latitudes, and the uncertainty of the plant reaching maturity before the arrival of the frosts, prevented the rapid growth of cotton culture in these States after 1830 which took place elsewhere, especially as the continual decline in the price of the staple only emphasized the disadvantages under which the planters of these States labored."[89] But while decline was noticeable in the Northern States, the States at the Southwest were going ahead by leaps and bounds. The same year (1843) Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, from which no cotton had been reported in 1801, produced together 232,000,000 pounds, while South Carolina increased its crops from 2,000,000 to 65,500,000 and Georgia from 10,000,000 to 75,000,000 pounds during the same time.[90] As the cotton field extended of course the demand for labor increased and that labor was necessarily negro slave labor, for it was thought that the white man could not endure work under a tropical sun, while the organism of the negro was especially adapted to it.[91] As a consequence negroes were secured from every possible source. In short, negroes and cotton soon came to be inseparably associated. The amount of cotton that could be raised depended upon the number of negroes to be secured to work it. The value of a negro was measured by his usefulness in the cotton field.[92] De Bow estimated that in 1850 out of the 2,500,000 slaves in the Southern States about 1,800,000[93] of them, or nearly three-fourths were engaged in the cotton industry, leaving for all other purposes only about 700,000, or about the same number as there was in the whole United States in 1790, at which time the production of cotton was only 1,500,000 pounds.[94] Thus it is seen that while cotton demanded all the increase of slaves from whatever source from that time forward all other things merely held their own. However, if we subtract the number engaged in the sugar industry, which was 150,000[95] in 1850 for the reason that it was a new crop developed during the early part of the century,[96] it is noticed that other things lost. From this we conclude it was only natural that the surplus slave population of the older slave States where it was useless was to be drained off to the cotton States. Some of the Southern papers, notably the "Richmond Enquirer," over and again called attention to the relation of cotton and negroes. In 1859 it says: "The price of cotton it is well known pretty much regulates the price of slaves in the South, and a bale of cotton and a 'likely nigger' are about well balanced in the scale of pecuniary appreciation."[97] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 59: McCord: S.C. Statutes at Large, Vol. VII., p. 449.] [Footnote 60: Annals of Congress, 16 Cong., 2 Sess., p. 77.] [Footnote 61: (Ingraham): The Southwest, Vol. II., p. 223.] [Footnote 62: Alexander: Transatlantic Sketches, p. 250. Basil Hall: Travels in N. Am., Vol. II., p. 217.] [Footnote 63: Hunt's: Merchants' Magazine, Vol. VI., p. 473.]