Newspapers / The Progressive Farmer (Raleigh, … / Dec. 15, 1887, edition 1 / Page 4
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Y 4 TJJE PROGEESSIVE F ARMEE, ( DECEMBER 15, 1887. Is ii i r i AGRICULTURE AND OUR MONE TARY SYSTEM. Recently a meeting of agriculturists and the State Grange of S. C. was held in the city of Columbia. Dr. E. J. Rembert, of Siimpter county, whose mother was a native of Wake county, N. C, delivered a most learned and interesting address, from which we extract the following : But while science benignant sci- ence conies to help the farmer, Shy- lock stands, as a great Sphinx with I his coffers full of filthv lucre, wrung largely from poverty toil and specu i lation carefully guarding the key that opens the way to its grating hinges. Fraud his ever ready help mate and companion, comes to his aid full of suggestion and plea. Extortion is near at hand to feedfcand fatten. Science, with the impress of Genius stamped upon her gentle face, contem plates its great triumphs and rejoices in the great benefits to humanity that have and will acrue from their prac tical use. But avarice and fraud spoils it all by closely watching the means by which the poor farmer can be be trayed by high figures and spurious articles. Science feels conscious that she has opened the womb of nature, for the benefit of humanity. But Shylock, Fraud and Avarice have im paled her ; with quiet face, but anx ious air she surveys the situation. She finds the toilers in chains, and law is siding with the great combinations strong in their might and fearless in their deeds overwhelmed with anguish and the marvelous conditions surrounding her. She calls for coun sel with her family for she is not alone. It is not the counsel of the Gods upon Mount Olympus, but a con cert of action among the great prin ciples or forces of nature. First she summons her twin sister the science of medicine. She comes bearing in jewelled chalice, all the gifts attained of nature, to ease the pains and pangs of the world but unfortunately, trailing behind her graceful garments, there moves with stealthy tread, the charlatan throwing a spray of poison over her munificent charities. Then enters mechanism, or the science of appliance whose genius sides over the adapting and fitting of the forces of nature to matter for tunately no attribute of antiquity, or of the dark ages encumbers her pro gress. Next in order, an appeal is made to the science of Law the science of Jurisprudence, of Ethics, of Justice He appears in stately robes, such as would have honored the forms of Jupiter and Apollo. But he is at tended by an army of followers, as exponents of its great principles (Jamelions, legal quacks, strategists, tatooed with quibbles, exceptions, in trigue, chicanery, incitements to strife, and barristry each bearing on the one side a package of briefs on the other a pouch for their golden gains. Lastly, but a more commanding figure than all this noble group, comes the science of government, with form erect and features firm as adamant but his advance is impeded by rings and thorny combinations and intricate labyrinths. Agriculture, before the assembled council, puts in her plea for justice and right but to reach this Temple, her way is studded with difficulties, and thorny encumberances. The weight is so onerous that each giant principle is impaled by its surround ings. But they survey the ages of the past, and visit the homes of their respective births take courage, as Paul did, and go on and as they look down the ages to come, they are as sured that their triumph will yet be complete. Now, I wish to be distinctly under stood before bringing into practical application the above figures, that it is not my intention to assail any of the existing conditions or institutions in our State, nor any officer in public station or trust, but rather, to assault, scalpel "in hand, the ulcers cropping out of society to note these wants in our system and those improvements that would tend to the prosperity of our people. After the war the situation of our people was abnormal and peculiar coming out of it in sackcloth and ashes,' they had ' to rebuild their wrecks as best they could with a National Government and a Congress hostile to their interests with a labor reversed and of a different race irritated,, prejudiced, estranged, de moralized, with ho conception of moral rules, of Government, of Law, of civilization with no public opinion save to secrete and to perpetrate the wrong and to suppress the right with no instance in the whole current of history of their ever having at tained or even appreciated the great impelling forces that carry the white man onward. The Government of the State, with all the utensils of our civilization were placed in their hands 1 by the powers that be ' to ruin, to wreck and de stroy what little survived a fearful struggle which changed values, changed opinions, changed ideas, changed society, broke links and crushed hopes that no future can re store. These dire and calamitous blows fell heavier upon the farmer than all other classes combined. It was an effort a struggle, a battle, to survive. From these remarkable conditions, there has been an output of crushing rates of interest, which has placed, and is placing, the farmers between the upper and nether mill-stones. Labor and capital, or interest at the North, it bears ostensibly at the South 1 0 per cent. But under what condition is this paid ? The farmer is placed in the main, outside of the capacity to control the result of his own products. Now it is certainly within the prov ince of the State to have enforced such laws, as to guard its citizens from oppression and frauds. The