Newspapers / The Carolina Union Farmer … / Feb. 13, 1913, edition 1 / Page 9
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Page Nine it. If you do not let him know now that you want and he does what you do not want done, then don’t “cuss” him when he comes home for not doing what you refused to tell him you wanted done. Y^OU SUPPORT BUSINESS AND BUSINESS RUNS POLITICS. The farm is the basis of all wealth and the farmer is the absolute producer of wealth. Every building in town and city is indirectly, and we might say almost directly, the result of the labor of the tillers of the soil. There isn’t a share of railroad stock that would be worth anything without the labor of the farmer and his family. The labor of the farmer, therefore, supplies the material that keeps up activity and sustains life in all lines of human endeavor. In other words, the farmer is taxed to maintain every business enter prise in this country and yet he permits “busi ness” to run politics, both State and National. He has been dong this so long that he almost con cludes sometimes that this condition of things can not be changed. It can not be changed by individual farmers, but when we begin to realize the potent cohesive force of organization and apply it in a business way to protect and promote our interests, we will discover that Wb have plenty of influence and power, if we will use it properly. ^ S TAXATION. In this country the burden of taxation has al ways rested heaviest upon those who are least able to bear it. Ability to pay taxes is not the basis upon which our taxes are levied. Farming lands are assessed for something like half their value while city lots and sky-scrapers and other less imposing city structures are sometimes as sessed at one-tdnth of their cost. Farmers pay taxes on hogs, yearlings, cows, horses, cord wood, provisions and everything else in sight on the premises, while many of the idle rich deposit their notes and mortgages in a private safe and escape taxation. Discussing some needed reforms in taxation Editor Clarence H. Poe makes some timely suggestions, but it is hardly probable that the Legislature will enact any of these reform ideas into law—unless more pressure is brought to bear by those who are carrying the burden than they have ever yet resorted to. We agree with the following suggestions from Mr. Poe: “I repeat that the problem of raising money for the schools in North Carolina can be solved. Some such methods as have suc ceeded in Wisconsin, Ohio and. West Virginia will succeed in North Carolina. • “The justest of all forms of taxation is the inheritance tax. We have no inhertance tax law worthy the name, whereas we ought to get several hundred thousand dollars from Inheritances. A law somewhat less stringent than Oklahoma’s but more stringent than that of Kansas or of California, rigidly en forced, would greatly increase our revenues and reduce the burden of taxation on the poor —would tax the gains of chance or inherit ance more, the gains of thrift and industry less. A stricter income tax, with provisions for publishing the income tax list, would also probably double receipts from this source. A plan for requiring all solvent credits to be listed or registered, in order to be collectible, should also be provided.” I heard a man say a while ago that he had made a careful investigation of the men who had achieved success in a large Southern city, and that ninety per cent of them had been bred on farms. To him it was a matter of pride and gratiflca- tion, but I will confess frankly that the statement shocked and saddened me. I knew in a general way that our cities were absorbing too many country boys, but the thought that the brains, energy and power of a great from the farms to the cities. In the South par ticularly, where the negro farm help is even more pronounced in its tendency to leave the country and congest in the cities, the farmer must learn how to hold his boys, or go to smash. I am not an alarmist—normally and naturally I am an optimist and believe most men are strug gling toward the light and better conditions. But I would be foolish to blind myself to the con ditions outlined, and which any observant man may see. Good schools and broader educational advantages will go for as a remedy. This is a real an'd great problem of the day as I s^ it. \Jnless it is solved we shall inevitably decay and vanish as the most powerful nation on earth. Union City, Ga., Feb. 5, 1913. A great nation is not the outgrowth of a few men of genius, but the superlative worth of a great common people. Dr. S. A. Knapp. It is impossible to impress upon any one that there is dignity in residing upon a farm with im poverished soil, dilapidated buildings, and an en vironment of ignorance. Dr. S. A. Knapp. « • notice to county secretary. * ♦ ♦ ♦ Please notify this office at once of any • change of County Secretary that I may send ♦ the County dues ajid fees to the proper offl- ♦ "cer. E. C. FAIRES, Secretary-Treasurer. Aberdeen, N. C. * * • • A*. city had been achieved at the expense of the farms was startling. In it, I saw one of the main reasons why farming was falling into decay, and farm lands were in alien hands. We hear and read a vast deal these days about conservation, but to my mind the most vital things in America today is the conservation of eur young men on the soil. It is old and trite to say that a nation’s prosperity is measured by its agriculture, but it is profoundly true never theless. There are a thousand issues over which our statesmen concern themselves and with which they whip the people into frenzies of political fervor. But