THE PROGRESSIVE FARMER.
Thursday, July 18, 1907.
' Increase in Agricultural Production Five Times as Great as the Increase in Population- A Land
Where Monev Grows in fJnltivated Fields Th Farmer's: Wniirlprfni A
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imvouu ijiuug ititu . ii-vrnf t, au: vmiuo auumf us xuiu ujT x.ne irrogressive M? OTIlUT S JQiCUlUr III
xne worms worK lor June.
,- Whatever progress manufacturing has made in
North .Carolina these last ten years and it has
been marvelous has not been made, at the ex
pense of agriculture. Being: (along, with 'her . sis
ter State of South Carolina) one of the four States
in the Union which made a -net gain of three
Tiniiito ni mnro in -rant oa q maniifarturinof : Stafo
1 in the last census decade, North Carolina (along
with her sister States of Virginia and Tennessee)
was also one of the eleven States which made a
net gain of three points or more in rank in gross
value of agricultural products. ' If the advance of
North Carolina manufacturing is more notable
than the advance of North ; Carolina agriculture,
therefore, it is only because it is more noyei, not
because' it is more substantial. From 1890 to
1900, our increase in' agricultural production was
five times as great as bur increase in population,
and since 1900 our agricultural progress has been
further accelerated. . ..
Golden Gardens of the East.
For one thing we are now : finding out just
what nature intended to make of each section and
are working in harmony with her instead of at
cross purposes as we once did. Eventually, Eas
tern North Carolina, for example, is likely to be
. come one vast garden for supplying Northern mar
kets and our own increasing factory population
with early vegetables, . fruits and berries. It has
not been many years since we began to ship
strawberries. Yet in two days last year 386 refrigerator-
car-loads passed through Rocky Mount
2,000,000 quarts, or enough to furnish one cup
ful to every man, woman and child of every race
and color in every city and county in the State of
New York. In Wilmington the other day I saw
forty acres under cloth, Mr. D. N. Chad wick's im
mense lettuce crop, his proceeds from this one
vegetable having netted him $40,000. One man
who came" to Eastern North Carolina penniless, "a
tramp," he says, attracted by our climate, has
since cleared as much as $25,000 in one year
from truck crops. Even the sand-hill section, once
regarded as fit for nothing except "to hold creation
together," has trebled in value as its adaptability
for growing fruits and - vegetables (notably
peaches, grapes and dewberries) and its suscepti-i
bility to improvement have been demonstrated'.
"We have the climate, and wa Mn mato tho
land," was a saying of Westbrook, the strawberry
pioneer. On our trucking lands the grower is
not content with even two crops a year from the
same land, one of my subscribers complaining the
other day that while he made three crops on the
same area in 1906 tomatoes, cabbage and spinach
he was to blame for letting his land lie idle
through six whole weeks of the best growing sea
son when it might have made a good crop of mil
let! "The system of intensive farming is growing
more profitable each year," writes Mr. McD. Wil
liams, of Duplin County, in a letter now before
rue, "the lands becoming more prolific with the
rotation, and many of our farmers now ship six
to nine money crops a year from farms on which
cotton was formerly the only source of revenue."
The Farmera Man Without the Hoe.
So much for trucking and fruit growing and
the combination of these with general farming.
In the cultivation of our staple crops the improve
ment has been no less marked. Formerly a bale
of cotton per acre was regarded as the high-water
mark of good farming (the average for the South
is only about one-third bale per acre) , but in
Sampson County last summer, I found more than
one farmer who expected to make two bales per
acre. Formerly; the farmer did not believe he
could grow either cotton or corn without hand
chopping, but soma of the best cotton in Wake
County last year was never hoed by hand, culti
vated only with weeders and harrows, and some
of the best corn oh the Agricultural and Mechani
cal College farm received no hand-chopping. In
wh eat farming the modern reaper and binder is
replacing the old-time cradle; and similarly we
no longer take four men and two horses to plant
one row of corn this fashion :
One man; one horse to open row;
One man to distribute fertilizer;
One man -to drop corn; .
One man, one horse to cover corn and fer
tilizer. :
Instead we now have
One man, two horses to open row, distribute
fertilizer, drop corn, and cover all at one opera
tion, and two rows at the time at that.