means provided to piotect the farmer from guano frauds and sales and weights of product are very inadequate, and I know of no leak that has been greater to his purse, or which he has more severely felt. - Money is a commodity, as all other articles of value. But there should be such legislation, as to promote its dis tribution and facilitate its circulation, and not have directed the whole ma chinery of Government to protect monopolists in hoarding the capital of the country. Debts or liabilities or obligations created, should be faith fully filled. But as ulcers crop out and grow and feed upon the breast of progress crippling its energies and exhausting its resources, it is the plain duty of the Government as far as its power lies to give its citizens protec tion, to throw around them its shield of safe guards. The great principles evolved in the frame-work of our Government which next to nature is the mother of its citizens is to give all of its industries, all classes, equal privileges and to guard them with the aegis of the constitution. There are further wants of the farming interests they clearly need two institutions, an agricultural and mechanical college and an agricultural station. The annex to the South Carolina College should be either greatly enlarged, or a distinct institu tion established. The immense in terest at stake would seem to demand its independent action and not trammelled by annexes. We need a change ! but how are we to reach it ? The experimental station should teach this for the country, (be it said with regret,) is too poor to attempt it and besides it is incompetent to execute it. Experiments in grasses adapted to grazing purposes and the growth of hay a merchantable crop in manures, in grains, in tobacco the castor oil bean, hemp, flax, jute, fruit, grapes and winemaking, silk worms and silk and discover and work out the in dustry most suitable to our wants, if there is enough left of the country, by the time we reach it, to be of any ser vice. I would like to dwell more upon these institutions, but time and your patience will not allow it. Any cursory observer will see their importance and I hope the State is not too poor to provide means to establish and main tain them and to do it thoroughly for we want no half-way business, as there is too much at stake. We now enter upon the considera tion of two others of the many crush ing evils bearing heavily upon the farmer and through him upon the general industries of the country, and which tend to shackle his energies and throttle his enterprise. Keeping him poor, almost to vagrancy and without a change must end in his final over throw. When the landed property of not only this, but many splendid States, will pass into stranger hands, and the plaintive notes of the sweet prophet of Israel, will resound through the land that " in Rama was there a voice heard lamentation and weeping and great mourning Rachel weeping for her children and would not be com forted, because they were not," and strange, as it may seem, while they place the farmer in the coils of want fatten and batten monopolies and monied power. I allude to the tariff and National Banking system. In times of complete peace, we are facing oppressive war measures, that are grinding the farming interests of these United States in to the very dust and ashes, to lobster up large monopolies and corporations. The people are taxed under the apparent pretext of being enabled to pay labor such wages as to place them above want. While making this plea before the country to gloss oyer their designs, they are im porting foreign labor to conflict with, and supplant native born citizens. Those engaged in the late strikes and disturbances at the North were princi pally Bohemians and Hungarians im ported at a recent date and thoroughly impregnated with those subversive doctrines of anarchy, so ruinous to a well ordered society. Has it benefitted the laborer ? Ought a Government to deal in subsidies or protect any indus try that cannot survive by its own elasticity and capabilities ? The doc trine is opposed to the spirit and essence of our institutions. The hoard ing of hundreds of millions in the Fed eral treasury, taken from its proper channels of circulation, makes money dear and products low. We have reached appauling conditions. By pap and plunder and protection, corpora tions have attained such protection, as to place in jeopardy the very princi ples of our Government. Before them free government and universal suffrage stand arraigned. The immense expenditures of the war, were created values all the green backs issued by the National Govern ment, was so much capital gained, and it has found its home at the North. All taxes to protect industries, manu factories, and corporations, finds its pillow in the Northern brest. Mill ions of pension money make its annual stream into this great basin of capital, and the greater gains to individuals, the greater the suffering and distress and irritation of the masses. There is somewhere a radical mistake in the financial system of the country. The National Banks by their charter are endowed with great privileges. They are untaxed, while State banks are taxed 1 0 per cent. United States bonds are untaxed and the interest paid in gold, and from the National Banks as a financial agent, the whole farming interests of these United States is ex cluded. Consequently their capital is used m other channels, and if procured for the farmer, additional value and expense is given by middlemen. In '85 their capital amounted to $524,599,602 Surplus 146.908,492 Hoarded by the Treasury, say 200,000,000 Now from access to these immense sums of money, the lands are excluded from