Cotton “Overproduction†in Late Nineteenth-Century Southern Agriculture

No source of agricultural distress in the post-bellum South was more frequently alluded to by nineteenth-century observers than the “overproduction†of cotton. The anonymous author of the opening quotation was merely expressing, in characteristically metaphorical terms, a widely-held view that was to persist for years among southern reformers. Even writers who conceded the peculiar advantages for cotton culture derived from the South's climate and soils often argued nevertheless that crop diversification was the order of the day.