Thursday, October 4, 19
8
PEOGEESSIVE FAKMEE AND COTTON PLANT.
The Progressive Farmer
Consolidated, 1904, with The OottOM Plant, Green
ville, S. O.
Entered at Raleigh, N. C, as second-class mall matter.
CLARENCE H- POE, - - Editor and Manager.
B. W. KILGORE, TAIT BUTLER,
Agricultural Editors.
C F. KOONCE. TravTg Agt. T. B. PARKER. Sec-Trcas.
The Progressive Farmer has a larger circulation than
any other Weekly or Daily published between Richmond
and Atlanta. .
" What's Sc News ?
THE NEXT GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK.
The nomination of William Randolph Hearst
for Governor of New York by the Democrats, and
of Charles E. Hughes by the Republicans, attract
ed more attention than any other piece of Ameri
can news last week, and probably not even our
strenuous President will be more talked about
these next forty days than these two men. It was
thought at one time that Jerome might capture
the Democratic nomination, but when the Conven
tion met, Hearst was seen to be in the lead and all
efforts to check his boom failed. Sometime ago
he- was nominated for Governor by the Inde
pendence League, a new- sort of third party in
New York, and he accepted and boldly declared
that he would run in opposition if the Democrats
did not nominate him just as he ran for Mayor
of New York City last year as the candidate of
the Municipal Ownership League, and in opposi
tion to the regular Democratic nominee. In the
South such a policy would have ruined all Hearst's
chances of party preferment, but it is different in
New. York.
MR. HEARST: A STUDY.
Perhaps it may not be out of place just in this
connection to refresh the reader's memory as to
the personal characteristics of Mr. Hearst and Mr.
Hughes. Mr. Hearst is the son of a California
millionaire, Senator Hearst, and inherited the im
mense fortune which he has since used in buying
and developing great dailies in San Francisco, New
York, Chicago, Boston, and Los Angeles. These
papers now have a circulation of more than 2,
000,000, making Hearst the most expensive user
of printers' ink in the world whether for good
or ill, it would be hard to say. His journals are
"yellow"; they are in fact the original "yellow
journals;" and they exploit criminal news, debase
public taste, and often shock the man of culture
and refinement with their crudities and quasi vul
garity. That ;much stands clearly against them.
On the other hand, at a time when most of the
great dailies have been controlled by trust and
monopoly influences, and have preserved a dec
orous silence about the high-handed ways in
which giant interests have bled the public, Mr.
Heart's papers have cried aloud and spared not.
They have told truths that other papers dared
not tell. Now whether Mr. Hearst in all this
found his greatest inspiration in a desire to help
his fellow-man, we seriously doubt. For a num
ber of reasons his fights against greed and ex
tortion seem rather to have been made to grati
fy his morbid desire to keep a sensation always
before the public. But whether selfish or unsel
fish in his work, Mr. Hearst has won the con
fidence of millions of. "the common people" by his
exposures of wickedness in high places, and when
he ran for Mayor of New York City last fall
Independent he certainly lacked only 3,000 votes
of election, and he has always insisted that a re
countperversely and foolishly denied by the Re
publican Legislature would have shown that he
actually had the largest number of votes. The
fact that he couldn't get a recount has greatly
strengthened his hold on the people. His nomina
tion for Governor now makes, it almost certain
that he will again seek the Democratic Presidenti
al nomination.
&
CHARLES E. HUGHES.
Charles E. Hughes, the Republican nominee for
Governor of New York, is quite a different type of
man from that usually selected for such positions
not a politician, but a clean, fearless, modest,
ungainly, strong, big-brained man who has made
a great success as a lawyer without ever losing
his grip on the principles instilled' by the God
fearing Baptist minister who was his father. He
is the sort of a man a party usually prefers to ig
nore in its days of prosperity, but whose character
is an ever present help in time of trouble. He will
make a great fight in the Empire State, and the
reputation for unyielding and unrelenting search
ing after truth which he made when ferreting out
the guilty in the insurance scandals, won him the
confidence of all the rest of , the country as well.
Men will, also admire the way in which he ac
cepted the nomination "without pledge other
than to do my duty according to my conscience."
Writing of him before his nomination, a contri
butor to Everybody's Magazine said:
Between the man Hughes and public office there
stands the formidable barrier of the man's own
modesty, his own shrinking from publicity, his
devotion to his own profession. For the things
of politics he has no liking. From the machine
politician he shrinks with horror. The efforts to
drag him from the duty of the insurance investi
gation to the honor of the Mayoralty last year
roused his deepest resentment. He could hardly
wait to write his refusal. His own declaration is
that he never intentionally voted for a machine
ticket. He was one of the original Jerome nomi
nators last year. To him the pursuit of public of
fice is "of all vanities the. vainest." And yet the
gulf is not impassable there is a single bridge.
"I am glad to accept your offer," he told the
Armstrong Committee after he had abandoned his
vacation to take up their work, "because I feel
that in so doing I shall perform my duty as a
citizen."
