very successful, and the second year a number of laborers proposed to work only four days, feed themselves and take double the land and mule work, without the money. The third year three-day hands came in, furnishing in part their own work stock; and as some hands paid the rent for a house and an acre of land by giving two days work a week, there were found various classes of hands on the same places, working from two to six days in the week. The share system is practiced more largely in Barnwell than in Hampton, and still more in Darlington and Marlboro. The terms are generally the same, the employer furnishing land, teams and implements, the laborer feeding himself and getting one-third to onehalf, after paying for his pro rata of bagging, ties, and fertilizers. Chancellor Johnson says (Marlboro county): "I have a good many tenants, white and black. I furnish the stock, food for it, pay one-half the blacksmith, fertilizer, bagging and ties account, and furnish ginning facilities; the tenant (has his garden and potato patch free) does all the work, from repairing fences and ditches to preparing the crop for market, my advances are repaid and the crop is equally divided. The tenants generally get at the rate of eight to ten bales for each mule they work, grain for their family supplies and enough to make their meat. I get the same amount of cotton and more than grain enough for the next year's crop. I have had some tenants over ten years." He prefers hired labor where the plantation is not too large, that is about eight plows. The advantage of either system depends upon the character of the individual, good tenants being sometimes poor laborers, and vice versa. Each locality reports favorably of the system pursued there.

In Hampton, the wages system is preferred, the laborers run no risks, the soil is improving, the condition of the, laborers good, very few of them own house or land. Lands sell from one dollar to twenty-five dollars per acre, and rent for one dollar to three dollars in small patches; little land is rented.

In Barnwell, the laborer decides under which system he will work. Share hands and renters pick cleaner cotton than wage hands. The wages system is preferred, by the planters, the laborer runs no risks, his pay is net money, he spends it and lives and works better, and land improves. The condition of the laborer is good and improving, quite a number own houses and lands. The market value of land is three dollars. to ten dollars an acre, including improved and unimproved. The rent is from one dollar to three dollars in money.; in kind it is seventyfive pounds of lint cotton per acre, or one thousand pounds of lint for a forty acre farm, or a five hundred pound bale for fifteen to twenty

acres.

In the lower part of Orangeburg, year hands receive monthly six dol

lars; the share system is also practiced here; no preference expressed between the two. The condition of the laborers is reported as good. The market value of land is from two dollars to ten dollars; and a good deal is rented from two to four dollars.

In Darlington, wages by the year are one hundred and twenty dollars for men, ninety dollars for women, with house, rations, fuel and truck patches. The share system and tenant system are largely practiced; the laborers do not work so well, nor do they realize so much, but they prefer less and to be independent of control; their condition is good, two per cent. own houses and land. The market value of land is ten dollars, and the rental yields about seven per cent. on the investment.

In Marlboro and Marion, a considerable part of the field labor is performed by whites; day wages are from thirty to sixty cents, by the month six dollars to twelve dollars, and the same when engaged for the year, in all cases with board. The share and tenant system are largely practiced (see above for terms, &c.). Condition of the laborers good, they are contented and happy; three to five per cent. of the negroes own land or a house. The market value of land is ten dollars to fifty dollars per acre, and rents are from three dollars to fifteen dollars per acre. (For further particulars see abstract of reports of township correspondents.)

From the southwest of Aiken county it is reported that the tendency to raise supplies fluctuates with the price of cotton, being increased by low and diminished by high prices. The share system is largely practiced, the laborer having one-third where he feeds himself, one-fourth where he is fed, the land owner advances everything, and the laborer's proportion of the expenses is taken out of the crop. The share system is not generally satisfactory; it is difficult to get cotton cleanly handled; land worked under the supervision of the proprietor generally improves; when rented, especially to negro tenants, it rapidly deteriorates; five per cent. of the negro laborers own land or their house; those who work steadily are prosperous, the proportion that do this is not, however, large. The market value of land is four dollars to fifteen dollars per acre, including wood land; tilled land rents for from one dollar to five dollars per acre.

The following comparison in some of the regards above treated of between Darlington and Marlboro counties is offered, because in 1870 Darlington led all the counties in the State in the production of cotton, nearly doubling the crop of the next highest; now it stands eighth in total production, and Marlboro stands highest in the yield per capita and per acre; the counties lie side by side:

TILLAGE AND IMPROVEMENT.

Enclosures, under the colonial laws, that have not been changed, are required to be cattle proof. The fences are built of pine rails ten feet in length, running about one hundred to the cord, worth usually fifty cents a cord, and are split for fifty cents per hundred, making the cost one dollar per hundred in the woods. Fourteen rails make eight feet in length of worm fence, or 9,240 rails per mile, lasting, on an average, five years. A recent act of the legislature allows each township to determine by vote, whether the crops or the stock shall be enclosed, if the latter, the township to tax itself for the fences necessary to protect it from the stock of the adjoining townships. To this date few townships in this belt have, availed themselves of this law.*

Drainage is little practiced in this region; the culture of the swamps being generally abandoned, and the uplands being thought not to require it. In Marlboro and Marion, however, great benefit results from a system of open ditches very generally adopted (see above soils). Little or nothing is required in the way of hillside ditches on these comparatively level lands, where little injury is experienced from washing.