any representation yet they are taxed and the Banks are not. Let us see the area and value of the farming lands of the United States in 1880. There is every reason to believe that their apparent or assessed value is now greatly increased. Their area was, in 1880, Valued at S. Car. area 13,535,237 539,309,179 $10,197,095,776 Valued at $58,677,482 Yet the Nation taxes directly the products of the soil, and the State their lands with their buildings, furniture and utensils and the farms are exclu ded, as collateral from the financial system of the Government. In South Carolina, lands taxed at the rate of $10 per acre, when used as collateral whith the view of raising money, are pledged at one-third of their appraised value. The number of persons engaged in agricult ure in the United States in 1880 was 7,607,493 In South Carolina 294,502 All other vocations 97,500 To throw this large population en gaged in agriculture with their im mense landed property, as valued by the census to the owls and bats indi cates to me that capital is outside of the granaries of the country and that as an interest it is impossible for it to escape being gulped up in the maw of speculation unless it could arrange to live by its own unaided efforts. There is probably now engaged in ag riculture by natural increase and by immigration, near if not altogether, 10,000,000 of men. The demand of the times is: there should be a change, and that speedily, in our banking and financial system. The great National debt should be liqui dated at the earliest practicable period and the Banks taxed out of exist ence. There is crying need of a Bank or Banking system, where landed property, as other property can be used as collateral, to raise money or supplies for the farmer and he should be lifted out of the mud and mire, where mon opolists have placed him. Then val ues would change and our country would blossom as the rose and throw a fragrance over our civilization the perfume of which would go down the ages. Besides these great hoarded and in accessible gains of the National Banks, there are hoarded constantly in the vaults of the treasury, . millions that are kept out of trade, out of commerce, and out of any practical use to the peo ple of this country. It is an oppres sion that should be, by the voice of the people, eliminated, and the sooner the better. The farmer is also further throttled by the treatment of silver. There is not money enough outside of the coffers of monopolists and the vaults of the Government to supply the actual demands of the country. Debs contracted by the millions of outsiders, but producers under existing conditions, cannot but rarely be liqui dated, and as the balls are now rolling, we may contemplate a great nation whose institutions are based upon uni versal suffrage turned over bound hand and foot to monopolists, who will eventually hold its land and all its wealth, and they become hewers of wood and drawers of water to monied circulation, and a deep laid strategy. It should be the daily thought the supreme aim and purpose of the peo ple of the United States to change gradually but firmly, these conditions. This paper has been written in the midst of many cares and business en gagements. It would have afforded me great pleasure to have given these ideas larger development, as they are, in my judgment, entitled to . all the consideration that can be given to a subject that towers above all others in the benefits it will bring a suffering people who now stand on the " rag ged edge " of financial ruin. I would also have taken pleasure in treating on the use of agricultural im plements, of under-ground draining and deep ploughing as a protection against too much or too little rain on the mental effort and attention and economy that farming now requires to meet with success. But I feel that I have sufficiently trespassed upon your patience and if I have in these lines added a mere feather's weight in ad vancing the interests of the farmers of this country, I will have moved that far on the road to an achievement that must and will come in the emancipa tion of the farming interest, or it will surely end in permanent enslavement FALL OR SPRING PLOWING, WHICH? This is a point on which farmers are by no means agreed. There are those who advocate that the fall is the very best season for doing much to prepare the farm for spring work, and plowing is a large part of that work. If the growing soason has been favorable and the first two autumn months have afforded a sufficiency of fair days to secure the corn in the shock, and the potatoes in the cellar, there still re mains, they say, a number of fair days before snowing and freezing weather set in, in which sod land may be broken up, antl fallows plowed for next spring's use. To thus advance the spring wosk, which at that season is generally crowding, is certainly a very weighty reason for fall plowing. An other reason might be urged that the land turned up thus early and exposed all through the winter becomes mellow and better fitted for seeds and their germination, besides rendering the soil more fertile by that very mellowness which makes the plant nourishing ele ments available, all of which can be but partially accomplished in the spring if all. So far the fall plowing advocates have the arguments on their side. There is, however, another side to the question. There are practical farmers who claim that comparatively ltttle is gained by fall plowing so far as the mere advancing of the spring work is concerned. It is not infrequent, they say, that by the copious spring rains the plowed fields become very compact, and needs a replowing before it can be made available for seeding. Besides, it