The Cotton Planter's Manual - Being a Compilation of Facts From the Best Authorities of the Culture of Cotton; Its Natural History, Chemical Analysis, Trade, and Comsumption; And Embracing a History of Cotton and the Cotton Gin #266348

This book is a compilation. It makes no pretensions whatever to originality. All compilations must, from the very nature of things, be imperfect; therefore this book is imperfect. One of two plans I bad to adopt, either to write an entirely original work, or compile one from the writings of others. Had I adopted the former plan, I might, it is true, have produced a more compact work, a more systematic treatise, in a more uniform style; but it is a question whether I would have made so valuable a volume as the one I present you. What might have been gained in the graces of composition, or the system of a well-digested treatise, might have been lost in my want of experience in all the departments I have presented you, to make a proper volume. It is quite easy to fill a given number of pages, but to make those pages useful and practical, is quite another thing. I thought it best, therefore, because it would be more useful to cotton planters, to compile the best authorities on the subject of which I treat.