iety, ennoble the upper classes, and give even the poorer
whites a stimulating pride of race. "In a few years," said he, "owing to
the operation of this institution upon our unparalleled natural advantages,
we shall be the richest people beneath the bend of the rainbow; and then
the arts and the sciences, which always follow in the train of wealth, will
flourish to an extent hitherto unknown on this side of the Atlantic." [29]

[Footnote 28: Portland, Ala., _Evening Advertiser_, April 12, 1833.]

[Footnote 29: _Southern Ladies' Book_ (Macon, Ga.), April, 1840.]

As a practical measure to relieve the stress of the older districts a
beginning was made in seed selection, manuring and crop rotation to
enhance the harvests; horses were largely replaced by mules, whose earlier
maturity, greater hardihood and longer lives made their use more economical
for plow and wagon work;[30] the straight furrows of earlier times gave
place in the Piedmont to curving ones which followed the hill contours
and when supplemented with occasional grass balks and ditches checked the
scouring of the rains and conserved in some degree the thin soils of the
region; a few textile factories were built to better the local market for
cotton and lower the cost of cloth as well as to yield profits to their
proprietors; the home production of grain and meat supplies was in some
measure increased; and river and highway improvements and railroad
construction were undertaken to lessen the expenses of distant
marketing.[31] Some of these recourses were promptly adopted in the newer
settlements also; and others proved of little avail for the time being. The
net effect of the betterments, however, was an appreciable offsetting
of the western advantage; and this, when added to the love of home, the
disrelish of primitive travel and pioneer life, and the dread of the costs
and risks involved in removal, dissuaded multitudes from the project of
migration. The actual depopulation of the Atlantic states was less than the
plaints of the time would suggest. The volume of emigration was undoubtedly
great, and few newcomers came in to fill the gaps. But the birth rate alone
in those generations of ample families more than replaced the losses year
by year in most localities. The sense of loss was in general the product
not of actual depletion but of disappointment in the expectation of
increase.

[Footnote 30: H.T. Cook, _The Life and Legacy of David R. Williams_ (New