The former practice of allowing fields to lie fallow, for the benefit of the growth of weeds, which increased the vegetable matter in the soil, and *Since the above was written the State legislature has passed a general law for the whole State, making it incumbent on the owners of live stock to see that they do not trespass on others. The tiller of the soil is no longer compelled to build fences to protect the fruits of his labor from the inroads of his neighbors' cattle, thus saving all cost in building and repairing fences, estimated in 1879 at $917,000 by the 10th U. S. Census.

which killed by their shade the grasses that were especially troublesome on cultivated lands, has been almost wholly abandoned. Nor is there any regular or general system of rotation of crops. Cotton lands especially are planted year after year in the same crop, and if properly manured, are thought to improve. Rotation, when practiced, is two years cotton, one year corn; small grain is planted in the fall, after the corn is gathered, and the next summer a crop of corn or cow-peas is grown on the stubble, to be followed the next spring by cotton. In Marlboro county, land planted in cotton for fourteen successive years, without additional manure, except the increased cotton seed from the larger crops, produce double what they did at first.

The fall plowing of cotton and corn lands, once much practiced, has been very generally abandoned; some still think it pays to break the land eight or ten inches deep in the fall about every fourth year, otherwise it is only done to turn under weeds on land that has been resting.

The depth of tillage varies from two and a half to six inches, measured on the land side of the furrow, and it is very rare to see more than one animal used in plowing. It is only the larger farmers, who are becoming scarcer, who use two-horse plows occasionally.

The amount of land once cultivated, that has been abandoned, is stated as very little in Hampton county; 'at from ten to twenty per cent. in Barnwell; at ten to fifteen per cent. in Orangeburg; at twenty-five per cent. in Darlington, and, excluding swamps, at nothing in Marion and Marlboro. When the uplands are turned out in this region, they grow up first in broomsedge, which is succeeded by short leaf pine, beneath which in time all grass and undergrowth disappears. When again taken in, they yield well with manuring, but without good treatment they deteriorate more rapidly than virgin soil. It is a question-on which there is a diversity of opinion-whether the second growth of pines is a benefit or an injury to land; in the lower country it is thought to be injurious, supporting the view that narrow leaved growths do not improve the soil. In the upper country the opinion is, however, decided that the soil improves under the old-field pine. With some other growths there is no question, in this regard; for instance the persimmon always improves lands, and seems to exert no bad influence even on the growing crops in cultivated fields, it being often remarked that the tallest cotton is found under such trees, where it is dwarfed by the proximity of a pine or a post-oak. Certain other forest trees seem to favor particular growths here, as the sugarberry, under which verdant patches of blue grass are often seen, when found no where else. There seem to be friendly and unfriendly relations among plants. Bermuda grass will not grow under pines or cedars, but thrives most under the Euonymus. Polk is said to give the rust to cotton, and Jamestown weed will, it is believed, eradicate nut grass.

Green manuring, especially with the cow-pea, is regarded favorably, although it is not practiced as a system. Sown broadcast, manured with the "Ash element" (a cheap fertilizer composed chiefly of lime and potash) and turned under after the vines are wilted by frost, remarkable results have been attained. Col. Thomas Taylor says that lands subject to rust, and never yielding more than seven bushels of wheat, have given twentysix bushels under this treatment. After the cotton is laid by a furrow is sometimes run in the alley, and cow-peas drilled in, forming the basis on which the next year's cotton bed is to be constructed. Peas grown among corn are esteemed highly for the beneficial influence they exert on the soil, as well as for the crop they yield.

The limited amount of stable and lot manure, furnished chiefly by the work stock, other cattle being rarely fed or penned systematically, is much valued. Cotton seed is wholly used for manure, and its use has much increased, either alone, or composted with woods mould and litter, or the superphosphates. These means of maintaining the fertility of the land are largely supplemented by the use of guanos and other fertilizers. In Marlboro county the general rule is, to return to the land all the cotton seed produced on it, and in addition one sack of Guanape guano, or half a sack of it, with one hundred pounds of superphosphates, and if rust is apprehended, one hundred pounds of kainit. Lands so treated are counted on with much certainty to give a bale of cotton to the acre one year with another. This may be taken as the best established and most successful practice regarding manures. There are wide variations from it. A very few, but not the least successful farmers, purchase no commercial fertilizers and rely wholly on cotton seed, composts of woods moulds and leaves, and stable manure. The use of fertilizer is very generally deprecated as unthrifty and extravagant, but the facility with which they may be obtained and used, makes their employment the general practice.

The first step in preparation for planting cotton is to dispose of the old stalks. If small, they are not attended to. Ordinarily they are knocked to pieces by hand with a club. Machines have been devised for this purpose, but have not proved successful, thus leaving a field open to inventors. When the stalks are very large, say four to five feet high, they have to be pulled up, and sometimes to be burned. Some planters pull up the stalks and lay them in the furrow on which the bed is to be made; it is objected to this practice that the plow in cultivation strikes the buried stalks and destroys the young cotton.

The furrow for the bed is either run in the alley between the rows, or the old bed is barred off and the furrow run through its centre. The first practice alternates the cotton rows every year, the second plants on