least exhaustive crops of the world,
taking nearly all its sustenance from the air, and that it was also one
of the most easily raised, requiring none of the complicated and
expensive machinery necessary for wheat and other smaller grains. He
knew, too, that under the thorough preparation of the soil necessary for
cotton, wheat did best after it, and with clover sown on the wheat, he
would soon have nature's remedy for reclaiming the soil. He also knew
that the most expensive feature of cotton raising was the picking--the
gathering of the crop--and in the children of Cottontown, he saw at once
that he had a quick solution--one which solved the picking problem and
yet gave to each growing boy and girl three months, in the cool,
delightful fall, of healthful work, with pay more than equal to a year
of the old cheap labor behind the spinners. For,--as it proved, at
seventy-five cents per hundred pounds for the seed cotton picked,--these
children earned from seventy-five cents to a dollar and a half a day.
The first year, only half of the land was put in cotton, attention being
given to reclaiming the other half. But even this proved a surprise for
all, for nearly one thousand bales of cotton were ginned, at a total
cost to the mill of only four cents per pound, while Cottontown had been
fed during summer with all the vegetables and melons needed--all raised
on the farm.

That fall, the land, under the clean and constant plowing necessary
to raise the cotton, was ready to sow in wheat, which in February was
followed with clover--nature's great fertilizer--the clover being
sown broadcast on the wheat, behind a light harrow run over the
wheat. The wheat crop was small, averaging less than ten bushels to
the acre, but it was enough to keep all Cottontown in bread for a
year, or until the next harvest time, and some, even, to sell. Behind
the wheat, after it was mowed, came the clover, bringing in good
dividends. After two years, it was turned under, and then it was that
the two thousand acres of land produced fifteen hundred bales of
cotton at a total cost of four cents per pound, or twenty dollars per
bale. And this included everything, even the interest on the money
and the paying of seventy-five cents per hundred pounds to the
Cottontown children for picking and storing the crop.

In a few years, under this rotation, the farm produced all the cotton
necessary to run The Model Mill, besides raising all its vegetables,
frui