I am glad you have returned to the old form of Magazine. Although a Life Member, and thus entitled to receive it without pay, yet I am glad to inclose fifty cents for it, and most earnestly hope each and every one who receives the Magazine will do the same promptly, and _thus increase the income of the A. M. A. twelve thousand and five hundred dollars_. Yours sincerely, A LIFE MEMBER. * * * * * (_From the N. Y. Herald._) SLAVE AND FREE LABOR COTTON. Twelve crops of cotton have been raised by free labor, and the comparison of the returns with an equal number of crops before the war shows some interesting results. The period of free labor may properly be divided into two portions—the first, including four years, during which the crops of 1865 to 1868, both inclusive, were made, and in which the labor system was greatly disorganized; the second, including eight years—1869 to 1877—when free labor was fairly well organized. If we divide the twelve crops preceding the war in the same manner, we shall get the following results: FIRST PERIOD—FOUR YEARS. _Bales._ Crops of 1849–’50 to 1852–’53, inclusive 10,729,874 Add consumption of the South, not then included in the commercial crop statement 500,810 ---------- Total (slave) 11,230,684 Crops of 1865–’66 to 1868–’69, inclusive (free) 9,246,793 ---------- Excess of slave crop over free 1,983,891 SECOND PERIOD—EIGHT YEARS. Crops of 1869–’70 to 1876–’77, inclusive, being eight years of organized free labor 31,570,212 Crops of 1853–’54 to 1860–’61, inclusive, being eight years of slave labor immediately preceding the war 27,535,949 Add Southern consumption then excluded from commercial crop statement, but included since the war 1,261,892–28,797,841 ---------- Excess of free labor 2,772,371 In the last eight years free labor has, therefore, overtaken the palmiest days of slavery, and has produced two and three-quarter million bales more cotton. This crop is now more free from the encumbrance of debt than ever before, and with it has been raised a supply of food far greater than slavery ever compassed. Without entering into minute statistics, it is safe to say that the money value of the thirty-one and a half million bales of cotton produced in the last eight years has been over two thousand million dollars in gold, and that over two-thirds of this value has been exported.