Farmers who thought a few years ago the emif
gration ot farm labor -to the mills would ruiu
them, now find the emigration a blessing in dis
gu ise in that it has forced the adoption ; of all
kinds of labor-saving machinery. One of the
photographs I am sending with this article is that
of fifty farm wagons loaded with modern machin
ery going out from Burlington and this is bu
one illustration of the rapidity with which im
proved farming implements are coming into use.
Learning to Fatten Liean Land.
Fifty years ago, moreover, we wasted our lands
tilled a field recklessly a few years, then cleared
a new ground" and abandoned the old to broom-
sage and gullies; but now bur land debauchery
has ended. Crop rotation and the legumes pre
serve the earth's fertility. Every season a crou of
land-enriching cowpeas can be sandwiched in be
tween the staple crops or cultivated in connection
with them; and even as Oklahoma may adopt al
falfa as her State flower, so for our own State
many would doubtless favor the cowpea! Farm
ers no longer scratch over 500 acres to make what
Intensive culture would produce on 100. "Don't
go West to find a new plantation," says a new
Eastern Carolina proverb, 'deep plowing will
rind you a new one just below the eld one you
have been scratching over."
Two stories from real life that have just come
to my attention will perhaps illustrate as well as
anything else the ; whole story of the State's farm
ing progress.
"Couldn't Afford to be Gov'ner."
The pivot of our first story is the expression,
You see I could not afford to be Governor." and
the man who utters it is not a Congressman nor
a capitalist nor a manufacturer, but a humble.
slave-born negro farmer Calvin Brock, of Wayne!
County. He was talking to the Governor of North
Carolina whose salary is only $4,000 annually, and
wnose clear profit is minus, while Calvin Brock
the year before had made a clear profit of $2,
723.61 on fifteen acres of strawberries alone, be
sides cultivating fifty acres of land in other crons.
The black Cincinnatus indeed could not afford to
leave his plow for the salary of the Chief Exeeii
tive although he has never seen the inside of a
school-house and only learned to read and write
by copying and conning a scawl alphabet which a
country carpenter pencilled for him on a new pine
sningie!
1 II JfJOW 11 a If- WAV Dmvn tr fThini if T W.nt rrf t
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The other story is that of a white farmer in an
adjoining county who paid $500 for a farm of
nr ty-three acres in 189 9 not quite $ 1 0 an acre.
Its former owner had acted on the theorv that hp
didn't own anything except three inches of .sur
face soil, aDd with such cultivation it took four
acres of the land to make a bale of cotton. But
that policy by no means commended itself to the
new owner. Thoroughly Inoculated with the idea
or crop rotation and deep plowing, he astonished
the soil itself by the energy of his reforms. Hitch
ing a 1,000 pound mule to an ordinary plow, he
found the beast unable to penetrate the brick-yard
tnat iay beneath the five or six inches of culti
vated -upper crust. Then he hitched two horses
and they broke off his plow, whereupon Green
cussea (in tnis one case I am usine an asanm?
name), and sent to Chattanooga for -a four-horse
disc plow. By this time the moss-backed farm
ers of the quarter-bale-per-acre size had congre-
euiea in me seats of the scornful. to-wit. thP vii.
lage goods boxes, and swore that Green would
ruin his land forever with his new f angled "book
farming" ideas; but to no effect. T Rlirolv nr n't
make money by your plans," he retorted,: "and it
can t oe any worse to try the book-farming ideas,
-you can tnem. And, as for ruining the- land,
Its my own, I reckon, and I will nlnw
half-way to China if I want to!" Of course Green
ougnt to nave deepened his seed-bed gradually,
for it is not best to bring so much subsoil to the
sunace at once, but liberal disc harrowing I.
ly overcame his errors here, and the heavy cowpea
crop and the barn-yard manure did the rest. The
next year indicated the land's iinwarrtr. or,
in 1901 (proper rotation, observe) he grew a' good
uuy.ui corn ana peas; m 1902 he made a half
bale of cotton per acre; in 1903 he grew corn and
peas again, and in 1904 a good crop of oats and
peas. By 1905 he had brought up his land until
part or it made two bales of cotton ner acrp nv,a
this yearr following corn last' year, he hopes for a
two-bale average on the entire field. To-day he
wouian t: sen nls ?i.4l land of 1899 for $luft
I . - -- . ; j - T . w w till
acre and why should he, since even at that fig
ure xne ouyer could pay for it with the first year
cotton crop? So it. was with Green, as with Gold
smith's immortal preacher, that "those who ram p
to scoff remained to pray;" and his example is
but . one 1 of thousands that might be cited, and
which nave proved as contagious as measles
- u- . - ' . -
Advance in Prices Has Made the Farmer Stron.