they are not striking at the heart and soul of the most vital problem of the day. These questions are most' largely politcal, while the greatest economic issue of this century is to create such conditions and to so educate our boys as to make them love, prosper on and stick to our farms. When statesmen big enough and broad enough fill our lawmaking halls to sense this fact and seek the remedy, then we shall have a new era. Here are just a few random facts tending to show our farms have been and are being drained of its best blood. Sixty-six per cent of the tillers of the soil in the United States are non-landown- ers. In Georgia only thirty-four per cent of the farmers own the land which they till; in Alabama and South Carolina thirty-seven per cent, while in other Southern States conditions are as serious. Similar conditions probably^ prevail nation-wide. This farm ownership by those who do not culti vate the land is becoming one of the greatest problems of the day, and I believe much of it is due to the boys leaving the farm for the city. This alien land ownership must be serious when Mississippi finds it expedient to pass a law regu lating it. We must face this problem and find the rem edy. Unless this movement away from the soil is checked our national prosperity and greatness is sure to crumble. Agricultural schools, rural delivery, rural telephones, wider and more general dissemination of information on improved farm ing and now the parcels post are helpful factors and beacon lights along the way, but much more is to be done to accomplish real results. Much depends on the farmer-father. They must treat their boys right; teach him how to love the farm and let him share in the profits of his toil. The Boys’ Corn Clubs have demonstrat ed very clearly what they can and will do if offer ed the right stimulus, the hope of reward. Closer and beter community interest and intercourse, accurate knowledge of the soil and the things that best grow on it—all these from part at least, of a general upward movement for the future farmers of this country. Are we to have conditions here in the South and in the West as one may find them In many of the New England States'—miles of abandoned farms and houses vacant and falling into' decay? I fear so unless we can check the flow of boys COULD THEY? At the recent annual convention of the New Y’'ork State Agricultural Society in Albany a far mer related substantially this: In his home town the local Grange had difficulty to buy feed by the carload direct from the mills. One drummer final ly was found who sold the Grange a carload, but the local feed merchants held a convention and protested against the practice of selling direct to consumers, and pledged themselves not to buy from mills which sold direct to Granges. The drummer who sold the carload said he had lost the sale of more than thirty carloads to dealers be cause of that one sale to the Grange. No one can blame the drummer for not wishing to repeat the experience. Few will deny the deal ers the right to buy from whom they please, and to refuse to buy from others. The mills will fol low the policy that brings in the most trade. Sup pose the farmers in that county had been organiz ed into Granges or other co-operative associations, and concluded to buy all their feed in car lots di rect from the mills. The drummer could then sell thirty carloads to the consumers where he could sell one to the dealers. The condition would be reversed. Does anyone doubt that the drummers of all the mills would be gunning for the Granges trade? The dealers’ association might then pass resolutions to their hearts’ content. They do not consume a pound of feed, and the drummers know it. If they could not sell feed they would not buy it, and their protest would be as idle as the pro tests of the lone Grange are now. There are argu ments for and against this direct buying. We are not discussing them now. But the lesson is that a dozen organized tradesmen can defeat several dis organized farmers. Could a dozen organized tradesmen defeat several thousand organized far mers?—Rural New Yorker. SINNERS AND SOUR SOILS. Among a half dozen rules for the country preacher which an investigator has laid down is the following: “He should do actual farm work, so that he may be more able to mix with his con gregation.” This is sound advice, but the chances are that a good many country pastors do not need it. Most of them have always had—for obvious financial reasons—their vegetable gardens, and many have kept hens, though not always with very profitable results. Two pastors who left the min istry to become poultry farmers soon found that something more than religious zeal was required to breed the two-hundred-egg hen. So they re- 1 turned to their mutton—to preaching. Perhaps the rural minister should be a general farmer in order to “mix with his congregation,” but it is to be suspected that one of the most use ful things he will get out of his experiment—or his observation if he refuses to experiment—will be a new stock of metaphors and illustrations for his sermons. The Bible deals largely with sheep and shepherds. The preacher should aim to speak In terms of cattle also, and of silos and separators. When he can compare a sinner to a sour soil and a backslider to an unsprayed orchard, he may feel he has used more modern means to drive home Into the hearts of his hearers some of the great truths.—The Country Gentleman.
The Carolina Union Farmer (Charlotte, N.C.)
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Feb. 13, 1913, edition 1
9
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