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CAHOUM
Vnion
Farmer
VoL VII.—No. 15.
RALEIGH. N. C., APRIL 10, 1913.
One Dollar a Year.
.V. „JoooE|i.oo
IF
TAR HEEL SKETCHES.
BY J. Z. GREEN.
The genial, big-hearted R. M.
Phillips, editor of the Greensboro
News, died suddenly of heart failure
on his farm, in Moore County, last
week. I saw him on the train be
tween Lexington and Greensboro only
a few days ago. He had just come
out of the Legislature where he went
through with the ceaseless grind of
reading clerk in the Senate, and he
seemed to be proud of having been
able to endure the task without vaca
tion during the entire session. “I am
sleepy and feel the need of a little
rest,” said he. ‘‘I will go to my farm
and rest up awhile.” While he look
ed weary and tired, he was other
wise the picture of health. Another
veteran editor, Jas. G. Boylin, of the
Wadesboro Messenger-Intelligencer,
answered the final summons last
week, after twenty-six years editorial
service. Both these editors had serv
ed as president of the North Carolina
Press Association.
low as 13.50 a bushel (which will
seed three or four acres of land) I
heard farmers saying last fall that it
cost too much to buy clover seed!
When we get about half waked up to
the importance of soil building, we
will learn that, when judged by re
sults, clover seed costs a mere pit
tance compared with the cost of so
luble commercial fertilizers that
must be replaced yearly. Year before
last a farmer in Randolph County
produced one hundred and eighteen
bushels of-corn on an acre of land,
and a crop of red clover which had
been turned under was the only ferti
lizer used.
that inasmuch as the child is several
thousand times as big as the “old
man,” I thought it appropriate that
the “old man” retire from active ser
vice and let his bouncing boy do the
work. These farmers who have been
sticking to local organizations of the
Alliance twenty years after it had
gone dead In other States refiect
credit upon Tar Heel folks.
• • *
* * *
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I use rye, vetch and crimson clover
as winter cover crops, but I am par
tial to the crimson clover. I have
this year one field sown with a com
bination of rye, crimson clover and
rape and there was already enough
vetch seed in the land to get a good
proportion of vetch in the mixture
also. I find, however, that the cattle
and hogs graze the clover and leave
the vetch, rye and rape. Lime and
ground phosphate rock seem to help
to inoculate for clover, but ordinary
wood ashes is the best Inoculator I
have ever seen tried. If you have a
patch to which ashes has been ap
plied liberally try it with clover and
watch* results. It may have been
twenty-five years since the ashes was
applied. That doesn’t riiake any dif-
fgj.g,jice—it will produce clover all
right the first trial.
There will never be any satisfac
tory co-operation until farmers quit
being so distrustful of each other and
so everlastingly trustful of the other
fellows. When I walked into a new
Farmers’ Union warehouse in an
eastern county, the other day and
saw five or six hundred bales of cot
ton stored I made some favorable re
mark to the manager about the loyal
support he had started off with.
“Yes,” he said, w'ith a wink and a
smile, “but our folks wouldn’t put a
bale in here until a local merchant
of the town began to use our ware
house to store his cotton in, then our
farmers thought it was all right and
they went to piling in their cotton.”
We farmers are a dandy set, anyhow,
it is said of us thp,t we do not object
to being skinned, provided it is done
in an artistic manner, by an expert.
♦ ♦
♦ ♦
I had been told that clover would
not do well on sandy soils, but I have
seen several patches of fine crimson
clover on sandy soils in the eastern
part of the State during the past win
ter. More clover is grown in the sec
tion that embraces Lincoln, Catawba.
Iredell, Davie, Davidson, Forsyth and
Guilford Counties than in any part
of the State. I haven’t got anything
to say against the cow pea, but it
doesn’t rank in the same class as
clover as a soil building crop. AVhile
crimson clover seed was selling as
Down in Edgecombe County a
night appointment was arranged for,
on the side, in a district where a
Farmers’ Alliance was in operation.
Most *of the members of this Sub-
Alliance had joined a Local Union
over in another district and the part
that wanted to abandon the Alliance
and substitute a Local Union in that
district, asked for this appointment
in the hope that they might finish
swallowing that Sub-Alliance. I tried
to amuse and entertain them in such
way as to make them feel like they
wanted to be embraced and swallow
ed by the Farmers’ Union. When I
presented the proposition one faith
ful Alliance leader still professed
faith in the old Alliance and suggest
ed that the Farmers’ Union is a child
of the Farmers’ Alliance, all of which
I cheerfully admitted, but I told him
That big fat Farmers’ Union man,
Bro. R. H. Savage, who used to go to
every State meeting as a delegate
from Speed Local Union, in Edge
combe, and who incidentally ham
mered it in to me that my duties as
State Organizer would not be per
formed until I had some more Local
Unions set up in Edgecombe, has
given me a cordial invitation to stop
off with him in passing and go fish
ing, and like invitation is extended
by Bro. R. E. Tarketon, of Bertie
County, and Bro. S. N. Harding, w'ho
lives back over in the mountains,
near Hendersonville, has a pressing
invitation for me to spend a week at
his house and go squirrel hunting.
To a man w'ho lives where there is
neither squirrels or fish and who
hasn’t had even a vacation in twenty
years, this class of invitations are be
coming attractive, and if they come
much thicker I may ask the Advisory
Council for a day or two off duty.
If I could have an expert scientific
eater, like the President of Chatham
County Union, along with me, it
would add an interesting feature to
the vacation.
* * *
Now and then you will find a man
living in town who has a broad con
ception of rural life conditions as
they are. A lawyer from the town
of Clinton, in Sampson County, went
out and made a mighty sensible and
practical talk at a Farmers’ Union
picnic two summers ago. His talk
was entirely free from flattery—a
dose that farmer audiences have been
fed upon for centuries. Among oth
er things, he said: “When you find
a man who can succeed, under pres
ent conditions, you find a man who
can make a still bigger success In
the speculative or business world. I
have time and again known neigh
bors to shake their heads when a
successful farmer decided to move to
(Continued on page 4.)
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