All in all, this appears to be about the most
creditable nomination that New York Republicans
have ever made and stands out in pleasing con
trast to the general record of the Odell-Platt ma
chine during the last year or two.
&
THE LESSON OF THE ATLANTA RIOTS.
One hardly knows what to say of that hideous
outburst of mob violence with which Atlanta dis
graced the South a few days ago the actual dead
numbering eighteen or more, many others wound
ed, and the whole city thrown into disorder from
which it will be long in recovering: a combination
of stupidity and brutality of which both races
ought to be ashamed. Alarmingly frequent as
saults on white women the deep damnation of
the negro's part had brought race feeling to the
highest pitch; then sensation-uhnting yellow jour
nalism (notably the Atlanta News), exaggerating
the details, stirring up the passions, set the spark
to the fatal power house of wrath; while every
reckless mob murderer, hungry for blood, ana
discriminating not between guilty and innocent,
was a disgrace to the white skin he wore. Given
a few beastly negroes, a few reckless newspapers,
and the always present mob of "lewd fellows of
the baser sort" and we have a saturnalia of law
lessness which hurts the peace and progress of
the whole South. Negro crime tries our spirits,
but to answer black lawlessnes with white lawless
ness can never mean anything else but confusion
worse confounded and the engulfing of both races
in the quicksands of common destruction. The
law must be made a terror to evil-doers, "and in:
no other course under Heaven, save in the orderly
process of our Courts of Justice, can we find safety
or peace for either white man or black. The coun
try as a whole, and the South in particular, need?
nothing else so sorely as a revival of that stern
and high regard for law which made the great-
nncsc nnnl'onf Pnmo and tttiV..4. v .
ui aauv iwm "huuui wnicn no na
tion can endure.
J
THE CUBAN .SITUATION.
Affairs in Cuba are terribly muddled, it is a
regular witches' caldron of mad Spaniards, nig
gers, half-breeds, ward politicians andJ scheming
American adventurers, and if anything good can
come out of such a mixture, Brewer Taft will de
serve a considerable degree of credit. The regu
lar Cuban officials having refused to act longer
Secretary Taft took charge Saturday as Provision
al Military Governor, and when the show of peace
is brought about, the present Governor of Porto
Rico will carry the burden for awhile. Then it
seems likely that a new election will be held under
American auspices, and the rival Cuban faction
kept from the wholesale cheating they sought to
practice on each other last year. But even this
will probably be only a temporary settlement and
the final outcome will apparently be in line with
that indicated by a thoughtful Washington corre
spondent: - The expected has happened, but nobody sup
posed it would be so long on the road. At this
writing Cuba is in a state of revolution, and sooner
or later Cuba will be a State of the American
Union. There is nothing else to come of it. Cuba
is our ward, and is not yet come to years of dis
cretion, and if suffered to run at large it is doubt
ful if Cuba would learn to be discreet in a thou
sand years; and hence it is inevitable that the
guardian shall find excuse to interfere and take
the ward in restraint and administer his estate
with a view to conserving it. A regiment or two
on the water will do the business in a jiffy. An
nexation will soon follow, and Cuba will get from
the Saxon what the Latin cannot give her a
stable government. That is coming, and the soon
er it is accomplished the better for all concerned
and unconcerned. ' I
THIS WEEK'S PAPER AS THE EDITOR j
SEES IT. !
We confess with due and becoming modesty,
that last week's paper was a good one (even our
friend Harrow admits that there wasn't a clod
to be found), but this week's is hardly less valu
ble. Page 2, is literally packed with good mat
ter: Recluse on the management of the pea crop
and the corn crop; some good suggestions on
the fall planting of fruit treesand not one
farmer in ten lives up to his opportunities for good
fruit; Entomologist Sherman's letter on how to
fight the grain weevil; and then the most striking
inquiry of all: "What are you raising on your
farm live stock or little negroes?" Don't pass
this by; "read, mark and inwardly digest," as
Uncle Jo would say.
Our Cotton Association articles are interesting,
and we regret that we haven't more about to
bacco conditions this week. In our next number,
however, we expect a full report of the Tobacco
Growers' meeting at Danville,, to which place we
have sent a representative.
An exquisite poem is -William Morris's "Octo
ber," on page 6, and we think that our readers
will also be interested in "Red Buck's" impres
sions of Bryan on the same page.
To say that ye Editor is delighted with the
"Suggestions for October Farm Work," by our
associates, Butler and Parker, is to put it mildly.
They have started off admirably and this month
ly article of "Suggestions" promises to be one
of the most helpful1 departments in the whole
paper one of those numerous features each of
which "is alone worth the subscription price."
The idea of a general State-wide stock law. seems
to be growing, and C. S. Ws' other two proposi
tions will find many supporters.
We are almost submerged in letters about the
open furrow method of growing oats. Everybody
who has tried it seems to like it and to want to
say so and this is as it should be.
Last but not least, we mention Uncle Jo: we
are glad to have him with us again, and if he has
ever written a more useful article than that on
page 14, we don't know it. Let Mrs. Farmer read
it aloud to the old man, if he doesn't read it first,
and so start the work of improving the poultry
blood. .