Thursday, December 17, .1908. J
THE PROGRESSIVE FARMER.
the penalty in diminished fees, diminished sal
aries, diminished 'influence. ..
Victims of the vicious teaching I am pointing
out, your men of talent- artist, sculptor, poet, or
ator, have too often fled to other sections, or else
have died with vision unfulfilled among a people
untrained to appreciate their genius when but
for these things you might see statues of South
ern leaders in every Southern city, the work of
soiuneru ai iwia m me wurm a greatest galleries.
the thought of the Southern .. poet the common
heritage of mankind. It is not that we have had
no mighty dreamers; it is that they sleep in neg
lected graves trampled under foot by war, and
waste, and error.
Now war ana waste, thank God, are behind
us. Let us also put error behind us.
THE SOUTH'S GREATEST ERRORS.
Of all our errors our greatest has been the
failure to recognize the fact that the prosperity
"of every man depends upon the prosperity of the
average man -ana in many cases the actual ac
ceptance of the doctrine that the State is bene
fited by having cheap, untrained labor. We have
seen on the contrary that such labor is a curse.? :'
And our second great error has been likGunto
it the belief that even if the prosperity of every
man does depend upon the prosperity of the.aver-
man, we are too poor to train him. The truth
is, 'that .we are too poor not to do so. The fullest
and freest training of the average man is the one
- . in .
ana oniy positive guarantee oi- soutnern . pros
perity, and by this I mean the prosperity not only
of pur section and of our institutions and of so
ciety as a whole, but the prosperity of every indi
vidual every farmer, every laborer, every mer
PROF. MASSEY'S
Editorial Page.
Prof. Massey will personally answer
inquiries on Agricultural subjects
sent by our readers. .
Raise Your Own Meat.
EARS ago I wrote of visiting a man's farm,
where all the land was in cottonTight up
to the house standing unpainted in a bare
field. A hopeless-looking woman was frying some
western Dacon ior tne amner, wnlie the man
toiled in the cotton. . And I got to thinking over
the matter. There was no stock on the place but
the mules that worked the cotton. And as I saw
that bacon, I thought that some farmer out West
raised that hog, and probably made something
out of it. Some railroad carried it to Chicag ,
and certainly made money. Some packer bought
me old, since he has found out the value of the
cowpea;:but asJie gets his land into better heart,
I think he will find that it pays better to save all
the peavines for hay and feed them to make ma
nure to return to- the soil. Then, while peas will
be all right in the tobacco if he is not going to
sow fall grain, I think that he would find it a bet-
rotation to follow the tobacco with winter oats,
and these with peas for hay. - ?
Mr. Lawson, by heavy application of fertilizers,
made 0 bushels of corn after oats. If he had
followed all his oats with peas and made three
tons per acre, the pea crop would have been worth
far more clear money than the corn, and would
have been of help to his land. It looks to me as
though he used over $14 worth of fertilizer and
cottonseed per acre, and it would have been in
structive had he left part without this heavy fer
tilization to see what amount of corn was due to
the fertilizer. Still, his letter shows that he is
beating cotton with his "supplies." .
Mr. Bigner puts a high price on his corn and a
very moderate price on his peas. If corn brings
that price with him he should certainly give atten
tion to the development of his land fn corn. But
and cured the meat, and grew to be a millionaire.
Another railroad brought it South and paid divi- 1 am glad to note that Southern farmers are find-
tfehdsby doing it. Some merchant bought it,
and sold- it to that man out there in the cotton
field al a big profit and he works all summer in
the cotton making all these Deonle DrosDerous
out of his one crop, while at the end of the year
he is as poor as ever, and his land grows les3
and less productive, while he might have made
all those profits himself in raising the bacon at
home.
The Western farmer makes corn, the railroads
" I II 11. . 1 9 L ) i tm
chant, every manufacturer, every professional IllUi mwcuaut DUS " ana 5eus 11 .tne man
man, every inhabitant as I have said, from the boy who could raise the corn at'more profit than the
who blacks shoes to the master-mind that builds
your railroad systems or governs your State.
ing out that four-foot rows are better than five or
six. One must have stalks enough on an acre to
make a big crop..
When Mr. Lewis has gotten his land through a
rotation, to make a bale of cotton per acre, he
should quit calling it "poor," for if not rich, it is
in afair way to become rich if he will stick to a
gooq rotation.
Some Features of Our Last Issue.
And having once accepted this doctrine concern- i
ing the average man -and the average man in
the South being a farmer we shall not be slow
to put into effect that large and comprehensive
program of rural development which earnest men
and women, working in many different lines have
gradually brought into shape a program which
looks to the ultimate doubling of the output and
the more than quadrupling of the profits of that
occupation which, engages the attention of more
people In the South than all other occupations
combined.
THE GREAT REVOLUTION THAT HAS NOW
BEGUN AND WHAT IT WILL DO.
Then indeed will the South blossom as the
rose; then indeed will the long ambitions of our
fathers come at last into glorious fruitage. Not
only will the common farm homes in the South be
supplied with all the conveniences our city breth
ren now enjoy, good roads and telephones and fine
stock and fat acres greeting the glad eyes of an
awakened people; but every industry known to
our Southland will throb with hew vigor as if
fresh blood had been Poured into its veins. Great
Western farmer if he improved his land. Yet,
he goes on in the old hopeless way imagining that
cotton is the only thing to get money out of, and
that corn, oats, and wheat are only "supplies,"
and the Western farmer gets rich supplying him.
