Dr. Cloud, the most intelligent writer upon cotton cultivation I have been able to find, is urgent in his advice to manure the land, practice rotation of crops, and produce larger crops upon fewer acres. But the universal practice is precisely the reverse; the process of exhaustion is followed year after year; cotton is planted year after year; the seed--which Northern men would cultivate for oil alone, and which exhausts the land ten times faster than the fibre--is mostly wasted; in the words of a Southern paper, 'The seed is left to rot about the gin-house, producing foul odors, and a constant cause of sickness.' The land is cropped until it is literally skinned, and then the planter migrates to some new region, again to drive out the poor whites, monopolize the soil, and leave it once more to grow up to 'piney woods.' Note again the warning words of Dr. Cloud: 'With a climate and soil peculiarly adapted to the production of cotton, our country is equally favorable to the production of all the necessary cereals, and as remarkably favorable to the perfect development of the animal economy, in fine horses, good milch cows, sheep and hogs; and for fruit of every variety, _not tropical_, it is eminently superior. Why is it, then, that we find so many _wealthy cotton planters_, whose riches consist entirely of their slaves and worn-out plantations?' No crop would be more remunerative to a small farmer, with a moderate family to assist in the picking season, than cotton. Upon the fertile lands of Texas, which produce one to two bales of cotton to the acre, ten acres of cotton is the usual allotment to each hand, with also sufficient land in corn and vegetables to furnish food for the laborer and his proportion of the idle force upon the plantation, which are two to one, without reckoning the planter and overseer and their families. Now, upon the absurd supposition that a free man, with a will in his work, would do no more work than a slave, what would be the result of his labor? 1st, food for his family; 2d, 10 acres of cotton, at 500 pounds to the acre, 5000 pounds, at 10 cents per pound, or $500. But the result would be much greater, for, as a Southern man has well said, 'the maximum of slave labor would be the minimum of free labor;' and the writer can bring proof of many instances where each field hand has produced 13, 15, and even 18 bales of cotton in a year. With the denser population which would follow the emancipation of the slaves and the breaking up of the plantation system, a harvest force for the picking season would be available, and one man would as easily cultivate 20 to 25 acres of cotton, with assistance in the picking season, as he could thirty acres of corn, the usual allotment to each hand upon the corn land of Texas.