A dozen distinct forces working together ha
each contributed I to the agricultural advance of
which I am writing. Most important of all, per
haps. Is the increase in prices of our staple crops.
Cotton, our leading ! "money crop," has more than
doubled in value in ten years, and while nrin
have merely doubled, the net orofits. of
have more than quintupled. Another factor not
to be overlooked is; that the less ambitious class
of farmer's have gone to the factories and towns,
and as a result of this winnowing, the craft as a
whole is to-day more alert and progressive than
ever before. In fiv years the attendance on our
Farmers' Institutes has doubled, the number of
farm papers read I has probably increased 400 ner
cent, and the number of agricultural students at
our Agricultural and Mechanical College has more
than trebled. With financial independence, too.
the farmer has acquired a deeper dignity and
pride iuj his calliigi He no longer owes the mer
chant, and so much! a thing of the past is the old
ruinous mortgage-breeding: "credit svatAm" of
buying supplies, that he has almost forgotten it.
To his prosperity is largely attributable the great
Increase in number of small banks, already men
tioned, j In Scotland County, reversing immemorial
custom,! farmers now lend money to the merchants.
If the prices in fall do not suit our North ' Caro
lina cotton growers, they, simply.hold $10,000,000
wortn for better prices the- following summer. A
conservative estimate would probably put the in
crease in land, values during the last ten years at
per cent. ' The cases of two Pender Count v
neighbors have just come to my attention, one re
fusing $2,500 for -land he bought in 1897 for
$35 0, w hlle another had sold a tract for $2,00 0
wnicn men cost mm ?750.. In the first instance
the profits were unusually large, but the second
case is typical. ; J
Feet of j Enlightenment Tread Beautiful Highways.
Of the other factors that have been helpful in
the remaking of country life in Carolina, bettfir
schools better roads, rural mail delivery and the
rural telephone must not, be ignored. The mud
tax has long been a burden grievous to be borne
but we are now mending our ways. Mecklen
burg's good roads are famous. Durham's will be
come equally so, and the $300,000 Guilford is
now expenamg will leave her roads not inferior
to Durham's. With their increasing wealth it will
become easy for the Piedmont section generally to
macadamize the more important highways, and in
the eastern counties the sand-clav svaf o.m matin r
only $200 to $300 a mile, is fast winning its way.
Where sand abounds, and application of clay is
xutiue w me roaus; wnere clay makes travel diffi
cult, itj is mixedj with stand. This simple opera
tion makes a hard; smooth and dnrahlA anrfn
In Northampton) arid Guilford Counties the split-
log arag, now so popular in the West., has hAen
tried with gratifying results. ' :
The rural free delivery of mails h as heiTi rf in
estimable benefit to the State. NVl rtTl Pr carving
the National : Government has ever rendered the
iarmer . is .comparable to it Aside from its nninir-
ening arid elevating influence, the mere increase
in landj. values I resultiner from its
doubtless exceeds its cost. The farmer not onlv
gets mote mail, but: his interest is aroused, and he
aemanas a Detter quality of reading mnttor wim.
the coming of rural delivery in Wake County the
Raleigh j postmaster; tells me that the once large
bulk of j fake story! papers from Maine and Chi
cago has dwindled intn
cance. 1 As for the increase in onalitv of man mat
ter handled, I recently obtained the stntiotir.es fr-
three Raleigh routes which had then been in on-
A. S . XT
iauon Lnree ana one-half years. On rniita Nn 1
I found that thej number of pieces of mail handled
per month had grown from 952 to 5.032: on rnn
No. 2 from 1.372 Itn 2 fi7rt -m
from 1,553 to' 3,531 a total increase of from 3,
87S to 12,253, or more than 5nn na-r nont a.
other illustration is found in the fact that in five'
years the circulation of the Methodist organ pub
lished j in the building in which I write this has
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