The Bishop of Cottontown Part 98

"Now, I'm goin' to give this mill a chance to raise its own cotton, besides everything else its people needs to eat. I figger we can raise cotton cheaper than we can buy it, an' keep our folks healthy, too."

Near Cottontown was an old cotton plantation of four thousand acres.

It had been sadly neglected and run down. This the bishop purchased for the company for only ten dollars an acre, and divided it into tracts of twenty acres each, building a neat cottage, dairy and barn, and other outhouses on each tract--but all arranged for a family of four or five, and thus sprang up in a year a new settlement of two hundred families around Cottontown. It was no trouble to get them, for the fame of The Model Mill had spread, and far more applied yearly for employment than could be accommodated. This large farm, when equipped fully, represented fifty thousand dollars more, or an investment of ninety thousand dollars, and immediately became a valuable a.s.set of the mill.

It was divided into four parts, each under the supervision of a manager, a practical and experienced cotton farmer of the valley, and the tenants were selected every year from among all the workers of the mill, preference always being given to the families who needed the outdoor work most, and those physically weak from long work in the mill. It was so arranged that only fifty families, or one-fourth of the mill, went out each year, staying four years each on the farm. And thus every four years were two hundred families given the chance in the open to get in touch with nature, the great physician, and come again. After four years they went back to the mill, sunburnt, swarthy, and full of health, and what is greater than health,--cheerfulness--the cheerfulness that comes with change.

On the farm they received the same wages as when in the mill, and each family was furnished with a mule, a cow, and poultry, and with a good garden.

To reclaim this land and build up the soil was now the chief work of the old man; but having been overseer on a large cotton plantation, he knew his business, and set to work at it with all the zeal and good sense of his nature.

He knew that cotton was one of the least exhaustive crops of the world, taking nearly all its sustenance from the air, and that it was also one of the most easily raised, requiring none of the complicated and expensive machinery necessary for wheat and other smaller grains. He knew, too, that under the thorough preparation of the soil necessary for cotton, wheat did best after it, and with clover sown on the wheat, he would soon have nature's remedy for reclaiming the soil. He also knew that the most expensive feature of cotton raising was the picking--the gathering of the crop--and in the children of Cottontown, he saw at once that he had a quick solution--one which solved the picking problem and yet gave to each growing boy and girl three months, in the cool, delightful fall, of healthful work, with pay more than equal to a year of the old cheap labor behind the spinners. For,--as it proved, at seventy-five cents per hundred pounds for the seed cotton picked,--these children earned from seventy-five cents to a dollar and a half a day.

The first year, only half of the land was put in cotton, attention being given to reclaiming the other half. But even this proved a surprise for all, for nearly one thousand bales of cotton were ginned, at a total cost to the mill of only four cents per pound, while Cottontown had been fed during summer with all the vegetables and melons needed--all raised on the farm.

That fall, the land, under the clean and constant plowing necessary to raise the cotton, was ready to sow in wheat, which in February was followed with clover--nature's great fertilizer--the clover being sown broadcast on the wheat, behind a light harrow run over the wheat. The wheat crop was small, averaging less than ten bushels to the acre, but it was enough to keep all Cottontown in bread for a year, or until the next harvest time, and some, even, to sell. Behind the wheat, after it was mowed, came the clover, bringing in good dividends. After two years, it was turned under, and then it was that the two thousand acres of land produced fifteen hundred bales of cotton at a total cost of four cents per pound, or twenty dollars per bale. And this included everything, even the interest on the money and the paying of seventy-five cents per hundred pounds to the Cottontown children for picking and storing the crop.

In a few years, under this rotation, the farm produced all the cotton necessary to run The Model Mill, besides raising all its vegetables, fruit, and bread for all the families of Cottontown.

But the most beautiful sight to the old man was to see the children every fall picking the cotton. Little boys and girls, who before had worked twelve hours a day in the old, hot, stifling, ill-smelling mill, now stood out in the sunshine and in the frosty air of the mornings, each with sack to side, waist deep in pure white cotton, flooded in sunshine and health and sweetness.

They were deft with their fingers--the old mill had taught many of them that--and their pay, daily, ran from seventy-five cents to a dollar and a half--as much as some of them had earned in a week of the old way. And, oh, the health of it, the glory of air and sky and sunshine, the smell of dew on the bruised cotton-heads, the rustle of the mountain breeze cooling the heated cheeks; the healthy hunger, and the lunches in the shade by the cool spring; the shadows of evening creeping down from the mountains, the healthy fatigue--and the sweet home-going in the twilight, riding beneath the silent stars on wagons of snowy seed cotton, burrowing in bed of down and purest white--this snow of a Southern summer--with the happy laughter of childhood and the hunger of home-coming, and the glory and freedom of it all!

THE END.