When will the cotton farmer get out of this
slavery to everybody else? Not till he goes to
farming just as the Northern and Western farm
ers do. He has a crop that is far superior as a
money crop to any they have, and a crop that fits
into an improving rotation -of crops fully as well
as any they have North or West, and while they
get rich in sending him "supplies" he gets poor
furnishing the crop that maintains the trade bal
ance between this country and Europe, and sell
ing the cottonseed that fatten the cattle that
make the meat he buys in various forms;
- - - -
Now, then, is the time to resolve to change all
this. Plan a rotation for your farmland stick to
it, grow plenty of forage and make manure, and
when you once have manure enough to cover a
corn-field, you will be on the road out of this
slavery to the North and West.
Nine-tenths of the letters I get from farmers
ask what fertilizer I shall use for this, that or
the other crop, when the man who farms right
will need to buy little, and that only of the rain-
IGHT at my kitchen door I have a little
cold frame covered with three 3x6 feet
sashes. In that frame is now a crop of
lettuce which we are enjoying daily. How many
farmers in the South have green stuff in winter
that they might have?
Get money in the bank, of course, but in the
meantime live at home and have the, comforts that
any one may have in the South in winter. With
parsnips, salsify, spinach and turnip-tops, to say
nothing of the green onions, any Southern farm
er should not live on peas and collards all winter.
Mr. Green tells a good story of the energy of
the Union Cdunty farmers. When farmers get
telephones it is an evidence that they, are alive to
modern improvement, and I know that, as a rule,
the" Union County farmers are improving in every
way; and, barring some thin slaty ridges, they
have a fine soil. They grow peas, too, and have
a pea that I have never seen elsewhere, which
they call the "Revenue," and though not a rank
runner, I believe the Kevenue will maKe more
peas per acre than most other varieties.
Mr. Powell is doubtless right so far as Edge
combe is concerned; but I referred to keeping the
potatoes in a colder section than Edgecombe. T
have kept them, and not the dry yellow barks
mercantile houses will grow up among us rivaling eral forms of acid phosphate and potash, or but either, till June without a rotten potato, in the
one of these, perhaps.
I have been hammering away at this for many
m V A - . AT - n
years, ana yet now lew nave taicen tne mea. out
I do hear now and then from farmers who have
broken loose from the old ruts, and are succeed
ing. Would to God that! could get all of them
to do so!
Our " Best Crop " Reports.
HE reports on last summer's crop Jn the
last two issues show that at least a few far
mers are trying to get the Old North State
those of the North and West, and Southern mer
chants will make the big profits that come with
big sales instead of the small profits inevitable
with small sales. (Merchants in the West are
selling automobiles to farmers; compare, if you
will, the profits on automobiles and ox carts.)
Manufacturers of a thousand things for which
there is now no ' Drofitable Southern market, we
shall have; and our laboring men, finding room
for greater skill and higher wages, will walk with
quicker step and lighter hearts. Bankers will no
longer own allegiance to other sections, but our
own financial institutions will become the equals
of any in America. Our newsDaDers will grow
greater with stronger subscription and advertising out of the f ourteen-bushel-per-acre class, and I
patronage, and Northern men and women will be- hope that tne next census win snow tnat we, nave
advanced. In fact, I believe mat it win. n we
could but get every farmer in the South to take
ThA Prosrressive Farmer and study farming, it
would not be long till North Carolina - and every
other Southern State would' show a creditable
yield of corn, oats, and wheat.
Mr. Petree spoke of me as "that grand old man,'
the apostle of the cowpea." The apostle is all
right, perhaps, but to a frisky youngster in his
seventieth year, who can walk a mile as quickly
as the next youngster, it Is something of a shock
to be called old. It is said that a woman Is as
old as she looks and a man is as .old as he feels.
According to this standard, I am about 45 or 50.
I eat three meals a day, sleep like an infant, and
am as active as most men of twenty less years
Hence, I am not old, for I do not feel old.
I will forgive Mr. Petree, however, for calling
gin. to read Southern magazines and Southern
dailies. Our railroads will double-track old lines
to supply the new demands, and new lines will
be built to quicken dead sections into life. Able
lawyers will no-longer go North to find big fees,
foreign pulpits will no longer be able to take our
strong religious' leaders from us, our poet-souls
and artist-souls will find here at last the atmos
phere in which they best can flourish, our states
men will speak with potent voices in the councils
of the nation, and the eye of every Southern
schoolboy will sparkle with a keener pride as he
learns the story of a generation that has wrought
as well in peace as the fathers fought in war.
These are the things we have now set out to win;
these are the things which are to come about with
that agricultural revolution upon which alone can
any really New South be predicated.
'a- ai a a V a
way .i descrioea. ah tne eartn tnat is neeaea is
enough to exclude frost in the section where they
are stored.
There is another sort of composting that pays.
On a farm in which I am interested we had this
summer a pond that completely dried up in the
extreme dry weather. The bottom was covered a
foot or more deep with a blacky, spongy mass of
decayed vegetable matter. Now, to haul this
muck lout fresh on the land would do little
good, as it is cold and sour. But we hauled out
about 150 loads and spread it in layers a foot
thick with two inches of lime between. Later on
when it has dried and been frozen several times,
the heap will be chopped down and completely
mixed, and we hope by time for planting canta
loupes and melons to have a fine compost on
which to spread some commercial fertilizer to
start the crop, believing that the black muckxom-
post will keep up the later growth and make a
crop. In fact, this black muck treated in this
way, will analyze in spring very like so much
cow dung. There are thousands of acres of sim
ilar muck in r Eastern North Carolina that treated
in this way would be a valuable addition to sandy
soil.
The scarcity of manure is one great drawback
in the way of better farming in the South to-day,
and every opportunity should be taken to in
crease its amount or to use It where it will do
the most good. The land cannot go on feeding
the owner if he will not feed It.