is very questionable whether after all anything is gained in the way of enhanced fertility. On the contrary it is claimed that the soil loosened and pulverized by alternate thawing and freezing, is, by the succession of spring rains, losing the veiy elements of nu trition, being driven down into the soil where, the land is flat and beyond the reach of the plants, or altogether washed out of the soil where the land is hilly or rolling. This argument is supported by the fact that frequently drainage water has been found to con tain the very element needed in the soil for plant food. On a point so mooted the farmer must be guided by his own experience. While a few general principles might be laid down, practically they may not be found of universal application. All men do not work alike, all soils are not chemically alike; all seasons are not uniform. Farmer's Home. POULTRY DEPARTMENT. " i iuc reaaera nf The Progressive Farmer that we have bn -fortunate as to secure the efficient services ofMr p II. Weathers as Editor of this Department u ; one of the beet informed men on this subiert in CWp rf nlfWRed to snnnnna n ouuiu, us an tumuiunications anil questions designed for his Department be addressed " Poultry Column, Progressive Pakwp t.iJ-Lv X. C " lie will most cheerfnllv naw- Vi . - ti an ( lies relating to poultry through this column' f him. Editor Progressive Farmer.) Write Summer vs. Winter. The idea that fowls cannot be niado to yield good profits during the winter weather is decidedly an erroneous one for if they are properly managed thev can be made really more profitable then than at any other time of the year. Some breeders who raise poul try and eggs entirely for market pur poses, seem to think that they must make all their proht during the sum mer months, and they have an idea that the fowls are a dead loss during the cold weather, and seem to be thankful if they lay enough to pay for their keeping. This is all wrong, and the breeder should not allow himself to be satisfied with any such results but should be constantly striving to do better each season. In winter, bote fowls and eggs are high-priced, and for this reason it is especially desirable to have a good supply during the cold weather; it can easily be done, too, if the fowls are managed rightly. They must be fed on more fattening, nourish ing food than they had during the hot weather, for a certain part of the heat thus created goes to keep the body of the fowls warm, and this, of course, was not necessary during the warm weather. There is one way of really saving food and promoting the thrift of the flock that is not fully appreciated, and that is good shelter, for the better they are protected from cold, the less food it will require to keep their bodies warm, and in this way a good shelter is economical as well as comfortable. It is carelessness in the little details of winter management that is the cause of so much disappointment on the part of the breeder. The more care and attention to the daily requirements in winter, the better will be their health and general appearance. Though aiming to attain the highest results by different methods, the breeder often fails to follow a judicious course in feeding and managing his flock, and in such cases disease will soon show it self, and of course fowls can never be made profitable or satisfactory when in this condition. The feeding has an important influence on the profits realized in winter, but this is not all, by any means, as the house in which they are confined at this time, and in which they spend nearly all of their time has a very effective influence on their health, and as stated before, without health there is no profit, and anything that can be done to promote strength and health will quickly in crease the profits. Be sure and have plenty of light in the south side of the house, so as to let in the sun's rays, as they are very scarce in the winter and must be made the most of. Ventila tion and cleanliness go hand in hand and are very important in securing good health. The food should be given regularly and in moderate quan tities. Be sure to see that they are well fed the last thing at night, just before roosting time, so that they will have enough to last them through the long cold nights. With such management, the fowls will yield fully as large profits as they did in summer, for the reason that poultry and eggs are always highest at this season of the year. TO RAISE HEAVY HOGS. The eight-week pigs should be kept in a warm yet well-ventilated pen, and allowed to run out each day for about fifteen minutes. The bedding should be clean wheat straw, changed at least once a day, they should be fed at least three times a day, the food to consist of oatmeal, maizemeal, sharps or thirds, either cooked or stirred with boiling water, covered over and al lowed to cool, the pigs also receiving as much new milk (or if this be too expensive, skim milk) as they will drink, a portion of this to be given with the food, the other between feed ing time, some 2 oz. of sugar being given to each pig per diem in the mil and food. If the pigs are of the com mon or restless kind, Thorley's food or a little rum will cure them of tins feiling and cause them to rest and j thankful. Coal cinders or earth shouia be within reach of the pigs once a da , vegetable food of some kind--nian-golds or cooked cabbage will help w keep them in health. Each pig shouia also have 1 oz. of sulphur at least onco a week civen in the food Snr Spencer, in Home and Farm.
The Progressive Farmer (Raleigh, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Dec. 15, 1887, edition 1
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