Newspapers / The Carolina Union Farmer … / April 10, 1913, edition 1 / Page 5
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pi Thursday, April 10, 1913] THE CAKOLINA UNION FABIffES Page Five ington and elsewhere, there is hereby appropri ated the sum of $50,000, of which sum $10,000 shall be immediately available.” This was not inserted as an after thought by some members of Congress but it is the result of persistent effort upon the part of your national officials. It does not carry in detail the provisions for a division of markets as did our bill cham pioned by Senator Smith of Georgia, and which passed the Senate by an overwhelming majority, but it is a step in the right direction and the more you study it the more important it will ap pear to you. The amount alloiwed is inadequate for so im portant a work but will possibly suffice to test its feasibility. The usefulness of this new venture will of course depend largely upon the initiative of the Secretary of Agriculture. It is intended to be of benefit to* producer and consumer and given hearty support by both can be made one of the most valuable divisions of the department. This is one of the most practical and progressive pieces of legislation enacted in the interest of the whole people in recent years and when properly at work will be a source of rejoicing to every body. Members of the Farmers’ Union should be especially active in promoting the usefulness of this department because its creation is due solely to the efforts of the Organization. Jn a subsequent article, I shall attempt to show, without presuming to advise the gentle men who now have the matter in charge, how the promoters of this idea hoped it would work out in practice. A. C. DAVIS, Nat’l. Secretary. Rogers, Ark., March 25, 1913. What Barrett Says: To the Officers and Members of the Union: A PARMER driving to the city with a load of cotton, produce or on some errand is struck by the general neatness of some cottage, prob ably the home of a workingman. Flowers bloom in the yard, well-kept grass grows on the lawn, the fences are neat and painted, and there is an air of distinction about the place. You say, A sober, honest, industrious man must live there. ' Next door is a dirty, unkempt place, cans and trash in the yard, fence falling down, and a gen eral- atmosphere of unkemptness. You say, A shiftless, drinking, no account chap lives there.” But how much more noticeable these things are out in the broad, open country, where the air is sweet, the sunshine free of smoke and the stench and filth of a great city. You drive along a country road, and come to a farm. Distinction marks it in a hundred little ways. The fences are all up, and no rotting fails are seen; the fence corners are free of bushes, briars and weeds; the ditches are clean-cut, with no wide hedge or rank weeds growing along either side, and the land cultivated close up; the stumps and rocks are out of the fields. Even the rows and appearance of the fields themselves show the thrifty care of intelligent application. Presently you come to the house. Flowers grow in the yards, which are clean and well-kept, with a neatly graveled walk leading up to the front porch. Barns and out-houses are in good repair, and no rusting farm tools or machinery clutter 3'ards or barn lot. And you know without a question that there a real man lives, a man that will do to trust, a business man; he pays his obligations, and, more over, is a real neighbor and a helpful one. You will generally find, too, that he is thoughtful of his wife, daughters and sons, that the boys want to stick to the farm because dad is all right and he made a good living out of it. So you drive on, and directly get a shock. You come to a place with the fences down, corners growing up in weeds; land washed for lack of proper drainage; stunted, weedy stuff struggling to survive in the fields. No palings surround the house, no flowers grown in it, but a litter of every sort of thing encumbers it. The roof of the stable and barn are leaky, the doors propped up, rusting farm tools and machinery stand about corroding in the weather. Four or five lazy hounds sleep about the door or yard, and every thing about is desolate and depressing. You will find without query that a shiftless. Indolent, pur poseless, don’t-care man lives there. He couldn’t get a cent of credit from anybody without secur ity. His wife is a hopeless drudge, with just energy enough to crawl about; his daughters run away and marry at the first opportunity, and his boys go to town or away from home as soon as they are big enough to know enough to leave. Up and down this nation I have traveled, and I have seen both types everywhere, and I have never made inquiries yet that I did not confirm my views between the two—the .hustler and the drone. And often, too, both men have equal chance in so far as productivity of the land goes. I see in my travels something- in this connec tion that makes me hopeful. The first-named class is getting more numerous, and the last- named fewer and fewer. Of course, we will prob ably always have the don’t care farmer, but his class is