Newspapers / The Carolina Union Farmer … / March 28, 1912, edition 1 / Page 5
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Thursday, March 28, 1912.] THE CAROLINA UNION FARMER Page Five 1 c omment on Things in General. J. Z. Green, in The Marshville Home. Northern farmers say that if na ture had given them a world monop oly of cotton production they would have been getting twenty cents a pound for that staple all these years. With their intelligence and their ca pacity to maintain a business organ ization ana mutual co-operation, they are probably not making extravagant claims when they contend that they would have been able to maintain the price of cotton at a twenty-cent average. Southern farmers once had the old organization known as the Grange, but they let it die for lack of intelligent membership. In the northern and central States the Grange has existed for forty-five years and now claims an aggregate niembership of more than a million. In competition with the world in the production of grain and live stock, farmers in the grain growing sec tion have succeeded so much better than the Southern farmers, with their monopoly of cotton production, that there is no comparison. Many of the farmers, living on rented farms in the grain growing section, succeed much better than the aver age Southern cotton farmer and land owner. And yet in the production and sale of their products the far mers of the grain growing section must meet world competition. * Nature has given Southern farmers an opportunity thht exists nowhere else in the world except in these few Southern States. We produce Something that cannot be produced economically, and only in limited quantity, except in the Southern part of the United States. This cotton Product is something the world is compelled to have—something for 'vhich there is no substitute, except at high relative cost. The primary '''ay to profit by this natural monop oly of cotton production is by neg ative action, by simply refusing to Produce it except in limited quanti- ties. But instead of using this great Patural nfonopoly to build up South- ®cn homes. Southern schools and Southern industries in such manner as to change the commercial center from New York to New Orleans, 'vhere it logically belongs, we have ’ised it to improverish our homes, to Perpetuate the withering, blighting carse of ignorance, and to keep our Southern enterprises dependent upon I^'Iorthern commercial centers for the! r existence. The far-reaching and disastrous effect of wasted ener- and wasted effort in Southern cot ton can be. realized only by far-reach- analysis of cause and effect. And I am not placing the respon sibility for this almost economic er- ^ar upon Southern farmers alone, for ®aly a part of it rests with them. In act, there are hundreds of thous ands of Southern farmers who are Peither remotely or directly respon sible for it. I have reference here n the farmers who farm under the asic and fundamental idea of, first ® all, making a living at home. Mer- ? ^ants and horse and mule dealers *P the South, who from choice (be cause the profits of time business are ^ h'ger) sell stock and supplies and P&gies and wagons under the iniqui- ^Pus crop-lien system (that ought to ave been long ago consigned to the nst by the strong arm of law) come as a big factor in the large yields ^ cotton and its consequent depres- in*^^^ prices and stagnation of bus- alf^^ ^ blaming them mor- > for doing this, for they are do- more than to follow the el that is prompted by tha of selfishneas that exiits in human race, the kind of lelflih* ness that always looks out for direct personal interests first and commun ity interest next. We should not want to eliminate this part of human nature, for men would become indo lent and improvident and inactive without it, but I am trying to point out some of the principal factors that are responsible for the poverty of the South that has resulted from producing too much cotton. When a negro buys his supplies and mules on time he must plant too much cot ton and too little food products in order to meet payments. It is bad for the Southern white farmers and their families who are thus forced into competition with that sort of cotton production. In the long run, and in its broader meaning, that sort of encouraged and enforced credit business keeps the South in an unsafe financial condition and li able to reverses and panics at any time, and it also keeps this section as a whole from enjoying the benefit of the natural monopoly that would be ours if one-third the present cot ton acreage were planted to food crops. But to get back to the responsi bility of the farmer who ought to have intelligence and manhood to place himself in an independent at titude—just this much in the way of direct and pertinent remarks: Of all the people in this world who should be the last to condemn the “time merchant,” it is the land-own er who decides to gamble on cotton and puts up a credit supply of fer tilizers to do it with. The time mer chant isn’t to blame for your own in dividual economic error. He sim ply supplies a demand which you create, when you go to him and ask for fertilizers or anything else on time. When you pay 10 per cent over the cash price for fertilizers, or supplies, or mules, or buggies, you make a note or account that runs about six months. Ten per cent for six months is equivalent to 20 per cent a year. What would you think of yourself as a “business far mer” if you should step out to one of your neighbors and borrow mon ey from him at 20 per cent interest? And yet you could do that and be just as good “business farmer” as you are when you pay ten per cent above the cash price for anything you buy. If you give a note bearing six per cent interest it makes it that much worse, for the interest then looms up to a basis of something like twenty-six per cent above the cash price. That sort of reckless business transaction would, if applied to them, bring bankruptcy to the best busi ness enterprises in this country. The commercial world considers ten per cent per annum good hire for capital -a good income on investments. When you pay the equivalent of twenty per cent interest on fertilizers and supplies bought on time you are paying twice what the commercial world considers a good income on in vestments. No business enterprise could exist if it had to do business on borrowed capital and pay twenty per cent interest, and the only reason the farmers, who buy on time, can manage to eke out some sort of ex istence under that sort of economic blunders exists in the fact that the peculiar nature of their occupation will stand more of that sort of thing than nay other. If they didn’t have their gardens, truck patches, milk cows, slop pigs, blackberry patches, etc., to come to their partial relief the "time farmers’* couldn’t stand It. • • • When I eUtedi Uet fell, thet rep- Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Company HOME OFFICE, RALEIGH, N. C. Strong, Conservative and a Sure Protection SURPLUS TO POLICYHOLDERS, $500,239 15 ALL PLANS OF LEGITIMATE INSURANCE AT LOWEST RATES CONSISTENT WITH SAFETY. By giving us your insurance, North Carolina reaps a benefit and at the same time you get “Value Received” for your investments. JOS. G. BROWN. President. P. D. GOLD, Jr.. CHAS. W. GOLD. 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The Carolina Union Farmer (Charlotte, N.C.)
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March 28, 1912, edition 1
5
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