it is probable that this number would be somewhat reduced. I have no doubt that the number of men on each plantation, in any case, would, on an average, much nearer approach that which would be most economical, in a free-labour cotton-growing country than in a country on which the whole dependence of each proprietor was on slaves. Is not this conclusion irresistible when we consider that the planter, if he needs an additional slave hand to those he possesses, even if temporarily, for harvesting his crop, must, in most cases, employ at least a thousand dollars of capital to obtain it?
Mr. Russell has himself observed that—
"The quantity of cotton which can be produced on a [slave-worked]
plantation is limited by the number of hands it can turn into the field
during the picking or harvesting of the crop. Like some other agricultural
operations, this is a simple one, though it does not admit of being
done by machinery, as a certain amount of intelligence must direct the
hand."
The same is true of a wheat farm, except that much more
can be done by machinery, and consequently the extraordinary
demand for labour at the wheat harvest is much less than it is
on a cotton plantation. I have several times been on the
Mississippi plantation during picking time, and have seen how
everything black, with hands, was then pressed into severe
service; but, after all, I have often seen negroes breaking down,
in preparation for re-ploughing the ground for the next crop,
acres of cotton plants, upon which what appeared to me to be a
tolerable crop of wool still hung, because it had been impossible
to pick it. I have seen what was confessed to be many hun-