vanishing at a gratifying rate, to be re placed by alert, hard-working farmers who realize that farming is a profession, calling for high intel ligence and commonsense. And as the profession of farming becomes higher and better, you will see a powerful and a contented nation. c. S. BARRETT Union City, Ga., March 29, 1913. Why the General Assembly Blundered HEN the Commission created to consider the State Constitution meets, many changes will be suggested, but there are two of such vital importance that they should have the right-of- way in preference to all others. One is an amend ment which will restrict the General Assembly in its power to pass local and special laws, and the other is an amendment extending its power in the matter of taxation. There will be differ ence of opinion as to which of these two is more important, but something has recently occurred which so emphasizes the importance of the for mer that it should not be forgotten. It has developed that in the passage of the revenue act a certain tax was fixed at one-flf- teenth of one per cent, whereas it was the inten tion of the General Assembly to fix it at one- twenty-^fth of one per cent, and that this will probably make a difference of $20,000 a year in the State’s revenue. It seems to be agreed that it was merely the error of a clerk in copying the law, but there are some matters about which there should be no errors, clerical or otherwise, and a solemn act of the General Assembly is one. The members are expected to see that the laws are properly written, and they are not expected to delegate this duty to clerks. But, as has been said before, the members are human and there are limits to their physical and mental powers. This error would not have occurred had the members not been well nigh exhausted by their strenuous efforts to protect squirrels in one township, to keep sawdust out of some little creek, to appoint a cotton weigher at some cross-roads, to establish a cotton plat form somewhere else, and to do in ten days a thousand and one other similar things that most of them never heard of. The folly and danger of allowing such matters to exhaust the time and energies of the members to the prejudice and neglect of such matters as a bill to provide reve nue to run the State government must be patent to any sane man. This error is not very great, but it is possible under the present system for such an error to be made as to require an extra session of the General Assembly to correct. And errors may be made which even the General As sembly cannot correct. It is suggested that the error is so manifestly a clerical error, that the Supreme Court may come to the rescue and say that the General As sembly did not do what it intended to do, and that what they intended to do, but did not do, is the law. It will be. an evil day for popular gov ernment when the Supreme Court does such a thing. Before such a doctrine is accepted it will be well to have the recall of judges in good work ing order. Our Supreme Court may not always be composed of such men as now adorn it; and the time might come when such a doctrine would be exceedingly dangerous to the people’s liber ties. The only safe rule is for the Supreme Court to accept, as the act of the General Assembly, that which the presiding officers solemnly declare in writing is its act. There is no occasion for the Supreme Court to invade a co-ordinate branch of the government. The proper way is to so reform that other branch so as to enable it to do intelli gently what it undertakes to do. This can be done by a very simple amendment to the Con stitution, and it should be done at the earliest possible moment. It is to be hoped that the Com mission, which will soon meet to consider the Constitution, will give this question its prompt at tention.—The State Journal. You know that this tariff question is a moral question. Men can not put their hands into their neighbors’ pockets and enrich themselves under the forms of law, and remain as soundly moral as when they worked out their own livings by the sweat of their brows. There is power in the doc trine of Democratic righteousness, that nobody has a right to take your money except for the needs of the government.—Chas. B. Aycock. When rich men combine to control the price of what they have to sell, they should not complain when laboring men follow their example. It has been said that when the sellers of fruit put the largest and best at the bottom of the bas ket, we may know that the millenium has come. We should never wed an opinion for beter or for worse: what we take up on good grounds, we should lay down upon better.—Swift. In judging politics it is sometimes necessary to look under the label. THE NEWCOMB COMMISSION COMPANY Wholesale Produce : Live Stock Brokers PETERSBURG, VIRGINIA We Solicit Consignments of All Kinds of Country Produce References: National Bank of Petersburg, Chamber of Commerce, Southern Express Co. PROMPT RETURNS li I i if; ; hi. if
The Carolina Union Farmer (Charlotte, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
April 10, 1913, edition 1
5
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