e
Piedmont in cotton, it was reported in 1836 that in the town of Columbia
alone the purchases of bacon during the preceding year had amounted to
three and a half million pounds.[15]

[Footnote 14: _Southern Agriculturist_, I, 61.]

[Footnote 15: _Niles' Register_, LI, 46.]

The world-wide panic of 1837 began to send prices down, and the specially
intense cotton crisis of 1839 broke the market so thoroughly that for five
years afterward the producers had to take from five to seven cents a pound
for their crops. Planters by thousands were bankrupted, most numerously in
the inflated southwest; and thoughtful men everywhere set themselves afresh
to study the means of salvation. Edmund Ruffin, the Virginian enthusiast
for fertilizers, was employed by the authority of the South Carolina
legislature to make an agricultural survey of that state with a view to
recommending improvements. Private citizens made experiments on their
estates; and the newspapers and the multiplying agricultural journals
published their reports and advice. Most prominent among the cotton belt
planters who labored in the cause of reform were ex-Governor James H.
Hammond of South Carolina, Jethro V. Jones of Georgia, Dr. N.B. Cloud of
Alabama, and Dr. Martin W. Philips of Mississippi. Of these, Hammond was
chiefly concerned in swamp drainage, hillside terracing, forage increase,
and livestock improvement; Jones was a promoter of the breeding of improved
strains of cotton; Cloud was a specialist in fertilizing; and Philips was
an all-round experimenter and propagandist. Hammond and Philips, who were
both spurred to experiments by financial stress, have left voluminous
records in print and manuscript. Their careers illustrate the handicaps
under which innovators labored.

Hammond's estate[16] lay on the Carolina side of the Savannah River, some
sixteen miles below Augusta. Impressed by the depletion of his upland
soils, he made a journey in 1838 through southwestern Georgia and the
adjacent portion of Florida in search of a new location; but finding land
prices inflated, he returned without making a purchase,[17] and for the
time being sought relief at home through the improvement of his methods. He
wrote in 1841: "I have tried almost all systems, and unlike most planters
do not like what is old. I hardly know anything old in corn or cotton
planting but what is wrong." His particular enthusiasm now was for plow
cultivation as against the hoe. The best