In 1790 South Carolina had sent abroad a surplus of corn from the back country measuring well over a hundred thousand bushels.

But by 1804 corn brought in brigs was being advertised in Savannah to meet the local deficit;[36] and in the spring of 1807 there seems to have been a dearth of grain in the Piedmont itself.

At that time an editorial in the _Augusta Chronicle_ ran as follows: "A correspondent would recommend to the planters of Georgia, now the season is opening, to raise more corn and less cotton ...

The dear bought experience of the present season should teach us to be more provident for the future." [37] Under the conditions of the time this excess at the expense of grain was likely to correct itself at once, for men and their draught animals must eat to work, and in the prevailing lack of transportation facilities food could not be brought from a distance at a price within reach.

The systematic basis of industry was the production, whether by planters or farmers, of such food as was locally needed and such supplies of cloth together with such other outfit as it was economical to make at home, and the devotion of all further efforts to the making of cotton.
[Footnote 36: Savannah _Museum_, April n, 1804.] [Footnote 37: Reprinted in the _Farmer's Gazette_ (Sparta, Ga.), April 11, 1807.] Coincident with the rise of cotton culture in the Atlantic states was that of sugar in the delta lands of southeastern Louisiana.