icultural product in the South, I
think a hundred and nine years of its production will prove
interesting and valuable: In 1791, 8,889 bales were produced, and the
second cotton mill built at Providence, Rhode Island! the first one
being built at Beverly, Massachusetts, in 1787. From this time on the
acreage planted, the output and the number of cotton mills and
spindles increased. The estimated area planted in cotton alone in
1852, 6,300,000 acres, and the census report of 1860 showed 1,262
cotton mills and 5,235,727 spindles in the United States, with an
output of 4,861,292 bales. Despite the depressing effect of the four
years of civil strife, it took only five years to almost completely
regain the highest point reached in previous years. In 1889 and 1890
we find in the United States 19,569,000 acres planted, giving an
output of 7,311,322 bales, with 905 cotton mills operating 14,088,103
spindles. In 1898-99 the acreage increases to nearly 25,000,000, with
an output of 11,189,205 bales, representing a money value of
$305,467,041. Such is the history, production and growth of the cotton
industry in the United States, and were we to trace the other staple
products we would find them none the less interesting, since they were
produced largely by Negroes as slaves before the war, and as freedmen
after the war. This applies especially to Southern products.

Whatever of truth there is in Mr. Van de Graff's grave apprehensions
for the Negro, he with us must admit that the ills of the black tenant
farmer are simply the ills of the Southern farmer in a more or less
aggravated form. It is also true that the curse of such a system falls
the heaviest on the smallest and most ignorant tenant farmer, who is
the least capable of self-defense. For years we have been content to
let the preachers preach, the lawyers argue, the philosophers predict,
the teachers and the doctors practice with scarcely a question as to
our priority of right. We have, in the face of the many oppositions
which come to every race similarly situated, labored with endurance,
patience and forbearance, until the birth of the twentieth century
dawns upon us, steadily marching on, with something over $263,000,000
worth of unencumbered property to our credit. Now as to the number
owning farms and following agricultural pursuits as a livelihood, we
are pleased to submit some figures from the last census report, from
Crogman, in his "Progress of a Race," and from ot