The first reform, however, that must be made is in the system of farming. The South must prepare to raise her own provisions, compost her fertilizers, cure her own hay, and breed her own stock. Leaving credit and usury out of the question, no man can pay seventy-five cents a bushel for corn, thirty dollars a ton for hay, twenty dollars a barrel for pork, sixty cents for oats, and raise cotton for eight cents a pound. The farmers who prosper at the South are the “corn-raisers,” _i.e._, the men who raise their own supplies, and make cotton their surplus crop. A gentleman who recorded 320 mortgages last year testified that not one was placed on the farm of a man who raised his own bread and meat. The shrewd farmers who always have a bit of money on hand with which to buy any good place that is to be sold under mortgage are the “corn-raisers,” and the moment they get possession they rule out the all-cotton plan, and plant corn and the grasses. That the plan of farming only needs revision to make the South rich beyond measure is proven by constant example. A corn-raiser bought a place of 370 acres for $1700. He at once put six tenants on it, and limited their cotton acreage to one-third of what they had under cultivation. Each one of the six made more clear money than the former owner had made, and the rents for the first year were $1126. The man who bought this farm lives in Oglethorpe, Georgia, and has fifteen farms all run on the same plan. The details of the management of what may be the typical planting neighborhood of the South in the future are furnished me by the manager of the Capeheart estate in North Carolina. This estate is divided into farms of fifty acres each, and rented to tenants. These tenants are bound to plant fifteen acres in cotton, twelve in corn, eight in small crops, and let fifteen lie in grass. They pay one-third of the crop as rent, or one-half if the proprietor furnishes horses and mules. They have comfortable quarters, and are entitled to the use of surplus herring and the dressings of the herring caught in the fisheries annexed to the place. In the center of the estate is a general store managed by the proprietor, at which the tenants have such a line of credit as they are entitled to, of course paying a pretty percentage of profit on the goods they buy. They are universally prosperous, and in some cases, where by skill and industry they have secured 100 acres, are laying up money. The profits to Dr. Capeheart are large, and show the margin there is in buying land that is loosely farmed, and putting it under intelligent supervision. Of the $52,000 worth of land added to his estates last year, at a valuation of twenty-five dollars per acre, he will realize in rental nine dollars per acre for every acre cultivated, and calculates that in five years at the most the rentals of the land will have paid back what he gave for it.