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0270

10 

cotton plantation, engaged chiefly in raising cotton by means of the paid labor of freedmen. The rent of the land is assumed to be, to the owner, an average of three dollars fifty cents per acre, and to the company one dollar per acre. Total for rents, four dollars fifty cents per acre. Wages of ten freedmen, twelve hundred dollars per annum; board of do., one thousand dollars per annum; cost of four mules, at one hundred and fifty dollars each, six hundred dollars; cost of carts, ploughs, and other agricultural implements, two hundred dollars. Expenses of family for first year after arriving on plantation, eight hundred dollars. The average product of cotton with slave labor is two bales per acre; but with paid labor, under the immediate supervision and co-operation of an energetic Northern man having a deep interest in the result, it might be expected to be much more; but estimating it at no more than two bales per acre, and that seventy-five acres of the one hundred be planted to cotton, and the other twenty-five acres devoted to raising grain and vegetables for the family, the laborers, and the teams, the result would be a yield of one hundred and fifty bales of cotton, besides a sufficiency of grain and vegetables to supply the wants of the plantation. The ginning and baling of the crop, and transporting from the plantation to market, would be about four dollars per bale. The market price is assumed to be one hundred and sixty dollars per bale. 

The result would be as follows for the first year:-